How to Eliminate the Dreaded "Blind Spot" - <AUTHOR> http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~gdguo/driving/BlindSpot.htm <comment><USER2> There are smaller things (bicycles, motorcycles, pedestrians) that can sneak into the gap between the side and rearview mirror views here. And colliding with one of those is much more likely to cause serious injury or death than colliding with a car.

It's a much better idea to make sure your side and rear mirrors have complete coverage (i.e. no gaps) at the back, and actually turning your head to check the blind spot. Make a habit of doing this on every lane switch or turn, even if you think you're at the side of the road - there may be a bike lane or crosswalk you didn't notice, or someone might be simply be using a nonexistant lane of travel.

A good way to adjust your mirrors is to have someone walk by your car, and make sure you can see them in either your rear or side mirrors, and make a note of where you need to look for the blind spot.

Of course, even if you make sure the side and rear mirrors provide complete rear coverage, that doesn't always keep things safe - some cyclists and motorcyclists seem to like to jump out from behind a vehicle to lane-split and then get mad when they see you switching lanes in front of them...

<comment><USER3> This is fantastic advice. The only thing I can really add is you should be keeping track of what's around you, don't look just before a lane change. Having good situational awareness is the most important thing when driving.

<comment><USER4> I used to emphasize and practice that, back when I drove a '93 Honda Civic. It was a useful skill as I would naturally adjust my speed to prevent cars from cruising in my blind spot or to give myself more room for maneuvering.

But newer cars have such poor visibility that it takes too much effort to track movement such that it becomes a diversion. In my '93 Civic any kind of movement in my peripheral--direct or in the mirror--registered immediately; and that peripheral was wide and tall and clear. It was also easier to hear the road and traffic, which also helped. Newer cars make you feel like you're entombed and deaden the senses, compounding the problem.

I know part of my degraded situational awareness is getting older, but since we keep a '98 Civic for when I have to commute by car, I have an idea about which changes are more objective than subjective. The sight lines in the '98 Civic aren't as great as the '93, but still incomparable to the post-2010 cars I've leased or rented. I drive both our family car (new lease every 2-3 years) and the '98 in roughly equal proportion and pretty much all of my unforced traffic errs have been in newer cars. (The most egregious of which are not noticing pedestrians about to cross at a four-way intersection. Modern A pillars seem deviously sized and placed to perfectly obscure the far corners of an intersection. Though I suppose these are the errs I'm most likely to notice as the pedestrians are revealed the moment you begin to enter the intersection from a stop. Most other potential collisions probably go unnoticed.)

Thankfully this year we finally leased a car with lane departure warning. It hasn't actually prevented an unforced err, yet, but I'm glad it's there. (I know it's there because it'll beep if there's an adjacent car when I initiate signaling, even if I'm not moving into the lane. If a car sneaks up after signaling it only warns when you begin the lane change.)

<comment><USER5> Definitely true about newer cars. My wife and I shop for cars specifically looking at the back window being small and raised too high as an automatic NO. We last bought in 2011, and the car has one of the largest back windows on the road today. I don't know what we're going to do when it's time for an upgrade.

<comment><USER6> Is it newer cars or newer US cars? I've driven a fair amount of rentals in both US and Europe and I'm always amazed at how big the blind spot is in the US.

In Europe the smallest car typically does not fit in the blind spot, in the US a pick up truck fits in there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's an even simpler, more effective way of checking blind spots: Actually turning ones head and looking over the shoulder.

The "blind spot" doesn't exist when drivers exercise proper caution and responsible driving behavior.

Of course, expecting this of drivers is unrealistically utopian. Nevertheless, a "blind spot" is just another excuse for unsafe drivers.

<comment><USER8> This is an integral part of a driving exam in the Netherlands. You are drilled to look over the shoulder for literally every maneuver (lane switch, turn, etc.) and if you fail to do it even once during the driving exam you will get a fail. In other news: driving test in the US is a complete joke.

<comment><USER9> Then again, in my US driving test I was penalized (I still passed the test) for not looking over my shoulder before one lane change. It was a two-lane one-way road with zero traffic. There's no way a car could've gotten there without me seeing it in my mirrors unless it had been dropped from the air into my blind spot. I'm definitely not still bitter.

<comment><USER10> I've had plenty of moments in my 33 years as a driver where a vehicle dropped out of the sky and into my blind spot; they just do that!

The problem is that your attention isn't riveted on the mirrors at all times.

If you have been sternly monitoring the mirrors in the previous fraction of a minute, then such a hypothesis does hold.

In road tests, you have to do everything by the book, though.

They want to see that you've developed the habit of checking. The habit will save you that time when your don't-have-to-do-it hypothesis happens to have a flaw.

<comment><USER11> > _The problem is that your attention isn 't riveted on the mirrors at all > times._

This is mitigated by what pilots call their "scan" or "flow" (I've heard both terms).

Pilots follow a visual path around the instruments to ensure they refresh their awareness of critical values and system states (airspeed, ascent rate, engine parameters, etc.) at appropriate intervals¹.

I argue that drivers should have a similar flow to maintain constant situational awareness, and side mirrors are a key element in such a pattern.

I also have a pre-drive checklist that I call the "Six Ls" —

Lights (obvi), Locks (obvi) , Levels (fuel, oil press, electrical supply, etc.), Laps (seat belts), Load (cargo secured?), Loud (radio down/pax calm).

/Acey

¹—With automatic alerting in modern planes this arguably is not strictly needed, but pilots start in small, simple planes before moving up the tech stack and it's a good practice at any level.

<comment><USER10> How much does the roster of what pilots are constantly scanning have to do with what is happening to the rear of the airplane's path of travel?

Pilots don't have the problem of a child jumping into their path from between parked cars.

They can fly blind in a complete fog, by instruments.

In a car, your attention should be mostly toward the front. The rear action deserves attention, but not a lot; just a glance every few seconds.

There are times in driving when what is happening rearward is very important and deserves a lot of attention; it's generally good to keep those to a minimum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> People who drove cars in the EU and in the USA: did you ever notice how the blind spot problem almost completely disappears in the EU? That's because US enforces in the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard #111 [1] that the left side rear view mirror cannot be convex, to aid the detection of the vehicles in the blind spot. I have not yet come up with a good understanding of why that regulation even exists, but personally I feel much safer on the road with the European type rear view mirrors.

[1] 49 CFR 571.111 Rear visibility

S5.2 Outside rearview mirror - driver's side.

S5.2.1 Field of view. Each passenger car shall have an outside mirror of unit magnification [2].

