Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Graphics Study - <AUTHOR> http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2015/03/10/deus-ex-human-revolution-graphics-study/ <comment><USER2> This happens to be a very timely article - I've been going through a replay of this game recently. I bought it right after it was released, but only played it once (and very quickly). I'm a huge fan of the original Deus Ex.

<comment><USER3> There's a directors cut on Steam as well that has Valve-style making of markers with developer commentary.

If your first play through involved killing people, try completing the game non lethally (except for the boss fights) for an achievement.

Also: Ceilings of Deus Ex [http://imgur.com/a/FDAbV](http://imgur.com/a/FDAbV)

Also: Michael McCann's soundtrack: [https://open.spotify.com/album/4LuVQCHTgUZjuWgUQ7lQbl](https://open.spotify.com/album/4LuVQCHTgUZjuWgUQ7lQbl)

<comment><USER4> Those _ceilings_. I don't think I've seen any work of visual fiction – game, movie, or otherwise – in the past decade whose art direction felt as genuinely futuristic as Human Revolution did. From amplifying current trends (extrapolating Zaha Hadid into wild, web-covered high-rises) to speculating the black-swans of fashion (a sudden rise of neo-Italian Renaissance couture), mixing in streaks of classic cyberpunk (Hengsha's city-over-a-city), the game's aesthetic is immersive in a way not even matched by even its (in some ways superior) predecessor.

The internet joke about the original Deus Ex is that every time it's mentioned, someone reinstalls it, but I think this just convinced me it's time to replay Human Revolution.

<comment><USER5> What I love about the entire game is the use of color. The much maligned gold/black color theme was explained by one of the developers as a theme for when you're around augmented humans.

It looks like in the sequel they're using that even more to indicate the golden age renaissance of augmentation is fading away.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2kd7F3YFz8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2kd7F3YFz8)

Also McCann is coming back for the score which makes me happy. I still have this soundtrack and listen to it often.

Finally, off the new trailer, anyone see the Megan Reed parallels with the leg augmented guy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> i found this game to be very aesthetically pleasing - as well as having an emotive and thought-provoking story. it's good to see a game that pushes the creative boundaries of rendering, rather than focus on what seems to be a slow drudge toward photo-realism. not wishing to suggest that HR was somehow deficient in terms of "realistic" qualities, however!

</comment><comment><USER7> HR was one of the few games I replayed multiple times and the level of design and atmosphere was one of the main reasons for going back, just to spend some more time in it's moody world. Can't wait for the next one either! Looks very impressive from the small peaks they have given: [https://community.eidosmontreal.com/blog/dawn- engine](https://community.eidosmontreal.com/blog/dawn-engine)

I'm hoping that they address one of the main letdowns of Human Revolution, that the hub environments were a bit sparse and lacking more NPCs to make them feel like real locations. I listened to the game commentary and apparently that was simple a limitation of the engine they used.

<comment><USER8> The hubs weren't too bad. I think that both Detroit and Hengsha were pretty fleshed in, and felt pretty lively.

My biggest complaint was that the central high-brow concept they pushed--"is augmented man not man", "are we playing god", et al.--was just woefully underexecuted. I felt more empathy for poor Gunther in the first Deus Ex worried about being phased out than I did for _anyone_ with or without augs in DX:HR.

As presented, for example, augs were strictly the better option if you could afford them. There wasn't any downside to piling them on, nobody in the game gave two shits whether or not you were man or machine. No quests really changed if you were really chopped up. It just felt phoned in and handwaved.

Even the gameplay and combat itself didn't support this--there was no real "Oh no, they've got augs, ruh roh" to speak of, except _maybe_ the boss fights. In the first game, for example, you go up against a fellow with augs as blinged out as yours, and it really really shows. The somewhat augmented humans are a bit harder to fight.

However, in this one, augmented humans or not can all be effectively one- shotted during stealth. There's no real feeling of "Oh, watch out, some of these troops are notably better"\--contrast with, say, how in _Dishonored_ or _Bioshock_ you could run into enemies with similar abilities to yours.

And the ending...oy vey.

<comment><USER9> > There wasn't any downside to piling them on, nobody in the game gave two > shits whether or not you were man or machine. No quests really changed if > you were really chopped up. It just felt phoned in and handwaved.

I agree with the rest of your post, but this was pretty much explained by saying that ALL the augs Jensen has are already installed in him at the beginning of the game. Them being unlocked as the game goes on had more to do with Jensen getting used to controlling them (as opposed to having them installed and being able to use them then and there).

<comment><USER8> Which is still kind of a cop-out from a writing standpoint. Hell, the clinics were where you went to activate everything, so that could've been a good place to do that.

When so much is being made of that difference, it's sad that the player is given so little agency in the matter. There's not even much being done in the way of reactions from NPCs about the augs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very interesting read. Would be really cool read a similar article about what is going on in a bleeding edge AAA engine these days.

<comment><USER11> The folks over at DICE have some nice presentations

[http://www.frostbite.com/topics/publications/](http://www.frostbite.com/topics/publications/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Great technical outlook on a fantastic game (whose ending totally, unforgivingly sucked in so many ways. First you give me levels of perfect urban cyberpunk adventure and then in the end just ______* and __ __ __*.)

</comment><comment><USER13> I had a nice time playing the original Deus Ex, explicitely because of its A.I.

But then IIRC I think I read somewhere that the A.I. was just scripted, and I probably lost some interest in it.

But does anyone know a bit more on that? Is it really just a scripted I.A. ?

<comment><USER14> When I first talked to AI gurus for FPS shooters about AI I thought that true intelligence and emergent behavior from the actors are good things.

I quickly learnt that most players want a gratifying and somewhat predictable experience. If you can predict and "out-think" the enemy you feel good and and you can handle the incredible odds that the game pits against you. Intelligent AI is actually at odds with this goal.

An AI also needs to be very controllable to meet story-line needs or just so that you can tweak it to fix over any issues. Many approaches to AI are very "black box" and so would fall down here.

If you've played F.E.A.R, you can see how very good / strong AI makes the game extremely hard on the player. And that AI is actually rather simple from a programming standpoint, not like a simulated brain or anything.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the insight! Off to playing F.E.A.R now ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 1\. Evolution seen in 'synthetic DNA' (2012) - [http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-17769529](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-17769529)

2\. Deus Ex: Human Revolution titles - [http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/deus-ex-human- revolution/](http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/deus-ex-human-revolution/)

<comment><USER16> Links are broken from characters at the end.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-17769529](http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-17769529)

[http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/deus-ex-human- revolution/](http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/deus-ex-human-revolution/)

<comment><USER15> Thanks — fixed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Aesthetically pleasing

The wardrobes were great in Deus Ex 3. But overall Deus Ex 3 was a huge let down for many who played Deus Ex 1 back in 2000.

Deus Ex 1:

Many things that made Deus Ex 1 so special and made it an all time classic, a game that is one of the best five games ever made. The awesome story plot, the many different walk-trough paths (thousands), the inventor, the health system, the hacking, the interactive environment (breaking things, moving things ...all saved to the save file), the music, the huge levels (for 2000), ... the game is just superb (just the Unreal 1 graphics hasn't aged that well).

Random gameplay video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41GmwHq6sGY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41GmwHq6sGY)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex)

90 of 100 on metacritic: [http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/deus- ex](http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/deus-ex)

Deus Ex 2 was already a let down as it was geared towards the XBox1 which meant incredible small levels (there was a loading screen between every other room) and the whole roleplaying system was extremely simplified - e.g. there was only one ammunition for all weapons. Beside that it was a good game with great physics system for 2004.

[http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/deus-ex-invisible- war](http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/deus-ex-invisible-war) (80 of 100)

Deus Ex Clan Wars (renamed to "Project Snowblind" at release) was an off-spin with a different story but similar game play (a bit more action oriented but still with augmentations and stealth). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Snowblind](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Snowblind)

Deus Ex 3 had tiny levels (Detroid was like two blocks with multiple loading screens), there were only two hub-cities and a lot of fake background to make the tiny levels look like it played in a city (Part 1 had larger levels 11 years before), the graphics was already dated on release date, the graphics were very orange in the original edition later the turned down the shader effect in the directors cut edition, the story was boring and simple in comparison to Part 1, boss fights that were implemented by an outsourcing company and felt very weird, sudden camera changes to third-person-view with one button stealth-kills and other weird design decisions that some console gamers may have liked.

[http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/deus-ex-human- revolution](http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/deus-ex-human-revolution) (90 of 100, but apparently many never heard or played the first two games to have a real comparison, the game with another name attached isn't bad for itself at all)

Deus Ex 4 that was first released only for Wii and later also for PC was just bad (metacritic score 45 of 100): [http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/deus-ex- the-fall](http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/deus-ex-the-fall)

For the upcoming Deus Ex 5 I hope that Warren Spector from Deus Ex 1 comes back and shares his game design vision with the team. He is literally a game design god and fame and he is currently a professor at a game design university: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Spector](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Spector)

Warren Spector recently did an AMA on Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/34fdjb/hi_i_am_warren...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/34fdjb/hi_i_am_warren_spector_a_game_developer_from/)

Warren Spector discusses a post mortem of Deus Ex 1 and 2 in video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTWvsGA77T4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTWvsGA77T4) (Part of Warren Spector's Master Class at the University of Texas)

Deus Ex 1 used the Unreal 1 (Unreal Tournament) engine, Deus Ex 2 used Unreal 2 engine, Deus Ex Clan Wars used the Crystal engine (based on Tomb Raider Legends), Deus Ex 3 used the Crystal engine (based on Tomb Raider Underworld), Deus Ex 4 used Unity and Deus Ex 5 will use an improved Glacier engine (based on Hitman Absolution): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex:_Mankind_Divided](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex:_Mankind_Divided)

<comment><USER18> The "outsourcing" of the boss fight is just that they asked the people who made their AI middleware to program the boss fights because they were rushing to release the game. (Source: I know someone who worked for the very small company that made the AI middleware) That's also why so many areas are so small and why the boss characters aren't properly introduced.

<comment><USER17> Interesting. The press had no good words left about the boos fights and found out about who made it months later.

"As it turns out, those boss battles weren't designed at Eidos Montreal, they were outsourced to a studio called Grip Entertainment" \-- [http://kotaku.com/5841910/those-horribad-deus-ex-human- revol...](http://kotaku.com/5841910/those-horribad-deus-ex-human-revolution- boss-battles-were-outsourced)

[http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/09/19/deus-ex-hrs- boss-...](http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/09/19/deus-ex-hrs-boss-fights- were-outsourced/)

[http://www.pcgamer.com/deus-ex-human-revolution-boss- fights-...](http://www.pcgamer.com/deus-ex-human-revolution-boss-fights-were- outsourced/)

I always felt the boss fights were so out of place in DX3 and one cannot solve the game without killing unlike Deus Ex 1 were it is possible to play through without killing a single person!

The Grip Entertainment game AI company has been dissolved to Autodesk as it seems: [http://gameware.autodesk.com/news/press/autodesk-acquires- te...](http://gameware.autodesk.com/news/press/autodesk-acquires-tech-assets- and-talent-from-grip)

<comment><USER19> >unlike Deus Ex 1 were it is possible to play through without killing a single person!

As far as I remember you had to kill Anna Navarre, no?

<comment><USER20> You can "avoid" killing her using a bug. The game then proceeds as though you had killed her, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Computers are so amazing. This incredibly complex and mathematically intensive process we just read about? It happens 30-144 times every second. And this is just the logic to render the scene - there's the additional input logic, game simulation logic, sound logic, and I'm sure dozens of other things that happen once a frame to make a game run smoothly.

<comment><USER22> It's funny when you contrast it to web applications. It just shows the layers and layers of bad, inefficient abstractions we've built over the years. For example, re-drawing when resizing the Slack chat window can take up to a second. In that time I could have rendered the Deus Ex scene at 1080p at the highest settings 60+ times.

<comment><USER8> I really, really hate it when people point at a web browser and a modern game engine and then say "Look how sloppy and horrible and inefficient the web is!"

Seriously, just stop for a second and use your head.

First, that game? Probably using precompiled logic--especially as games in the last decade have gotten objectively harder to mod. The browser must deal with any arbitrary code shoved at it, and handle modifications to its scene graph (the DOM) at any time. These modifications may include creating more script code, pulling in networked resources, or any other damn fool thing.

Second, that game is only going to run on a narrow selection of hardware. It's not going to run on a machine from ten years ago, probably. It's not going to run on a machine ten years from now, probably.

Third, that game is built to use files and formats specifically made for itself. It's not dealing with old goofy image formats. It's not dealing with potentially malformed XML documents. It's not dealing with any number of things, because those have been trimmed away and pre-verified.

Fourth, that game is never going to have to scale from a multiple-socket workstation all the way down to a handheld phone or shell script.

It's really silly to point at a hyperoptimized purpose-built tool and claim it is somehow massively better than a platform for distributing massively-varied media and documents.

EDIT:

Downvote away--but first, write a purpose-built pipeline for deferred rendering, and then a real-time app in Angular, for example. If you haven't done both of these things, you probably don't know what you're raging about.

<comment><USER23> Written both. Not sure why it needs to be deferred rendering specifically lol. A forward renderer (or a light deferred, or tiled deferred, or forward plus, etc) would easily prove the same point.

The precompiled logic thing is nonsense. This happens on the fly in games too. Shaders get compiled on the device, assets streamed in from disk or the network. Game behavior is typically scripted and patched, etc. Narrow selection of hardware? 10 years ago? Wrong. I work on a game engine that fully supports a 10 year old machine, and most state of the art engines can degrade to that level too.

Goofy image formats? Please. DXT1-6, BC1-7, crunched assets, raw DDS, etc. We deal with tons of different formats, lossy and otherwise. Texture arrays, cubemaps, etc too. Malformed XML documents are trivial with a good lexer and we need tons of validation too on our side. Many games patch themselves.

The game can scale to a mobile device believe or not. It just doesn't make sense to. Throttling draw calls or streaming only the lowest mip levels is trivial for a good engine.

The web is absolutely 100% less efficient than a commercial game engine and does far far less. The flip side is that the barrier to entry is way lower as well. It takes less experience to write a web app than it takes to author a game. I would argue that authoring a web renderer is easier than authoring a state of the art game renderer too, although there are certainly complexities there. The DOM scene graph compared to a game scene graph? Come on, is there even a comparison? I could dump a scene graph for you which is totally dynamically generated in real time that dwarfs the most complicated web page you could find. I mean, heck, we use BVHs, KD trees, octrees, and more to represent our scene graphs. You think the DOM has even a fraction of that complexity?

Too quote you, "seriously, just stop for a second and use your head."

<comment><USER8> I'll stick with my precompiled logic assertion. How many AAA games ship with a fully dynamic language like JS? Of those, how many then expose low-level APIs to those languages instead of just an operating environment suitable only for scripting? At any point, do those games allow trivial fetching of new code from the network from an unspecified source, parsing and executing that code in or out of a sandbox?