[2] 'Unit magnification' mirror means a plane or flat mirror with a reflective surface through which the angular height and width of the image of an object is equal to the angular height and width of the object when viewed directly at the same distance except for flaws that do not exceed normal manufacturing tolerances.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is one of those things that most people do wrong and just aren't comfortable doing it the correct way. I tried to get my mother to setup her mirrors correctly but she just puts them back to an improper setup. For some reason people can't get past not being able to see the side of their own vehicle in their side mirrors. They think they need this reference point. Drivers education should really be pushing this so at least new drivers will setup their mirrors correctly.

<comment><USER14> This is so true. I was fortunate to learn about the technique described in the article when I learned to drive in high school and have used it for the past 25 years. However, I've completely failed to ever convince anyone else that this is the right way to do it. I've mainly tried it with people I shared a car with, first my parents and later my wife. They are so insistent on wanting to see the side of the car, but can't explain why that matters. My only hope is to indoctrinate my children when they start driving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> No. A thousand times no. I did this, on the advice of "Click" and "Clack" the CarTalk brothers. Shortly after, I backed into a short concrete pillar and messed up my left rear fender. The pillar was too short to see out of the back window, but I would have seen it if my side mirrors were set correctly as they reach you in school. You have to see where your fenders are going. Imagine if it was a small child back there instead of a pillar.

<comment><USER16> Yeah I also worry this advice would make it harder to back up. I drive a large minivan and use my side view mirrors all the time to check if I'm going to hit something when backing up. That would be a lot harder if I were not able to see my own car in the mirror.

Although I guess all you would need to do to see your own car in the mirror would be to lean to the side a bit... so maybe not a big deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can deal with blindspots.

What boggles my mind is that some modern cars still have abnormally large ones. Cars with bad crash ratings get shat on but apparently designs with massive blindspots are totally OK.

<comment><USER18> Indeed. It puzzles me too how an A-pillar large enough to disapear a motorcycle, or group of children, is somehow accepted as safe. Our indescriminate push for safely has taken control from our hands in many contexts it seems.

<comment><USER19> Passive safety. A-pillar might be so bulky because it contains curtain airbag and provides structural stability necessary for good crash rating.

<comment><USER20> Airbags don't go into the A pillars typically - they start at about the top of the windshield, and when they blow the headliner tears, but not the plastic covering the A pillar.

<comment><USER19> You can see at 0:44 here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl4-cO6pO34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl4-cO6pO34) that a portion of the side airbag is in the upper part of the A pillar. Here's what under the cover: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHRZcmA1A9U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHRZcmA1A9U)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Related concepts, in the Netherlands they taught everyone to open their car door with the right hand, which makes your head turn and improves odds of spotting a cyclist.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/16/how-to- sa...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/16/how-to-safely-open- a-car-door-dutch-style)

<comment><USER22> I was taught (in the Netherlands) to hold the door with your right hand while you release the latch with the left. The benefit is not only turning the torso to see cyclists, but also holding on to the door in case there's a gust of wind.

The latter has saved the neighbor's car door a number of times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been aligning my mirrors like this for years. I prefer it because I can see cars in immediate adjacent positions without turning my head. It's particularly helpful in situations where I need to very quickly assess the situation, such as unexpected debris on the road and little time to react.

As noted, however, motorcycles can draw up unseen. But more often, when it fails, it's a car two lanes over to my rear that changes lanes towards me at the same time I do. it can go completely unseen. So I always do a head check, time permitting.

<comment><USER24> Yes. I always turn my head before I switch lanes, but I much more frequently am just aware that I don't need to turn my head because there is someone beside me. And you gain continuous situational awareness that means you pretty much always know which way you can go if you have to.

I also have had more surprise cars coming up next to me than motorcycles, because they're so rare and they don't come ut in the winter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> My father taught me this forever ago when I was learning to drive.

If this is done correctly, as a vehicle is coming up on, say, the left of you, as it is leaving your rear view mirror, it's entering the side view mirror. It should actually be in BOTH mirrors simultaneously. There's no blind spot.

</comment><comment><USER26> Fun fact: European driver-side mirrors actually have a larger FOV than their US counterparts. It took me a while to get used to that when I moved to the US. I ended up buying some small blind spot mirrors that can be stuck onto the car's mirrors. I've been pretty happy with that solution (in combination with looking over my shoulder).

</comment><comment><USER27> I have used this advice for the past decade and I could not recommend it more. After just few days of driving like that I could not believe how it was possible for me to drive with incorrectly set mirrors like 99÷ of car drivers.

<comment><USER28> I see many comments complaining about almost hitting bikes while using this method. How is your experience?

<comment><USER27> Okay, so the important thing to understand that with this method your mirrors don't overlap. Before, you could ignore your rear view mirror and just look in the side mirror to get the same coverage but slightly extended on that side. With correctly set mirrors you absolutely have to use both rear view mirror and the side mirror if you want to change the lane or are looking for a cyclist when turning.

I made some tests when I first started. I parked my car parallel to the street and observed when cars move from behind they move out of the rear view mirror and start appearing in side mirror before wholly disappear from rear view mirror.

With bicycles it is more difficult, not all parts of bicycle are easy to spot. If you just get a rear part or front wheel in the mirror you might miss it (it may be below your vision if you have SUV or have mirrors set bit high). For this reason I have my side mirrors set low, which also aides backing up when parking.

It is also important to look at your mirrors correctly. If you look for things moving faster than you, which is most of the time (for example when you are changing lanes or looking for cyclists when turning right) then you need to first look into the rear view mirror and then to side mirror, in that order.

I taught myself to scan all mirrors constantly when driving to have a map of all cars and their relative positions and velocities around me. It is tiring at the beginning but it means I am rarely surprised by normally moving cars (ie. not doing any stupid manouvers). It is very helpful when you need to suddenly swerve and you can frequently anticipate problems other drivers have and accommodate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Am I the only one that doesn't find the blind spot to be where this article puts it? (Between the side mirror and the rear mirror's coverage areas.) I can (barely) see the entire side of my car in my side mirror; anything closer to behind me is going to appear in the rear mirror. The part I have trouble with is the _other_ side of the side mirror, that is, the forward part of its coverage. A car can sit forward of what the mirror can see, but not yet in my peripheral vision.

So I turn my head when merging, to clear that area.

(Perhaps I have my side mirror pointing further "back" than the article?)

<comment><USER30> Yes, the point of the article is to adjust the side mirrors further out in order to shrink the regular blind spot (the same one you are talking about).

I disagree with that though, for two reasons:

1\. You don't eliminate the blind spot, only shrink it. Depending on your car, the FoV of the mirrors, and the size of the other vehicle, you might still have a large enough blind spot so that your peripheral vision doesn't have it once it leaves the side mirror.