As for "goofy image formats"\--I'm going to be somewhat surprised if you aren't doing a preprocessing step to normalize your textures and images into either an atlas or at least some standard format (with texture compression or whatnot). I know that across the entire space of game engines there are bajillions of formats, but again, when you're building a custom engine for a game, I'm willing to bet that you can pick your battles in ways that browsers simply can't.

The "malformed XML" isn't a simple matter of just "Oh, a missing closing tag!". It's "quirks" mode. It's supporting weird old behavior, bug-for-bug, across browser versions (thank you Microsoft).

 _" The web is absolutely 100% less efficient than a commercial game engine and does far far less."_

See, from a performance standpoint, I wouldn't hesitate to agree that the web engines are less efficient. Similarly, I wouldn't claim that a gas turbine is less efficient than piston engine. However, piston engines are a lot more common because they're more flexible, easier to make, and can put up with a lot more nonsense.

You lost me, though, when you said that the web does "far far less" than the specialized work a game engine does.

 _" Come on, is there even a comparison?"_

Look at the spec:

[http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/rendering.html#rendering](http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/rendering.html#rendering)

You're absolutely right--there's no comparison. Show me a modern game engine whose rendering pipeline is one _tenth_ as complicated _or_ well-specified!

Sure, bang around about your scene-management structures for visibility tests. I'm sure that'll impress your friend at GDC who similarly rediscovering techniques already mined out twenty years ago--better than thirty in the case of octress.

At the end of the day, game engines (from a display standpoint), are just rendering lots of triangles, with optional intermediary targets clever shading tricks. There may be some animation, there may be some physics, but all of that is relatively straightforward in implementation compared with the downright _byzantine_ rules for, say, CSS:

[http://www.w3.org/TR/css-2010/](http://www.w3.org/TR/css-2010/)

I'm not saying that game engines aren't impressive feats of engineering--they are in no way, however, _near_ as complicated from anything other than a technical perspective when compared with a modern web browser.

<comment><USER24> > How many AAA games ship with a fully dynamic language like JS?

Every single game that lets you use Lua to write game logic? AIUI, every Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind? The Crash Bandicoot games? The Jax and Daxter games? (The Jax and Daxter games use [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp) and the Crash Bandicoot games use its predecessor.)

> At any point, do those games allow trivial fetching of new code from the > network from an unspecified source, parsing and executing that code in or > out of a sandbox?

Every single game that permits custom levels that can include scripted elements fits this bill. See, though, this is a strawman. Almost every competently designed website is just like a AAA game in that all of the code that that site runs and all of the assets that it loads were explicitly selected by the dev team and tested by its QA team. Moreover, any user- supplied data is carefully handled and constrained so that processing of said data is low-impact and non-disruptive; just like in a AAA game.

I also note that you're refusing to engage with folks who call you out on the fact that your argument that "Having to handle a wide array of obscure image formats and potentially invalid XML makes page renders and reflows slow!" is bunk.

<comment><USER8> I've engaged specifically on the image formats--consider both GIF and XBM, for example, or WebM or whatever else. Do those show up frequently in games? Nope. Games have other things, like DDS and whatnot, but those are actually kind of designed for their use case (storing mipmaps, cubemaps, etc.), and game engine developers have the luxury of saying "We use this blessed format and anything else runs through our tools pipeline first to _become_ this blessed format". Web browsers have no such luck.

The XML/HTML stuff I mentioned elsewhere is still the same: it's not just simple missing character stuff, it's dealing with old pages that are semantically (not syntactically) malformed and still rendering them properly. See also quirks mode.

By contrast, game engines have level and script formats that they support, with simpler document models, and they get to deprecate things whenever it suits the developers.

As for scripting, just look at some docs for the Morrowing stuff you bring up: [http://www.quicenter.com/morrowind/files/Morrowind_Scripting...](http://www.quicenter.com/morrowind/files/Morrowind_Scripting_for_Dummies_8.pdf). That's _hardly_ on the same class of utility as Javascript--it's basically a procedural wrapper for stepping through basic scripted sequences. And that's fine--it's built to do that and only that.

 _Every single game that permits custom levels that can include scripted elements fits this bill._

"Scripted elements" is very, very different from, say, loading an arbitrary IDE into the browser: [http://repl.it/languages](http://repl.it/languages)

On the average, most game scripting languages don't support running Ruby, Python, or Erlang interpreters.

<comment><USER24> > I've engaged specifically on the image formats [and malformed documents]...

Yeah, you haven't. The comment which spawned your first statement was one that complained about rendering speed. Many people in this thread have noted that by the time an image or document (XML or otherwise) gets to the do-layout-and- render-pixels-on-the-screen stage of the process, it _DOESN 'T MATTER_ how malformed that document was or what format that image was when it came over the wire.

Why? Because when we're at _this_ stage of the process, that data has been converted into whatever representation is most convenient for the web browser to use while rendering its screen. Just like in a video game, support for a new image type or document type is as "simple" as adding on a converter from $NEW_FORMAT to $BROWSER_INTERNAL_FORMAT.

> "Scripted elements" is very, very different from, say, loading an arbitrary > IDE into the browser

No. It's a difference of size, not of complexity. The interpretation and validation tasks are the same in both examples.

> On the average, most game scripting languages don't support running Ruby, > Python, or Erlang interpreters.

Heh. Nice of you to ignore my Crash Bandicoot, Jax & Daxter, and every-game- which-supports-lua-scripting examples. Lisp, Scheme, and Lua are every bit as complex as Ruby, Python, JavaScript and -to some degree- Erlang.

I've read your other replies in this thread. Your initial arguments are weak, and you continually choose to ignore evidence and assertions that contradict your initial argument. This is a real pity, because you're pretty well- written. If your behavior matched your tagline "Strong opinions, weakly held", you'd be far better off. :)

<comment><USER8> " _It 's a difference of size, not of complexity._"

Again, no. "Scripted elements" is waaaay too broad, and includes elements for purely procedural work (move here, say these lines, move here, etc.).

Your example of Crash Bandicoot, by the way, isn't great--GOOL was compiled down into a form that shipped with the game. It wasn't dynamically compiled from external sources by the engine during runtime, unlike what we have to deal with with Javascript. Same criticism applies to Jak and Daxter with GOAL.

" _Lisp, Scheme, and Lua are every bit as complex as Ruby, Python, JavaScript_ "

Scheme and Lua, certainly not--just compare their BNF grammars, much less their actual use. If by Lisp you mean Common Lisp, well, you have a point, but otherwise nope.

As for the rest, I don't ignore the assertions; it's just that the fine difference between "can support" and "must support" is apparently lost on most folks. Additionally, points on loading are all sidestepped by you folks ignoring that, as part of the browser, that flexible loading must happen, whereas in the engine you can assume the tools pipeline (you know, the 3DS plugins or whatever) have already done the work.

And then, for all that, people are still complaining about the _platform_ of the browsers when all of there examples are of shitty and slow web apps running on it. It's like they've never seen badly-performing maps in a game engine, or a shitty Unity game which isn't optimized properly.

I'm trying to help educate folks here by clearing up misconceptions, but it's rather uphill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There's a lot of voiceovers in these games, I detest them. Can you play through the game using subtitles?

Thanks.

<comment><USER26> Um, like every single game made in the last 10 years allows you to turn on subtitles

<comment><USER25> thanks, am showing my age. can you turn off voices and use subtitles in this game specifically? or does it cut out another part of the sound?

<comment><USER27> I have not played the game, but found the manual on google: [http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/238010/manuals/...](http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/238010/manuals/DXHR- DC_PC_MAN_EN.pdf?t=1429780781)

The section on the audio settings says: _" Adjust the game's music, dialogs and SFX volume levels"_

Typically those sort of settings gives you a slider for different categories of sound. It _seems_ like that is probably what this game does as well.