2\. It risks creating an even more dangerous blind spot behind you (the one between the mirror views). Maybe not large enough for a car, but definitely for a motorcycle. This one is much harder to catch even if you turn your head.

I think every driver should turn their head, always.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> These seem like good guidelines, although I would add that drivers should also be aware of other cars that may merge from the side, so you cannot depend entirely on the mirrors. This happens quite frequently in heavy traffic when folks are eager to take any space available

<comment><USER32> Agreed, drivers often do not check for this. If I'm merging into a lane, I prefer to do so when not sliding next to another car. If it's inevitable, I do it slowly.

<comment><USER29> Yes! I wish more people thought like this.

I've more than once been signaling a merge and had the car two lanes over attempt the opposite merge right into the space I'm signaling into, often when I'm already partially in it, without signaling. I'm very wary of merging next to someone now for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've almost been hit by so many idiots who don't turn their heads and just trust their stupid mirrors, I want to have 5 minutes alone in a locked room with whoever wrote this article.

</comment><comment><USER34> I rented a car once that had blind spot cameras in the outside rear view mirrors -- when you turn on the turn signal, it displayed the camera's view in the multifunction display in the middle of the dashboard.

It had a better field of view than the mirror, and made it very easy to see if there's a bike or pedestrian beside you. Since it was just a rental, out of habit I still turned my head to look, but it seemed like a useful. I think it even flashed and beeped a warning if there was someone in the blind spot, but that may have only worked for cars.

I think these systems should be required for trucks and other large vehicles that have a large blind spot.

[http://www.carblogmy.com/honda-blindspot-display- system/](http://www.carblogmy.com/honda-blindspot-display-system/)

</comment><comment><USER35> Is it legal to have European style mirrors in the us? I almost crashed due to the stupid American bathroom mirrors.

</comment><comment><USER36> Exactly how we were taught to set the mirrors in drivers ed.

They don't teach it in Wisconsin. Nor do they teach how to use blinkers, or to deal with multiple people coming up to a stop sign controlled intersection.

But I digress.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is how you end up thinking you don't have blindspots and end up hitting someone/something. Blind spots need to be checked by turning your head unless you have 4 inch round fisheye mirrors that would fit equally well on a dumptruck or semi-truck. Those little tiny spot mirrors on consumer cars? Those are 4/5 times complete garbage and don't give nearly enough vision. If someone walks behind your car, at no point in time should they disappear without moving your head even for a fraction of a second.

</comment><comment><USER38> I looked at some other "tips" in the folder and found this: [http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~gdguo/driving/RoadMarkings.htm](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~gdguo/driving/RoadMarkings.htm) which suggests it's OK to turn into any lane, near or far. That's not acceptable in my state. You must turn into the nearest lane.

</comment><comment><USER39> [Never mind the next para. See child comment I replied to]

In driving school, I was taught to adjust my side mirrors exactly the way described here: rear view mirror points to rear, side mirrors just barely show the side of the car. And still there are blind spots in every car I've driven, no matter how much "fine tuning" I do.

This is why blind spot warning systems are a must in any new car I consider buying.

<comment><USER40> You might have misread this -- the way that you learned is the traditional way. The way described on this page, you do _not_ see your own car at all in the side view mirror.

<comment><USER39> Ah I see, you're right. I didn't understand what the author meant when he said you have to lean to one side when adjusting that side's mirror.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I have a seven year-old Prius and the support columns on the left and right of the windshield are huge. I can't count the number of times I'll be pulling up to a stop sign only to stop and freak out when a pedestrian walks right in front of me. See, they're walking across the cross-walk at a pace that seems to match my slow speed but they're behind that giant support column so I don't see them until I've stopped. Usually, they're freaking out too and mouthing/gesturing bad things at me for not stopping sooner. This, of course, coupled with the fact that they were probably looking at their phone and couldn't hear me because at that speed, the engine has shut off.

The instructions in this post are great and I'm going to follow them the next time I get in my car. Still, I hope Toyota and other manufacturers start making pedestrian detection systems and blind spot information systems standard in all vehicles soon.

</comment><comment><USER42> Side mirrors are called that either because they're mounted on the sides, or to see what's beside you. Specifically they're not there so you can see the sides of your own car.

As mentioned in other comments, what you seen in side mirrors are for situational awareness. When performing a manoeuvre, turn your head around to get the best view.

</comment><comment><USER43> Here's a paper going into some technical details of blind spots and how to overcome them:

[https://doi.org/10.4271/950601](https://doi.org/10.4271/950601)

The Geometry of Automotive Rearview Mirrors - Why Blind Zones Exist and Strategies to Overcome Them

<comment><USER44> Googling that paper turned up an interesting summary of innovations in side mirrors, etc.

[https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/are-blind- spots-...](https://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/are-blind-spots-a- myth/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> If this eliminates the blind spot, what's the white stripe in the 2nd illustration, between the side and rear mirror views? _It 's the blind spot._ And someone on foot, on a bicycle, or on a motorcycle can fit in it. Turn your head, lazy-ass.

</comment><comment><USER46> I like how some new cars automatically switch on side cameras the moment you turn on the indicators. Safety Features like these should be mandatory in all vehicles just like seat belts.

On a side note I follow the practice described in the article and found it quite useful.

</comment><comment><USER47> My driving instructor in Sweden gave me a rhyme to remember. It consisted of only three words: blicken, pilen, filen. It literally translates to: the view, the signal, the lane – in that order. Basically you always look through the mirrors first and take a glance to the side your changing lanes into to cover the blind spot, then if it's safe you turn on the signal, and then you switch lanes. It's not entirely accurate, since you need to keep an eye on things all the time, but it's helped me develop a routine that's pretty much impossible to break these days. It's almost like I scan still hear him, 10+ years later. He was a great instructor.

<comment><USER48> US equivalent is SMOG: Signal, Mirrors, Over the shoulder, Go when safe.

Not sure whether it is better to signal before or after looking, but that was what my partner's driving instructor taught.

<comment><USER47> The point of looking first, as explained by my instructor, was to not freak out other drivers by signaling first. They might think you're going to suddenly pop out of the lane, spooking them to either speed up or slow down, or perhaps swirving, causing an accident that way. By looking first to make sure things are clear, you mitigate this risk. Of course, in heavy traffic this is still an issue; but heavy traffic typically means lower speeds as well so not necessarily as dangerous. That's the bit that comes with experience I suppose, learning when more attention is necessary.

<comment><USER49> My thought is that signaling before the full check gives the other driver a chance to make sure they're comfortable with and prepared for the change, but obviously you want to know they're there already.

I think the missing point in that SMOG acronym is general awareness. I don't know if they teach this, but I won't signal unless I'm already quite sure I'm lined up with a clear space I want to get into. But, once I'm aligned and think I'm good, I'll signal, double check mirrors, shoulder check, and then go. The only new info that gives is the shoulder check, and if you're paying attention a shoulder check should never surprise you.

If you need to change lanes within the next 30 seconds, and don't already have general knowledge of the destination lane's status, you've screwed up already. [1] It makes much more sense to consider checking after signaling if it's a double-check, not your first look at what's around you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Additional advice: 1\. Buy additional spherical mirrors. I bought them for sole reason to see blind spot and they are great. There are oval ones like [https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spot-Mirror-Convex-Mirrors- GUAR...](https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spot-Mirror-Convex-Mirrors- GUARANTEED/dp/B0093LYB20) but I actually found additional small spherical mirrors and added them. They mount on existing mirror.

2\. Change lanes slowly so if I didn't notice someone, he can dodge or horn me.

Those blind spot indicator ligts surely help on newer cars, but I don't have them. I know that it is possible to buy those too.

</comment><comment><USER51> 1\. Adjust your side mirrors so they have minimal overlap in coverage, which means you get maximum overall field of view.

2\. Check your mirrors routinely (though not constantly, that can be distracting in itself). Stuff doesn't just sneak up on you out of nowhere, unless you aren't paying attention. Cars can't materialize in your blind spot, they have to drive there, and if you're paying attention you'll see them, you'll know where they are even when you can't see them in your mirrors directly. Don't just use your mirrors as a final check as you are changing lanes or making a turn, use them to maintain situational awareness around you.

3\. Check your blindspot by turning your head and _looking_ at it with your eyes _before_ you make a lane change or turn. This is your last minute double check that your situational awareness map of what's around you is accurate. If you've been paying attention then this check will almost always be what you expect, but it's still valuable to double check (the belt and suspenders strategy).

4\. (actually number zero) STOP FOLLOWING SO CLOSELY. Drive defensively, leave a decent gap ahead of you, don't drive for extended periods of time side by side with other vehicles (especially much bigger ones). This sets you up for success instead of setting you up for failure, it means you have a buffer on your reaction time. If you have an extra second or two of reaction time in addition to your emergency braking distance ahead of you then even if the car ahead of you comes to a dead stop right when you have your head turned for a split second to check your blind spot then you will _still_ be able to come to a stop without hitting them when you bring your head back and react to what's going on, for example. Stack the odds in your favor, not against them. And don't let yourself be ruled by the dumb primitive impulses that tell you driving a car is always a race and you need to "win" and be aggressive and dominate others, etc, it's not any of those things, relax, concentrate on getting where you need to be safely.

P.S. Not checking your blind spots by turning your head is illegal in most states.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've been doing this for years. TBC - it doesn't eliminate the need to check your blind spot anyway (as many have mentioned) - just makes it more likely that you catch something moving unexpectedly into your blind spot, or you catch it before turning to look.

Also, the positioning is difficult to get used to, since you kinda have to trust it blindly (you can't get a good idea for where it's positioned based on seeing the side of your car) and then also it's just awful positioning for parking. Not to mention, anyone else using or sharing your car will complain to no end about the weird mirror positions.

</comment><comment><USER53> I read this article on Hacker News a while back and it seems on target to give pause for thought. I recommend reading it to understand more about saccades. This phenomenon may also help explain some accidents. Cheers, link next [https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide- to-s...](https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-fighter-pilots-guide-to-surviving- on-the-roads/)

</comment><comment><USER54> I bought these to try to help lessen the blind spot: [https://www.ebay.com/itm/Adjustable-Blind-Spot-Mirror- Wide-A...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Adjustable-Blind-Spot-Mirror-Wide-Angle- Rear-View-Car-Side-Mirror-with- Adhesive/273433031968?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649)

</comment><comment><USER55> In India, rear view mirrors with a wider view have been available as "clip on" options for a long time. If those are made standard in cars (instead of as addons), the specific "blind spot" problem would instantly disappear. Many of these aren't even highly convex, and so don't create much of a distance perception problem.

</comment><comment><USER56> The problem with any adjustment is that he car can just pass from one view to another just between you refocus your eyes between them (ie. from rear to side mirror, from side mirror to side window).

The solution is panoramatic rear view mirror (you can see thru the rear plus backseat side windows) and side mirrors with curved section that pretty much eliminate the blind spot

<comment><USER57> GM has a fantastic camera enhanced rear-view mirror that solves a lot of these blind-spot problems ...

[http://gmauthority.com/blog/gm/general-motors- technology/gm-...](http://gmauthority.com/blog/gm/general-motors- technology/gm-safety-technology/gm-active-safety-technology/gm-rear-camera- mirror/)

Hope it catches on. Can't wait till it's on more makes/models.

<comment><USER58> >Researchers and engineers working on the GM Rear Camera Mirror have been awarded 10 patents – one for the streaming video mirror and nine for video processing. The patents cover innovations in the wide field of view camera image calibration, de-warping, glare reduction and camera hardware design.

I assume that this will add some friction to adoption of similar video mirrors by other automakers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I drive cars that get a bad rep for visibility. This is the advice on mirror adjustment I swear by: [https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15131074/how- to-adjus...](https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15131074/how-to-adjust- your-mirrors-to-avoid-blind-spots/)

</comment><comment><USER60> This whole discussion is aggravating. There would be no blind spot if there were two mirrors per side, or those blind spot mirrors, or god forbid, space- remapping cameras or proximity detectors (which now are standard on some cars). It's at the end a cost issue.

</comment><comment><USER61> Yeah for years I've already done what the link mentions -- basically make the side mirrors point quite some way out. Depending on the vehicle you may have a small "blind spot" still, which is why you _always shoulder check_ before changing lanes or turning!

</comment><comment><USER62> Similar topic was discussed on HN a while back: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17900759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17900759) I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned yet.

</comment><comment><USER63> I cannot adjust my mirrors this way in my new car (they do not go sufficiently far "away" from the side of my vehicle). Had I noticed before buying it, I would have not bought it, but I'm stuck with it now.

</comment><comment><USER64> I saw this in a magazine years ago and have been doing it ever since. Last semester I was driving university cars a couple days a week and I would sometimes be amazed at how people had the side mirrors set up.

</comment><comment><USER65> Lane change assist alerting in modern cars has saved me from hitting cars in my blind spot, this tech makes a beeping alert when you hit the turn signal and a car is in the lane you are signaling towards.