So I guess my answer is, _" I think so"_.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New details emerge on Fruitfly, a near-undetectable Mac backdoor - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/new-analysis-fruitfly-mac-malwware-almost-undetectable-backdoor/ <comment><USER2> I love the ignorance of the reactions on that site.</comment>


SSD and relational databases - update joined views? - <AUTHOR> http://drcoddwasright.blogspot.com/2009/06/but-i-can-see-russia-from-alaska.html

<comment><USER2> I have two comments:

1\. This article appears to completely ignore _write_ speeds for SSDs, which aren't that good. Do people just not care?

2\. I believe that while Google's server farm machine have drives, the goal is to RAM cache absolutely everything they have to serve. To the speed and power requirements of their HDDs are transient issues at worst.

<comment><AUTHOR> The write-speed issue, even on the cheap SSD drives, is going away this year.

On the RAM side, have you considered the impact of having 32 GB RAM and 640 GB SSD perform _better_ than 64 GB RAM and 2 TB HDD ? That's what Young is pointing at.</comment></comment>


Laser scanner may allow passengers to take bottled drinks on planes again - <AUTHOR> http://www.gizmag.com/insight100-liquid-container-laser-scanner/21443/

<comment><USER2> In a larger sense, this is rubbish. It's a man-made rule that you can't take bottled drinks (or can't take X for any X) on a flight. Not allowing bottled drinks on flights is particularly stupid in light of exactly how the "two part explosive" is made, and in light of what the goobers in the terror plot using two part explosives wanted to blow up (the terminal).

This is like a headline saying that a dog has spent a frugalpopillion dollars to figure out how to bite a postman. It's a "so what". The real headlines ought to be about how the TSA and the USA feds are running roughshod over constitutional rights. Frikken lapdog news outlets...</comment>


Ad Captain at your service - <AUTHOR> http://www.ad-captain.com

<comment><USER2> How is this any different than buysellads.com? Other than a more reasonable 5% cut than the 25% cut BSA asks for.

<comment><AUTHOR> you will see when its launched :)</comment></comment>


Bilder – go web app to host photo albums - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fgeller/bilder <comment><USER2> I like the name, it means "Pictures" in Swedish. Is that intended?

<comment><USER3> The author lives in Germany, where the word has the same meaning. Pretty sure it is intentional.</comment></comment>


Wikipedia's shame - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/29/wikipedias_shame/

<comment><USER2> Wikipedia is chock full of human bots that try to turn it into a relational database or some kind of graph of human knowledge. Just look at all the categories Hitler is in:

\- Suicides by firearm in Germany \- German founders of automobile manufacturers \- Austrian anti-communists \- ...

Of course Wikipedia (or rather MediaWiki) is completely terrible for this purpose. It's a completely unstructed raw text storage. You can find date A cited on one page for event X, then go to the page on event X and find a completely different date. It's all just text, and the human bots are overwhelmed with keeping it synchronized.

Of course the human bots will be angry if you spit on them in some dead tree op-ed thinking their valiant efforts toward reducing Wikipedias text to ever smaller isolated atoms are hurting some political ideal.

(Of course the people over at Wikipedia have recognized that the problem is insurmountable the way they are approaching it. They have created WikiData in response: <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page>)

<comment><USER3> As someone who maintains the largest _Futurama_ wiki (albeit not as active anymore, but I still host it), I can recognise the problems that Wikipedia is faced with. Of course, at a much _much_ smaller scale, as we only have 3,000+ content pages (which is a lot for a _Futurama_ wiki).

And we have had to deal with the usefulness of indexing articles appropriately. That is; giving them categories (and whether new categories is going to help anyone). But since our wiki is so much smaller, we don't use bots but do it by hand (although, we do have one bot to do some basic cleaning up, but nothing truly intelligent).

And the issue isn't just with Wikipedia or our wiki; it's practically with every wiki (even non-MediaWiki wikis). This has led to the creation of Semantic MediaWiki, an extension that is supposed to maintain more rational relationships of data and make it easier indexable.

But most wikis I've seen using Semantic MediaWiki, doesn't really look like a content site, but rather a data site. Which is nice for the purpose, but it makes you wonder if MediaWiki really was the right choice to begin with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Note this story is from almost a month ago (date stamp on the linked article is April 29th). Previous discussions on Hacker News:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5624163>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5663072>

</comment><comment><USER5> As the article says, the parts of wikipedia that stay in the history tend to eventually be corrected. The real worst behaviour occurs around articles where even that history is expunged, e.g. those deleted for "non-notability".

<comment><USER6> The fact that Wikipedia expunges the history of deleted articles always made me a bit uneasy; it seems like the editors want to escape accountability by sending the articles down Orwell's "memory hole".[1]

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole>

<comment><USER7> Wikipedia admins (essentially community-elected moderators, there are thousands of them) have the ability to access the history of deleted articles. Articles are often deleted due to copyright violations, etc., so the history is not shown to the public.

<comment><USER6> It makes sense to make removed copyrighted content inaccessible. However, that doesn't mean you need to delete the entire history: just hide the part that was copyrighted. And in any other case of deletion (e.g., "non-notability"), the entire history could be retained.

<comment><USER7> Regardless, its not a memory hole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Salon is just part of that cadre of circle-jerking, highly agended websites (along with most of gawker and huffpost) that regularly fire cannonballs at places like Reddit and Wikipedia that allow the kind of free expression and thought they would rather suppress. At least Wikipedia airs its dirty laundry for all to see, and on balance things generally work out OK.

<comment><USER9> Actually, reading through the article it never seems 'circle-jerking' or a 'cannonball' fired at Wikipedia. The article explains what happened. It then goes on to discuss how Wikipedia airs its dirty laundry and on balance things generally work out OK - pretty much exactly what you said.

<comment><USER8> Try reading the article aga....oh never mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Qworty's rant is rather entertaining and even a bit more persuasive than the Salon article that quotes it. Oops.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here comes a flame war. Hopefully some moderator will move drop this entry to the bottom of this list.</comment>


A fast, offline reverse geocoder in Python - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thampiman/reverse-geocoder <comment><USER2> If you're interested in making both forward and reverse geocoding better, please consider paying attention to a project I started and help maintain called OpenAddresses:

[http://openaddresses.io](http://openaddresses.io)

The goal is to collect address datasets so that forward and reverse geocoding is an easier problem to solve. A contributor wrote an excellent overview of the project the other day:

[https://medium.com/colemanm/creating-an-open-database-of- add...](https://medium.com/colemanm/creating-an-open-database-of- addresses-73a7d0dc24c5)

<comment><USER3> It's a nice overview but it glosses over the fact that while the OA database is governed by a CC0 license, the individual address collections in the database are still governed by their own licenses which can be (much) more restrictive. The fact that you can download the data doesn't mean you can use it the way you want. The OA web site hints at this but doesn't address (ah- hah) that underlying problem. That doesn't mean that OA is not valuable - quite the contrary - but I think the fact that it's presented as one big free and open dataset can be misleading.

<comment><USER4> As the (dead) sibling comment points out, my (non-lawyer) understanding of US copyright law is that simple collections of facts, when compiled in a way that requires no creativity, do not enjoy any copyright protection at all.

I would be surprised if a simple list of addresses, even a very large one, is something that could be subject to copyright.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can't really use KD trees with lat/lon coordinates, at least you can't use euclidean distance there for nearest neighbor search.

First, longitude wraps from -180 to +180 at antimeridian, meaning distance calculations will fail there; second, and I'd say more importantly, one degree longitude length in meters differs a lot depending on latitude; meaning this library will be heavily biased towards longitudal neighbors when using it for locations far from equator.

<comment> shawn-butler I can recommend the excellent Geographic lib::Geodesic for this having used it in the past.

[http://geographiclib.sourceforge.net](http://geographiclib.sourceforge.net)

There is a python implementation available as well. [http://pypi.python.org/pypi/geographiclib](http://pypi.python.org/pypi/geographiclib)

<comment><USER6> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kudos for a very well done README (and it's not just cribbed from the original project, it explains the new stuff very well and tells what the project is, and gives credit back). So many projects neglect the README.

One question - is it OK to put an MIT license on something that is based on LGPL code? I don't know enough about how the LGPL works (I do know it is less "infective" than plain GPL).

Well two questions: python2, or python3?

<comment><USER6> Thanks for that comment!

Good question regarding the license. I'm not too sure about that. I'd appreciate it if someone could shed some light on it.

Regarding the version, I've only tested it on python2. I should add that in the README. Thanks!

<comment><USER8> As of now, for Python 3 it does not work, but it seams that fixes are not hard: [https://github.com/thampiman/reverse- geocoder/issues/2](https://github.com/thampiman/reverse-geocoder/issues/2)

<comment><USER6> UPDATE: I've just released v1.2 which supports Python 3. For details: [https://github.com/thampiman/reverse- geocoder](https://github.com/thampiman/reverse-geocoder)

<comment><USER7> Sweet!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While we're on this subject, is there a good, free street address parser that will work for at least the US, Canada, UK, and the major EU countries? I've tried most of the available ones, and they can parse about 90-95% of business addresses.

(Regular expressions don't work well for this. Neither does starting from the beginning of the address. Proper address parsing starts at the end of the address and works backwards, with the information found near the end, such as country name and postal code, used to disambiguate the information found earlier.)

<comment><USER10> The most principled approach I've seen on this is at [https://github.com/datamade/usaddress](https://github.com/datamade/usaddress). They use tagged training data and conditional random fields. I haven't seen comparisons with other systems, but it's worked well enough for my projects.

Though as the name suggests, it's only trained for US addresses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very good companion for Geocoder - [https://github.com/DenisCarriere/geocoder](https://github.com/DenisCarriere/geocoder). Glad to see Python getting more geo libraries for Non-GIS users.

<comment><USER12> Are there any offline Geocoders that work for the whole world, even if not free? Nominatim doesn't work for a lot of Asian addresses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very impressive, I'll be looking closer at K-D trees.

I wrote a quick (500k lookups/sec) offline geocoder for Ruby: [https://github.com/bronson/geolocal](https://github.com/bronson/geolocal) to comply with the silly EU cookie rules. It precompiles the statements you're interested in:

        Geolocal.in_eu?(request.ip)
        Geolocal.in_us?('18.104.22.168')

Glad to see that my lib has a role model if it ever grows up. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Awesome, one more thing that can be made standalone instead of using google maps service.

<comment><USER6> Thanks! I'm the developer of this library and I hope you find it useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks really interesting!

Would it be possible to use OpenStreetMap data?

[http://planet.openstreetmap.org/](http://planet.openstreetmap.org/)

<comment><USER16> OSM data doesn't contain an easy way to find the top 1000 cities. You'd end up with 100.000s. Looking for wikipedia tags, population (which often comes from Wikipedia) and 'admin' tags might be a good guide.

(I work on a OSM geocoder, not offline but has a Python library [http://geocoder.opencagedata.com/](http://geocoder.opencagedata.com/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice! Shameless plug for a SQLite no network geocoder that uses (I believe) the same text files to seed everything. [https://github.com/NickStefan/no- network-geocoder](https://github.com/NickStefan/no-network-geocoder)

</comment><comment><USER18> On a related note: An efficient geolocation encoder/decoder with error correction using Reed-Solomon. 3m accuracy with error correction in 10 symbols. 20mm accuracy with 5-nines certainty in 15 symbols:

[https://github.com/pjkundert/ezpwd-reed- solomon](https://github.com/pjkundert/ezpwd-reed-solomon)

</comment><comment><USER19> Starred. We're currently using nominatim + osm data + postgis on our own hosted servers. Can this be a good alternative?

<comment><USER6> I should think so. I've tried nominatim/osm data but it took forever to query a large set of coordinates. I was only interested in knowing the nearest city and admin regions 1/2\. And this library is really fast... ~20s to lookup 10M coordinates on my MBP. If you'd however like to know the full address, then this is maybe not a good idea.

<comment><USER19> That's fast. Though yes, our use case involves reverse geo of full street level addresses. Currently we do several 10s to 100s of req/s on nominatim.

The sibling thread asked about using OSM data; it'd be awesome if street level OSM data is workable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is great, does anyone know of a js version? I'm currently using [http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/reverse](http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/reverse) in my Node app but I'd rather not rely on a 3rd party, especially under heavy load.

<comment><USER6> Check out this library for Node [https://github.com/tomayac/local-reverse- geocoder](https://github.com/tomayac/local-reverse-geocoder)

<comment><USER21> Thanks for posting this. Would appreciate pull requests and feature requests or simply general feedback if you use this in practice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is super cool! Shameless plug. If you're looking for street-level reverse (or forward) geocoding, we offer[1] a super affordable API and CSV upload tool.

[1] [http://geocod.io](http://geocod.io)

</comment><comment><USER23> Hello, I read a little bit about geocoding on wikipedia but was hoping to learn more. Is a good beginner guide on geocdoer/geocoding?</comment>


Startup Visa Update - Lord of the Visa - <AUTHOR> http://blog.vidli.com/startup-visa/ The Start Visa is starting to boil. Check out this comedic Lord of the Rings rundown on the movement. Entrepreneurs are Hobbits!?! Brad Feld is Aragorn?!? <comment><AUTHOR> We posted this here because we're trying to figure out if hackers are orcs/goblins (fake entrepeneurs) or hobbits (real entrepreneurs).

Probably orcs cuz most hacks are consultants. Will the real hobbits please stand up :-)</comment>


I rode all the e-scooters, and most of them are awful except two - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/i-rode-all-the-e-scooters-most-of-them-are-awful-excep-1835373127 <comment><USER2> > We've restricted our entrants to scooter-type vehicles (as opposed to > e-assist bicycles)

And then the conclusion is that the most bicycle-like one is best because it's more bicycle-like. Seems like a category arbitrage rather than a fair analysis of mobility options.

<comment><USER3> I regularly ride my e-bike in SF but have also dabbled with the rental scooters. I have a hard time understanding the scooters' popularity, compared to a rentable e-bike like the Jump or Lime bikes. In my experience e-bikes have the advantage in top speed, stability, comfort and safety. Other than taking up marginally more space when parked, I can't think of any downsides. This matches the article author's conclusion. Can anyone explain to me what I'm missing?

<comment><USER4> I take both Jump e-bikes as well as various scooters on the regular. Honestly I prefer Jump Bikes - it's almost always cheaper and faster and safer. I definitely feel more "seen" by cars as well.

That being said, with a scooter you aren't pedaling at _all_. Even on an e-assist bike you're still getting the adrenaline pumping and sorta sweaty. And a lot of people are afraid of riding bikes in traffic, so while even though bikes are actually much safer, there's a lower mental barrier to entry with scooters. People who almost never ride normal bikes (which is most people) have a harder time adopting the mindset of taking a bike share, e-assist or not.

Plus scooters are straight up more fun to ride with a group of friends - it's a genuinely fun thing to have out of town friends do.