</comment><comment><USER66> George McFly's vehicle had a blind spot according to Biff!

</comment><comment><USER67> > must have been in the Insured's blind spot, therefore it was an unavoidable > accident

No shoulder check => gross negligence => revoke license

</comment><comment><USER68> Blind spot mirrors solve this issue, and they are very cheap. I am surprised they are not mandated by manufacturers.

<comment><USER69> They look ugly and people don't want them. It should be mandated by law, much like seatbelts IMO.

<comment><USER70> Current US legislation forces those blind spots by requiring the driver side mirror to not distort distances. Change that law to match the rest of the world, where the blind sports are much smaller: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_mirror#Planar.2C_convex.2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_mirror#Planar.2C_convex.2C_aspheric) (and if you drive a car that has a EU-equivalent model, sometimes you can import EU mirrors. Best $100 I spent on my VW).

And while you're at it, also match the headlights with the ECE, such as to not blind oncoming traffic: [https://web.archive.org/web/20170120092812/http://www.motive...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170120092812/http://www.motivemag.com/pub/feature/tech/Motive_Tech_The_Difference_Between_US_and_European_Lights.shtml)

<comment><USER71> > And while you're at it, also match the headlights with the ECE

It's too bad that's not an option for most non-European makes. That is, if you have an Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, etc, they're relatively easy to obtain and install. If you have an Asian or American make (Honda, Ford, etc.), it's probably not an option since the overseas models may have a different shape for the headlamp assembly (making it difficult, if not impossible, to install them in the equivalent domestic model).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> anyone try the new lcd rearview mirrors. some of them claim no blindspot. [https://www.amazon.com/Master-Tailgaters-Mirror-Adjusting- Br...](https://www.amazon.com/Master-Tailgaters-Mirror-Adjusting- Brightness/dp/B06XHQ1QXX/)

</comment><comment><USER73> Blind spot can be greatly reduced. Just take a look at convex, wide-angle mirrors that cars have in EU.

</comment><comment><USER74> A blindspot mirror costs $5. I'm really surprised it's not mandated by law in the US.

</comment><comment> BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 Been doing that for over 20 years.

</comment><comment><USER75> "Blind spots" are a sociological device to absolve motorists of responsibility for dangerous driving.

<comment><USER76> "Oh I didn't see them officer." "Oh I mistook the gas for the brake." "They came out of nowhere." "I didn't have time to stop."

etc. etc. etc.

The excuses for irresponsible dangerous driving behavior are endless.

I yelled at someone for not stopping for a mother and stroller in a crosswalk. The driver said she didn't see them. I said that meant they were going too fast. They said no, they weren't, they just couldn't see them. It was impossible to get through to this person that if you didn't see someone _in the crosswalk_ then they were going too fast and not paying enough attention.

Simply amazing. I try not to think about it too hard or I'll never leave the house.

The approach of the original post, blind spots for motorcycles and bicycles aside, is at least taking responsibility on the part of the driver to change behavior and drive safely. Every "accident" has a cause, somewhere down the line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Works only if lane splitting for motorcycles isn't allowed. You need to be able to see between lanes and the rearview can be obscured by a close following vehicle you.

<comment><USER78> It also means you always need to re-adjust your mirrors for parking, especially for more urban areas. I don't understand why a portion of the mirror can't simply be made convex. There are lots of aftermarket adhesive ones that do exactly this.

<comment><USER79> I bought a used car and it came with the sticky convex ones applied. Never going to go without them again, they should totally be mandatory. So simple, so effective

<comment><USER80> This, exactly. I don't understand why these aren't required stock equipment on all cars.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


When "Doing Everything Right" Goes Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20141112/229946/When_quotDoing_Everything_Rightquot_Goes_Wrong.php

<comment><USER2> Even the people recommending this game on steam note that it's overpriced. From some reviews, the game is less than four hours long. $3.50 an hour isn't really a price point that steam users are used to. If I had to take a rough guess, I would say it's almost 10x my average.</comment>


On the accuracy of statistical procedures in Microsoft Excel 2007 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~bdm25/excel2007.pdf

<comment><USER2> Best part : _"Gnumeric was originally such a good Excel clone that it even reproduced many Excel errors. When informed that these were errors, the handful of part-time programmers who maintain Gnumeric managed to fix them correctly in a matter of months"_

<comment><USER3> And the linked paper for this claim: <http://www.csdassn.org/software_reports/gnumeric.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think that in jobs where statistics is the main function of the job, you will often not find them using Excel. The business intelligence folks at my company use it for cursory analyses, but I often question the rigor involved in their practices, and using Excel to do statistics is icing on the cake. I would trust the results of SAS or R or, hell, even Minitab, over the results I get out of Excel. Microsoft seems more content making their product shinier than improving the underlying numerical accuracy of their methods.

The sooner people realize it's not designed for real statistics, the sooner people can stop hearing statisticians rant when they receive "Report_Analysis_Feb1-2012_Update_Final-v3.xlsx".

<comment><USER5> If it's not designed for real statistics, what is it designed for then, fake statistics? I see what you're saying, but I think the real distinction you're drawing is between heavy-duty work and run-off-the-mill descriptive stats. Even the latter need to be accurate.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for pointing out the distinction. You're right that this is what I was going for, but the articles I've seen thus far about the inaccuracies in Excel deal mainly with the poor capabilities of the optimization routines, RNG, and distribution functions. If you're balancing a budget with numbers that involve 2 decimals or taking measures of central tendency on similarly-scaled values, Excel isn't woefully inadequate.

<comment><USER5> That makes sense. Apologies if I was being flippant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excel's main limitations (disclaim: I haven't upgraded to 2013 yet)

\- you can't easily audit a spreadsheet unless each cell only refers to cells immediately above or to the left. Otherwise it's GOTO and COMEBACK programming. "referentially opaque probabilistic graph programming"

\- Control-] lets you see where a cell is referenced in other formulas, but only if the formula is on the same tab. Control-[ does take you to other tabs. Control-` shows you a wall of formulas

\- there's no easy way to track significant digits and sources of floating point error, e.g. adding numbers that are orders of magnitude different.