<comment><USER5> > And a lot of people are afraid of riding bikes in traffic, so while even > though bikes are actually much safer, there's a lower mental barrier to > entry with scooters.

In LA it's not legal to ride scooters on the sidewalk, so, in theory, people should fear riding scooters too because they're supposed to ride scooters in traffic -- just like the bikes. Of course, in practice, almost everyone rides everything on the sidewalks in LA. Traffic codes are mainly unenforced here.

<comment><USER4> Oh yeah - I've seen plenty of not-confident-bikers hop on scooters and ride them in the street.

Even though riding a scooter in the street is often fairly terrifying, I feel like there's some kind of easy mental jump that has people getting on without nearly as much reservation as they would have hopping on a bike.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _During the single day of this test, I found three Wheels with intentionally cut brake lines_

WTF is wrong with people? I understand these things are annoying and litter sidewalks, but intentionally cutting brakes to harm someone? Jeez, this is just shitty behavior

<comment><USER7> Evil and insane people unfortunately do exist. Some of the failures of modern technology are directly related to refusing or ignoring this inconvenient truth.

<comment><USER8> And some of the worst abuses of power and technology have come from assuming that evil people are relatively common rather than extremely rare.

<comment><USER7> Sadly, crime is fundamentally asymmetric: a small number of bad actors can inflict damage and pain on a large number of victims.

This is particularly well-known in the domain of public urban facilities, where _everything_ can be assumed to suffer vandalism or sabotage at any given time. You only need a handful of thugs to have a "gang" that can effectively demolish anything fairly quickly, including facilities used by hundreds or thousands of people. Defensive design, in this domain, is not just warranted but _necessary_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the first I've heard of people tampering with the brake systems - it's incredibly malicious. I understand some people might be frustrated by the scooters, but is manslaughter really the right way to go about it?

<comment><USER10> Story here in Lyon, France, yesterday about a less-dangerous attack on the electric scooters: instead of cutting the brake cables, vandals are painting over the QR code instead. No QR code to scan means no useable scooter. Link in French: [https://www.leprogres.fr/rhone-69/2019/06/10/a-lyon-les- trot...](https://www.leprogres.fr/rhone-69/2019/06/10/a-lyon-les-trottinettes- electriques-immobilisees-en-un-coup-de-peinture)

<comment><USER11> To be fair, QR codes are a fairly fragile technology for something like that. If instead of destroying them, someone replaced the codes with a malicious link the outcome could be worse.

<comment><USER12> Great idea! I'll go print some QR stickers tonight

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe I'm coming into this with low expectations; the best we have in NYC is the CitiBikes (by Motivate) that are strictly human powered, dock-based, and not cheap. But I love these scooters and would vote for any candidate for mayor that made it a priority to remove the blocks preventing these things from being issued.

When I was in Venice on business, I used all of these scooters (except the 'Wheels', which to me looked silly; I could pick up an electric bike, which were also everywhere, if I wanted to sit down). All of the scooters I used (the same ones in the article) worked fantastically well, I never hit a geofence or had a problem finding one when I needed one, and they are all amazingly cheap.

I never got in or witnessed a crash; the scooters don't go fast enough that falling off is a big deal anyway, based on my experience having to hop off one when I got myself into a pickle.

<comment><USER14> The larger wheels on the Wheels bikes (and electric bikes in general) seem like a big pro to me, after some injuries from small cracks in the road while riding a scooter. I think the advantage of Wheels over other electric bikes is the smaller parking footprint.

Given that it's battery-powered, not dock-based (but bikes eventually get returned to hubs to avoid clutter), and cheaper than the scooters, what makes you still prefer scooters?

<comment><USER13> To be honest, the Wheels in particular I thought were just kind of silly looking. I also didn't want to sign up and give my credit card to another random company, when I could use most of the vehicles around through other apps. I didn't know that they were cheaper than scooters -- I don't think I ever paid more than $2 for a scooter ride, and most were less than that. Next time I'll try the Wheels.

If I was going longer haul, I tended to use one of the electric pedal assist bikes instead of the scooters, but they were slightly harder to find than the scooters, which were everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Seems like the main flaw in the ones the author labeled "awful" was a geofence policy that limited the top speed on a "bike path", or locked them out of it altogether. Makes it a bit difficult to generalize their conclusions, especially without knowing more about the path to be able to judge whether that policy is reasonable (and/or mandated by the city).

<comment><USER16> The Venice beach bike path is a "standard" mixed-use path. Wide enough for bikes to pass in opposite directions - total width is a bit wider than a full size pick-up truck. It's fairly twisty and bordered by sand on both sides, so if you run over the edge, you probably fall on your face.

As for appropriate speeds, a jog is about 5mph. That sounds reasonable and safe for a small-wheeled scooter. A townie/cruiser bicycle will do 10mph without too much effort, so that could be the upper bound too. Much faster with those small wheels seems dangerous regardless of location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So the #1 scooter is not a scooter?

Also, some cities are banning those pedestrian focused areas. In Austin, they banned ebikes and scooters from our waterfront area that has a 10 mile walkway around it.

I ride scooters in austin, tx every weekend. Its half as cheap as a lyft and there are lots of competitors. Here's my top two:

1\. Bird - cheaper per mile and pretty reliable

2\. Lime - often faster than the others, but more expensive and sometimes have minor defects (braking issues, throttle delay, etc)

<comment><USER18> We used to have both brands on my school's campus. I found the lime app on android to be very buggy (crashing, not letting me park my scooter, etc.), not sure if that has changed.

<comment><USER19> They fixed the app but it can be slowish to respond if you just pulled it out of your pocket. There was a period of time where I could unlock a scooter, close the app, and get a free ride.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I was somewhat annoyed by the penalising of scooters that stopped you riding on cycle paths; presumably you aren't meant to use them on there, hence the restriction.

If so, the company that limits speed to 3MPH - enough to exit the cycle path - is doing it exactly right.

<comment><USER21> Indeed. The ones he rated poorly were the ones that tried to prevent him from breaking Los Angeles City Municipal Code 63.44.

<comment><USER22> Yes, but I like the ability to make that choice. My car is not governed, why should my scooter be? This is not unreasonble, even if inconvenient thinking.

<comment><USER20> I would generally be in favour of restrictions that stopped cars driving on cycle lanes.

<comment><USER23> Until there's a broken-down vehicle blocking the road, and the only way around it involves encroaching on the cycle lane (carefully!) ... but your hi-tech geofenced car forbids that, so you're stuck.

Or you attempt to move out of the way of an oncoming emergency vehicle, as it's barrelling down the centre of the road to reach a dying patient ... but it needs an extra couple of feet of space that you can only give it if you move partly into the cycle lane. And your car refuses.

<comment><USER2> > Or you attempt to move out of the way of an oncoming emergency vehicle, as > it's barrelling down the centre of the road to reach a dying patient ... but > it needs an extra couple of feet of space that you can only give it if you > move partly into the cycle lane. And your car refuses.

Do you think geofencing cars out of bike lanes would lead to more or fewer deaths overall, when you include all the cases of drivers killing cyclists that would be prevented?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I took an Uber scooter yesterday and it was the most bone rattling experience I've had in a while. Not sure who designed these but there is a reason bicycles and cars have had pneumatic tires for a century, now. Wheels look interesting and I hope they extend their service area to south Florida.

</comment><comment><USER25> Ive been using an 'adult' push scooter for five years in an urban environment. This year I encountered the electric rentals for the first time, and bought a Xiaomi m365 (aka the Bird scooter).

I also have a normal bike. They serve different purposes.

Either version of a scooter is safer. I've been in a few situations where I've simply stepped off the plank and become an instant pedestrian, to avoid cars which would have wiped me out on a bicycle.

<comment><USER26> Is the m365 good? I was thinking about getting one a few days ago. I usually cycle, but a scooter would be nice for smaller distances around the city.

<comment><USER27> _(Not OP, have owned one for two weeks of daily seven mile commuting.)_ Good as in, "in comparison to similarly-priced scooters"? Yes, it's probably your best choice in that segment. You can spend a few hundred more for the M365 Pro or Ninebot ES4, but you're mainly getting more battery. Parts are no problem, as I'm pretty sure you could build a complete replicate from Alibaba, right down to the screws and molded rubber bits. Build quality is decent, but not great. Overall, better than I expected for $400 off Amazon.

Now, is it "iPhone good"? Quality-wise, no. It's not very water-resistant, for starters, so it won't like a Seattle winter. The 250W motor is probably fine for tourist rentals, but it can be a bit anemic on hills. The mobile app integration is usable, but pretty meh. It's a 2nd-tier Android phone: good enough for the purposes of most people, for the money spent. I have no complaints with the M365, other than questionable durability.

Therefore, because I see making a habit of this scooter thing and water- resistance is a consideration, I have one from Boosted (the e-skateboard folks) pre-ordered. Should be iPhone/Pixel quality, and priced similarly ($1600).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone know who the manufacturer of the "Wheels" scooter/bike is? That design appeals to me much more than the standing scooters.

<comment><USER29> I think this[1] is the one "Wheels" uses but it's pricey and sold by a UK company though it appears they ship to the US for a flat rate £10. There's also this one[2] which is a similar design and just as pricey.

[1] [http://i-walk.co.uk/product/urban-2-foldable-electric- scoote...](http://i-walk.co.uk/product/urban-2-foldable-electric-scooter)

[2] [https://onemileusa.com/](https://onemileusa.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there a cargo scooter/bike that can carry groceries? I'm not asking for more cargo than I can carry in my hands, but I can't imagine carrying more than a gallon of milk home in one of these.

<comment><USER31> Any of them, if you own a backpack

<comment><USER32> That sounds awful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The title is misleading. the OP tried well "most" of the "rental" e-scooters available in his geo-location.

I was hoping for a comparison of the brands.

On the Scooter vs Bike discussion, my GF and I discussed the idea of getting bikes or scooters to commute to work and I gotta tell ya, scooters won by a huge margin. Biggest benefit is that they are smaller in size. we can roll them up in a closet, take them into the transit, and heck even put them in the trunk of an uber car when needed. we dont need to to pay for bike room fees and most cases can take them up to the office and store them under our desks.

the one point that I totally agree with is that scooter riders in this mixed mindset of wanting "the rights of a pedestrian, the rights of a bicycle, and the rights of a car, all at the same time", and yeah most of the accidents I have seen come from this misconception of which category they really belong to!

</comment><comment><USER34> So, this is a comparison about how lenient various scooter companies are when it comes to allowing use on restricted bike lanes in a particular city. This article applies to people living in Venice Beach who want to ride these in bike lanes and not much else.

The bike looks cool though.

</comment><comment><USER35> The legal liability for these companies must be huge. I've seen toddlers on these things with their parents, more than once. Kids very often.

<comment><USER36> They probably have it in their fine print that you are not allowed passengers. They'd be stupid not to really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The headline makes it sound like they tested all the scooters you can buy, but it's specifically talking about 5 rental scooter brands in one location:

"We've restricted our entrants to scooter-type vehicles available on the street for rent in Venice, CA as of May 13, 2019. For this test, that means Bird, Lime, Lyft, Jump (Uber), and Wheels are in the game."

</comment><comment><USER37> This article seems to be ranking how well the scooters comply with the local GPS based speed restrictions which don't apply everywhere. I've only ridden a couple of them but I prefer the old generation Lime, it seems to be the quickest accelerating with highest top speed and the disc brake is better than other options that have regenerative only. My area doesn't have GPS based speed restrictions though (they do have GPS based parking restrictions)

</comment><comment><USER38> So he tested a bunch of low end scooters and concluded that all of them suck. otherwise the sky is still blue. Some people may not realize that all of the rental companies only stock cheap low end scooters. In general those scooters are slow, have shitty brakes, suspensions, tires, etc. The scooter that I have has large deck, pneumatic tires, excellent suspension, dual hydraulic disc brakes and can go up to 65 km/h.

</comment><comment><USER27> Well, "rode all the e-scooters one can _rent_ ". Spend your own hard-earned, and better options abound even if you just buy the retail version of the Xiaomi/Ninebot that Bird/Lime use because it won't be geo-fenced.

And I'd rather walk than ride the clown bicycle that was the #1 pick, and I say this as one who rides a Xiaomi standup scooter to work every day.

</comment><comment><USER39> As I understand the speed is throttled on bike ways. So is it only allowed to ride e-scooters on the sidewalk?

In Switzerland e-scooters are categorized similar like Mopeds, so they are allowed (or required) to use the bike lanes or the street.

I wonder how this is handled in other countries as I just was in Spain and we saw a lot of e-scooters and I wondered what the rules are there.

</comment><comment><USER40> Recently used e-scooters while visiting Detroit. They were hit or miss and hard to find a handful that actually worked (charged, maint., etc) near each other. However, when they did work, it was a pleasant experience.

While it was interesting, I can't say that I'd prefer it over walking or public transportation. Also, South Park definitely nailed it.

</comment><comment><USER41> Sounds like the author missed the existence of the real road legal ev scooters (like Vespa Elettrica, Unu etc) and complains that the skateboard-with- handlebars type ones don't do miracles.

</comment><comment><USER42> I really want a high-quality non-e kick scooter. After the trend passed out, there aren't many high quality kick scooters manufactured.

<comment><USER43> Oxelo Town 9 EF V2. It's a little too heavy though.

<comment><USER42> It looks like it's not using pneumatic tires. and it's rather difficult to purchase from Japan for no official dealers in Japan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Good write up. I wonder if people would have such a problem with these scooters, if they simply sat upright when left instead of falling over. Most photos I see of these scooters, are "piles" of them, or them strewn on the sidewalk. Even with kickstands, I doubt users would leave them in neat order - however I wonder if there's an engineering solution that would prevent them from falling, or at least encourage people to be neat.

<comment><USER45> In theory, some of them have gyroscope things that can send a signal if they are not upright.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Articles like this are why I love the internet. That was a fun (and informative) read!

</comment><comment><USER47> Good write up. Don't see the cangoroo sticks on the list.

</comment><comment><USER48> Any recommendations on a good scooter to buy?

<comment><USER33> I own a Glion Dolly ([https://glion-scooter.com/dolly/](https://glion- scooter.com/dolly/)) and my girlfriend has a Segway ES2.

I would advocate for rubber tires despite the discomfort. the moment you get a flat tire is pretty much the end of your scooter's lifetime as it is very difficult to fix it.