\- in the past, underflow has even been a security issue

[http://www.checkpoint.com/defense/advisories/public/2011/cpa...](http://www.checkpoint.com/defense/advisories/public/2011/cpai-11-June.html)

\- you can't report bugs, or see their tracker, that I know of

<http://connect.microsoft.com/> (i'll save you the time, Excel isn't on 2 lists

\- you can't go to extended precision, Rationals or unlimited precision integers or floats when you need.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ah. Andrew Gelman just complaint about this few days ago on his blog:

 _In response to the latest controversy, a statistics professor writes:

It's somewhat surprising to see Very Serious Researchers (apologies to Paul Krugman) using Excel. Some years ago, I was consulting on a trademark infringement case and was trying (unsuccessfully) to replicate another expert's regression analysis. It wasn't until I had the brainstorm to use Excel that I was able to reproduce his results – it may be better now, but at the time, Excel could propagate round-off error and catastrophically cancel like no other software!

Microsoft has lots of top researchers so it's hard for me to understand how Excel can remain so crappy. I mean, sure, I understand in some general way that they have a large user base, it's hard to maintain backward compatibility, there's feature creep, and, besides all that, lots of people have different preferences in data analysis than I do. But still, it's such a joke. Word has problems too, but I can see how these problems arise from its desirable features. The disaster that is Excel seems like more of a mystery._

</comment><comment><USER8> Analysis of Excel 2010 <http://homepages.ulb.ac.be/~gmelard/rech/gmelard_csda23.pdf>

<comment><USER9> Apparently 2010 isn't much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One problem of particular concern for many budding statisticians is the difference in the way Student's t-distribution and the Normal distribution are handled. The Excel functions for the t-distribution split the probability into two tails, but the functions for the Normal distribution did not. This made it quite a pain when doing some calculations with both large and small sample sizes. Newer versions of Excel have "fixed" this by adding a flag to the t-distribution functions that let you choose whether you wanted to use single tailed probability or two tailed probability. But this flag has not appeared on the functions for the normal distribution and thus the functions for these two similar distributions are still inconsistent.

Another annoying issue was the autocorrelation in the random number generator (a very bad thing for a _random_ number generator). The main rand() function is now corrected but the problem lives on in the randbetween() function, which shows that these two related functions are using separate RNGs instead of them both tapping into a single good RNG. It's very frustrating if you want to do any real work in Excel because you can't trust the built in functions.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is a funny sarcasm on the topic:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22213219>

They are saying Excel - established data tool - is, in fact, dead for big data. And what else matters?

<comment><USER12> The problem is that still most data is not big; even worse, big data is often either small data presented in a very sparse way (logs for instance) or is being subsetted or summarised to fit in Excel :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In Excel 2010 a review of statistical accuracy of functions and related work was done. Here is a summary of the work: [http://office.microsoft.com/en- us/excel-help/what-s-new-chan...](http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel- help/what-s-new-changes-made-to-excel-functions-HA010355760.aspx)

Its also worth noting that Excel only guarantees a certain level of accuracy (15 digits if im not mistaken). In cases where this is highly important SSPS, MatLab , etc should be used since they offer a higher degree of accuracy.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't even know if this matters that much within a corporate environment. Those dealing with the numbers are most of the time aware of the fact that these numbers have already inherent flaws and do only approx. the reality out there. As long as the results sound somewhat plausible chances are dim that anyone is going to ask questions. At the same time those requesting the numbers are happy "to have the facts on their side".

</comment><comment><USER15> Excel 2007 was released in late 2006. Six and a half years have passed and two new versions have been released. It would be much more interesting to see the accuracy of the current version, then this very old version.

<comment><USER16> Microsoft is likely to preserve some errors in the name of backwards compatibility. Spreadsheets that calculate different values in different versions are going to cause them more headaches from their customers than these reports of errors, as the people who care are already using other methods.

<comment><USER17> Sit down, have a drink, and think about what you are saying.

<comment><USER18> And yet, in your heart of hearts, you know mutagen's point to be true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone know how LibreOffice compares?

<comment><AUTHOR> Calc (from OpenOffice) was analyzed among others in 2010 "On the numerical accuracy of spreadsheets, Journal of Statistical Software, 34, 4, 1-29."

<http://www.jstatsoft.org/v34/i04>

" This paper discusses the numerical precision of five spreadsheets (Calc, Excel, Gnumeric, NeoOffice and Oleo) running on two hardware platforms (i386 and amd64) and on three operating systems (Windows Vista, Ubuntu Intrepid and Mac OS Leopard). The methodology consists of checking the number of correct significant digits returned by each spreadsheet when computing the sample mean, standard deviation, first-order autocorrelation, F statistic in ANOVA tests, linear and nonlinear regression and distribution functions. A discussion about the algorithms for pseudorandom number generation provided by these platforms is also conducted. We conclude that there is no safe choice among the spreadsheets here assessed: they all fail in nonlinear regression and they are not suited for Monte Carlo experiments."

<comment><USER19> I'm curious as to why use a Spreadsheet for statistical functions if they cannot be trusted?

<comment><USER20> Because they claim to support statistical functions, their users expect them to be able to do it, their users already _have_ the spreadsheet software and know how to use it, and knowledge that they can be dangerously broken is not widespread.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How does SPSS compare? I've mostly used Excel and SPSS back in college.</comment>


Cluster Management with Amazon ECS - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/cluster-management-with-amazon-ecs/

<comment><USER2> _One of the core principles behind the design of ECS is the separation of the scheduling logic from the state management. This allows you to use the ECS schedulers, write your own schedulers, or integrate with third party schedulers._

OK, but doesn't Mesos provide both state management and scheduling? Does ECS+Mesos do anything that the Mesos stack alone cannot do?</comment>


Microsoft files lawsuit against Samsung - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2014/08/01/microsofts-samsung-action/ <comment><USER2> I've been waiting for this to happen. Why? Because Samsung will fight this, and there's a 90 percent chance Microsoft will _lose_ , just like they nearly lost with Barnes and Noble. But unlike B&N, Samsung won't back down this time with a settlement.

So this is actually great news for the Android ecosystem. Some of Microsoft's main asserted patents will finally be invalidated. It also doesn't help that all of their 300 asserted patents have now been exposed by the Chinese government, and Google and OEMs can circumvent them in future Android versions (governments should've never allowed them to keep the licensing deals secret in the first place, as it creates an anti-competitive environment and defeats the purpose of patents), obliterating most of Microsoft's Android licensing/extortion business.

This lawsuit also comes at a perfect time after the recent Supreme Court ruling.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's so weird to read this and see Microsoft touting the success of Android like, "Consider this: when Samsung entered into the agreement in 2011, it shipped 82 million Android smartphones. Just three years later, it shipped 314 million Android smartphones ... becoming the leading player in the worldwide smartphone market" I'm sure the marketing folks at MS are wincing when they read that.

I wonder what is Samsung's reasoning for breaking the agreement? Was there some kind of clause that MS wouldn't build Android devices to directly compete, and with the Nokia purchase the plans for a Nokia Android device (that were just swiftly stopped after the acquisition was finalized) might have given Samsung an out?</comment>


Publishing: The peer-review scam - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/publishing-the-peer-review-scam-1.16400 <comment><USER2> I'm an author on several physics papers published before I switched careers to become a programmer. So I've been published in "big name" (for physics) journals.

Peer review, even without people scamming it, is still broken. The reason is, presuming you have an ideal peer panel, everyone is competent in the art of the paper. This means that they are all working in schools of research relevant to the paper they are reviewing.

Thus every paper either supports or opposes the peers school. If your paper helps confirm their theory, great. If not, they have a tendency to let politics get involved and reject the paper.

Now, a lot of funding comes from government. Imagine the situation where government is funding research with a desired outcome. This desired outcome has a policy implications. Result: Your peer review system is going to highlight results that confirm the government's policy position because the peers are getting their paycheck there, and it is going to bury results the disagree with the position.

I think that a better system would be to have peers give written reviews, that would be attached to the paper, with a rebuttal from the papers authors. Publish more papers, air differeing views, and make more money (since more paper sold means more library fees, etc.)

Then peer review will be less about "censorship of radical ideas" than about "hypothesis-antithesis-synthesis".

And yes, even in obscure areas of materials physics, there is a lot of politics... cause the stakes are so low.

<comment><USER3> You're right, and as the importance of the area of study and the research $ at stake, the worse the likely effect.

The urge to censor not by written rule or by conspiracy, but just to protect self interest, is very strong. A system must take that into account.

They say science advances by funeral - and that is a sad thing.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [reposting from a previous submission that didn't get any traction]

If anyone wants a good idea for a startup in the academic journals space, I'd recommend looking into vetting peer reviewers as part of the article submission/review process. There have been a few high profile cases of people faking their peer reviews recently. At Sage we dealt with a big case of that earlier in the year and retracted 60 papers. A new case this week seems like it involves 5 published papers and a bunch that got caught before being published. Note that both those cases (and some more) use ScholarOne as the submission management platform.

In particular, the new hotness in the academic journal world is open access journals, and OA journals need to be particularly careful about bad stuff slipping through peer review. A few OA journals from Hindawi just lost their impact factor (source: [http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/10/14/the-scientific- world-journ...](http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/10/14/the-scientific-world- journ...)), not due to outright peer review fraud, but due to other "abnormal citation patterns". For OA journals getting or losing an impact factor has a HUGE impact on the # of submissions (which are directly tied to revenue), so there's a big need to ensure you don't get caught with your pants down when it comes to the peer review process. So if you had a product that gave a publisher higher confidence in the integrity of the peer review process I imagine you'd be able to get a number of bites from big and small publishers alike.

<comment><USER4> The OA EGU Journals have been doing a good job of reviewing. The review process is open to the public with anyone able to read and comment on a paper, while they also invite/require several experts to participate. While some papers are only reviewed by the invited reviewers, many are reviewed by 5+ people. Having the entire process open to the public is the way forward.

<comment><USER5> This is the correct response for open-access journals.

There's an economic imperative to keep the process secretive in paid-access journals, rather than improving it - they can claim this vetting process is their 'secret sauce' and it's one way many attempt to justify their fees.

As we've learned from open-source, if you can get enough eyes (identity isn't actually that important) then all bugs become shallow.

<comment><USER6> "As we've learned from open-source, if you can get enough eyes (identity isn't actually that important) then all bugs become shallow."

This is an often repeated claim, but I don't think it holds up.

What is more accurate is that, given enough eyes most bugs are shallow, but the deep ones are not.

Some things are just subtle, and some things are technically deep. Throwing a thousand naive[1] reviewers at a problem like that wont get you anywhere near the result of just one person who knows the domain.

In the domain of peer review, this means that you can't replace (domain) expert reviewers with a random sample of interested people. You can certainly _enhance_ the expert reviewers with additional people, and this is a good idea.

[1] Naive with respect to that particular problem domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The fundamental issue with the current peer review system is that most academic research is "valueless" to those involved in the system.

I use the term "valueless" in a very careful and specific meaning. It does not mean the work is without merit or doesn't have large impact or benefits to society, rather it simply means the quality of the work has no value to the peer reviewers or to the journal itself.

* The peer reviewers are donating their time and generally getting nothing in return from reading the work other than seeing what other developments are going in in the field.

* The journal gets nothing from work itself. They are solely in the business of collecting author fees and fees from library.

In this context, I think it is accurate to describe most work as "valueless" to those involved in the system. This naturally leads to sloppy peer review and publishing practices.

What I would like to see is a system that makes all players have skin in the game for the quality of the work.

How to do this? One way would be a new kind of journal where everything published has to be patentable. The journal would pay for the patenting costs and the split any potential licensing fees with the authors/funding institutions in some way. Peer reviewers would be paid and/or get a small cut of the patent.

This would make everyone in the process have "skin in the game" in the value and quality of the work being published. I don't know if the economics of such a model would work, but I think it would be a fascinating experiment.

<comment><USER8> Um, you're talking about patenting the Higgs boson, the structure of DNA, the speed of light.

There is academic merit in being a reviewer. Being a reviewer for the New England Journal of Medicine would surely favor any tenure committee or grant application. Perhaps one could argue that's hard to perceive, but I think it's safe to say any PhD sees the value.

The journals, on the other hand, have abided by very loose business practices with exorbatant margins enabled to a great degree by the perception of the academic honor system, for a long time. Their business models and methods are thankfully coming under much deserved scrutiny.

Should researchers be honorable people? Yes. Will you always find dishonorable behavior in a set of 100 people, over a lifetime? Yes.

<comment><USER9> Having been through this there is no value in being a reviewer when it comes to tenure or grants. There is value in being an editor, but being a reviewer is worth zero to your career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We need to separate the process of deciding if a paper should be published in a journal from the process of reviewing a paper. Reviewers (I have been one many times) are asked to do two things:

1\. Give an opinion as to value of the paper and if it should be published in journal x 2\. Point out flaws or suggest improvements to the paper.

These two activities are not really connected to each other. The decision to publish or not in a journal is an editorial decision that reviewers should not be making. I am happy to point out flaws or suggest improvements, but who am I to make a judgment on the value an article to a journal? If the science is sound (but boring) does that make it less worthwhile of publication?

One advantage of separating these two processes is it would enable reviewers to communicate directly with the authors to ask questions or get more information. As a reviewer I have many time wanted to fire off a quick email to the authors to resolve something that I was unclear on, but the need to make the process anonymous (so I can pass judgement on the value of the paper) means everything has to go back via the editor. This makes it impossible to open a dialog with the authors and get the best result for science.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is one of the problems we're trying to solve with Publons.com. We help reviewers to build an officially verified record of past reviews (which is great when it comes to getting tenure). Editors can then use those records to vett candidate reviewers.

</comment><comment><USER11> The current academic peer review system is an example of a process that worked fine when number of participants was small but fails at scale. I'd like to see something like hacker news or reddit's social version of vetting papers in addition to any formal review process, perhaps with additional moderation from known experts. There is currently no site for community review of articles or papers and I think it would be a great resource for scientists of all kinds.

<comment><USER12> For physics and astronomy, there is the arXiv. Essentially all the papers (at least for astronomy) are posted there. The next step would be to add a community voting/vetting scheme on top of that. Statistics could be displayed alongside the article, and access to more detailed comments could be facilitated. Version tracking would enable people to update their papers to address criticism and suggestions. (arXiv already does allow people to replace their papers with new versions, and they retain the old ones, but there isn't really an easy way to "diff" two versions of the paper).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The entire scam seems to be possible because there is no attempt at confirming the credibility of the people presuming to actually do the peer review. This type of decentralized authentication is precisely what PGP is particularly good at.

I have to imagine that it would be trivial to design a system which would simultaneously ensure that only the actual scientists would be able to peer review a paper based on other (recognized) scientists signing their keyring.

Journals of higher credibility (Nature, Cell, etc..) might even require reviewers that had more authority/signatures on their keys.

<comment><USER14> If you image this is a trivial problem to solve, I think your imagination is not very good.

I'll quote the Bruce Schneier quote from the article. "There are almost never technical solutions to social problems."

<comment><USER15> Great quote. It gets me thinking about Facebook. FB is assuredly a massive technical solution to a social problem. I get Bruce's sentiment, but there are exceptions to this rule.

<comment><USER16> And what social problem does FB solve?

<comment><USER17> It's pretty good for staying in touch with people who you wouldn't regularly contact on an individual basis.

<comment><USER3> Yes, the social solution that Facebook presents is ideal for keeping in touch with a loose or geographically diverse set of real life friends. It is a technical solution to an admittedly simple social problem but a solution it is. Prior to Facebook I used to send graph emails, people would leave jobs, change email, etc etc. then came the cc replies, all out of order. A mess, solved well with Facebook, ad still really the only useful feature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow! I have participated in peer review and the system can work--here, it seems like the editors were lazy. I wonder how many papers a typical editor is responsible for per day? I can understand researchers wanting to exclude groups that they are competing with. I always assumed that editors would check suggested referees against obvious conflicts of interest, but perhaps there really are too many papers and too many groups for editors to manually keep track of this these days? Perhaps some checking for recent coauthorship and institution could be performed? Ultimately, the safest way would be to simply not allow people to suggest referees. Editors should be able to find people in the field (based on the literature) who could potentially referee the paper...

The basic problem is that I think there is value to having referees who are anonymous to the submitter. That way, there is no problem with someone relatively new offering a strong critique of a relatively established researcher. But someone (the editor) needs to know that the referee is competent. Also, competent refereeing takes work. For example, I refereed a "methods" paper awhile back and since the method would likely be encoded into software (and there are a lot of people that don't repeat derivations), I actually went through their integrals, checked for conceptual errors, (-) sign errors, integration errors, etc. It's community service and necessary--but it does take time.

<comment><USER9> Yes authors should never be able to suggest reviewers. I always hated this as I knew the whole process was so corrupt. Not all journals ask for this, but it seems to have become more common.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > researchers exploited vulnerabilities in the publishers' computerized > systems

...

> But even the most secure software could be compromised.

This is nonsense, it is nothing to do with software vulnerabilities. It would be no more or less "secure" if I mailed in printed paper with a cover letter saying "Thomas Edison would be a suitable reviewer, his phone number is 555 5555 5555".

</comment><comment><USER20> Disclaimer: I haven't read the whole article, so maybe it was mentioned there.

My idea: only allowing reviews from (primary) authors of already-published, peer-reviewed journals?

Bootstrapping wouldn't be a problem, because there are already quite many papers published, many of them containing the email address of the authors.

It would make it much harder to set up fake identities for peer reviews.

<comment><USER21> This is the existing system. It would be extremely rare for someone to be asked to review without having already published.</comment></comment>


These Tiny Wooden Houses Are The College Dorm Of The Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/3017459/these-tiny-wooden-houses-are-the-college-dorm-of-the-future?partner=newsletter

<comment><USER2> The interesting thing to me was the requirement that they last 100 years or more. It was my first thought when I saw "wooden" and "college dorm" in the same sentence. Colleges are long-term institutions and can (and should) make architectural investments that are long-term rather than short-term. A cheap throwaway is exactly the opposite of what colleges should do, although there are plenty of situations where cheap throwaway housing is appropriate, where short-term economics outweigh long-term economics in the buyer's eyes.

This line of thought brought to you by the superb book, _How Buildings Learn_ , by Stewart Brand. I recommend it to every software professional I know. Sure, it's about physical things rather than software, but the principles are similar.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm nuts about tiny houses so this has an immediate appeal to me. The interior is a bit too Ikea-ish for my taste, but nothing a bit of veneer or maybe some paint wouldn't fix. I thought long and hard about what it takes to build these earnestly and a lot of designs were style over substance. I have no reason to believe the two can't happily co-exist.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why is a tiny modular house the best way to build for several hundred people? Do they stack, or is the idea that universities in Sweden have acres of space waiting to put these on? Also, _an initial test run of 22 units arranged in blocks of eight_ , how many blocks of eight does it take to arrange 22 units exactly?

</comment><comment><USER5> Some issues I see with this particular design:

        1. loft access is very unsafe.  Imagine being drunk (college student, no way!), sick or injured.  How to get up or down those stairs safely?
        2. I see no water heater or place for plumbing or electrical access.
        3. I see no place for bicycle storage, etc.
        4. Having a small shower would be very nice.

</comment><comment><USER6> So long as you do not live in any place that has a high likelihood of Tornados or Hurricanes, i suppose this would work.

What gets me with this type of thing is the fact that your living room/bedroom/kitchen is also your bathroom.

</comment><comment><USER7> It still looks better than my first college dorm.

</comment><comment><USER8> That's a pretty grim future.</comment>


My Top 10 Side Projects from 2014 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@fogleman/my-top-10-side-projects-from-2014-713a78d6fc9d

<comment><USER2> impressive - looking forward to see some browser graphics from you in 2015</comment>