I like Glion for its design and ease of carrying, but Segway wins in every other aspect. Depends on your budget. If you are willing to spend a grand or more then Mercane WideWheel probably tops the market right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Wow this page loads a LOT of js</comment>


Tell HN: Secure email provider Riseup will run out of money next month - <AUTHOR> I received this email from Riseup today and thought I should share it with this community.
The news is not good <comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
We hate to be bad news birds, but we need to tell you that Riseup will run out of money next month. We had a number of unexpected hardware failures, lower-than-expected regular donations, and a record year of new Riseup users which puts more financial pressure on us than ever before.
We need your help to keep things going this year, so we are starting a campaign to ask Riseup users to give us just one dollar!
Can you give us a dollar? There are a lot of easy ways to do it: https://riseup.net/donate
Is it really worth giving just a dollar? </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
Yes! It might seem inconsequential, but if you and every Riseup user gave us just one dollar, that would  fix our current financial problem.
Riseup is now delivering over a million messages a day, but we need your help if the messages are to keep flowing. You know the importance of alternative infrastructure. You know the importance of communications systems that put people before personal tracking and corporate profiteering. We need at least 5% of our users donating monthly to be sustainable. Can you become a monthly donor?
Spread the word </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>
Are you friends with a carrier pigeon? Do you know morse code? Are you skilled in building signal fires? Help us spread the word about this campaign with your community. You can even use the internet, that might work too.
Not everyone can afford a dollar to donate. We provide services to so many people and social movements around the world, many in places where even one dollar is a lot of money. If you can give us one dollar, maybe you can cover one other person by giving two?
In Europe it is now easy to give to Riseup with a simple bank transfer! Tell your friends that it is finally easy.
Thanks! </comment><comment><USER2> What does secure mean?

<comment><USER3> Not what I would have thought, but they say:

What is special about riseup.net email Your riseup.net email account is a wonderful thing. Although we don't provide as much storage quota as surveillance-funded corporate email providers, riseup.net email has many unusual features:

We encrypt traffic whenever possible. When you send email from riseup.net to another secure email provider, the email is encrypted for its entire journey. (see StartTLS for more info)

We don't disclose your location to email recipients. When you send email with riseup.net, your internet address (IP address) is not embedded in the email. With corporate email providers, anyone who receives your email can figure out your approximate physical location from the internet address included in the email.

We don't log your internet address. Our commitment is to keep as little data on you as we can. Unlike corporate providers, we do not log internet addresses of anyone using riseup.net services, including email.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't sound like they're doing anything that gmail + VPN doesn't do.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Indeals – food and drink deals from independent venues in your city - <AUTHOR> http://www.indeals.co.uk <comment><USER2> Another Groupon clone?</comment>


Basic Security for the Operations Impaired: Stop Sharing Credentials - <AUTHOR> https://roberttisdale.com/basic-security-for-the-operations-impaired-stop-sharing-credentials/ <comment><AUTHOR> I know most of the people here are generally senior so might not be engaging in this sort of thing.

If you are sharing credentials though, the article might be useful read for you.

I also mention a great tool by the guys over at Widdix for utilizing IAM CodeCommit Public Keys for EC2 server access.

It's hacky but it's clever and works pretty well.

[https://github.com/widdix/aws-ec2-ssh](https://github.com/widdix/aws-ec2-ssh)</comment>


The world's most 'liveable' cities - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/08/daily-chart-5

<comment><USER2> Note this criticism in Crikey:

[http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2015/08/19/is- being-t...](http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2015/08/19/is-being-the- worlds-most-liveable-city-such-a-big-deal/)</comment>


Musk: I Won't Be Tesla's CEO Forever - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/11/musk-wont-teslas-ceo-forever/#more-950041

<comment><USER2> Well, even though he's a workaholic his energies aren't going to last forever and he's already CEO of SpaceX.</comment>


I couldn't resist! - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?site0=paulgraham.com&site1=philip.greenspun.com&site2=&site3=&site4=&y=r&z=1&h=300&w=500&range=6m&size=Medium&url=paulgraham.com <comment><USER2> Ah, the epic battle of the pg's on the alexa battlefront. Our resident pg has an army of hackers and close access to robots and futuristic unicycles. I think the winner here is clear.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommendation for open-source self-hosted collaboration software - <AUTHOR> Hey HN guys,
there are dozens of open source self-hosted collaboration solutions. Can you recommend any of them you have good experience with?
Required standard features like upcoming events, calendar, mail integration and notification, document and contact details sharing, discussion boards, internal wiki, possible attendance system integration.
Community is from non-technical people so it needs to have user friendly GUI (CLI interface not needed). Solution needs to be open-source and self-hosted.
Thanks <comment><USER2> tiki.org is what I usually turn to, and it works well enough after a bit of setup. However there may be better solutions out there. (and if there are, I'd love to know about them!)

</comment><comment><USER3> How about a github-like service, like gitlab or gogs?

It might not be perfect, but that's a possibility. And could can definitely work around your requirements with those.

<comment><AUTHOR> I already consider these solutions but they are good for devs. I am looking for something for non-devs. But thanks for tip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> google wave[1] is open sourced now.

[1]: [https://incubator.apache.org/wave/about.html](https://incubator.apache.org/wave/about.html)</comment>


Ask HN: A helping hand please - <AUTHOR>

hello everyone, I have a lot to tell but I will cut it short not to take your time. I know this is not what HN is for but HN community is the only place left where I have hopes for. If moderators think this is wrong, you can delete my post.
I am a 4th year aerospace engineering student at METU (Turkey) and do russian (I'm fro russia, but study in Turkey)/english/turkish interpreting at large conferences for businessman and politicians (once to even a prime minister) for additional income back home but my real passion is internet, startups and technology.
I have built simple websites using CMSs like joomla and wordpress and have done domain dropcatching, linkbuilding, etc. before but I always wanted to create real value, to build or take part in building something valuable, something that is useful to people. I have been reading techcrunch and other 'web2.0' blogs for last 5 years and  always wanted to visit silicon valley and bay area to see the place where all innovation happens, where all these awesome people work on these awesome projects.
Thats why I decided to come to united states this summer and 'Work and Travel' program was most convenient at this point. The agency that arranged me a 'job' to work and travel turned out to be a huge liar. I was promised that I will ride a pedicab in San Diego for couple of hours a day and make enough income to travel the rest of the time. (thats when I thought I could visit silicon valley or meet local startup people). Now that I got here it and have spend 3 weeks trying to make money to cover the costs I found out that the reality is different. The rent for bike is 300 dollars per week, if you add apartment rent and food to that its impossible to become cash positive in here. I tried to find some jobs here in downtown San Diego and applied to 15-20 jobs but nobody even called back.
I have like 500 dollars left, which is enough for 2 more weeks tops and after that I will have to fly back to Istanbul. But before giving up I though may be I share my story with good old HN community, where a lot of smart, rational and helpful guys hang out. I love technology, I love learning new things and I am a mature and disciplined person for my age (24).
If you guys think I could be helpful to you, or have something in mind that I could enjoy doing and cover my living costs here that would be awesome. I need a place to stay and any job. I am fine with crushing on the floor:) I am thinking of applying for a transfer to some local universities here so I may stay here long term. I have a legal work visa and a valid social security number. 619 646 6609 or email@example.com thanks <comment><USER2> Recent July 2011 Who is hiring thread may help: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2719028>

Might also be a good idea to break up your post into paragraphs for easier reading.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The SDHN guys meet up quite regularly, <http://goo.gl/l5MYb>.

Unfortunately, I don't live in SD anymore, or I'd let you crash on my couch while you got settled. I was in a similar position last year, and it can get a bit tough. It's an expensive town. I suggest to ditch the bike, and get a Compass Card. You can get those at the ticket vending machines next to bus/trolley stops. You'll be able to travel longer distances, and it's much, much cheaper(about $80 per month).

Best of luck, and don't give up!

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> have you tried looking at Craigslist for any 'gigs' or any of the freelance programming sites?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have squeezed everything from San Diego craigslist. no luck so far. its tough with jobs here, at least for me.</comment></comment>


SF plans 120-day annual short term rental caps - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfmayor.org/index.aspx?recordid=837&page=846

<comment><USER2> Once again, instead of responsibly approaching the housing problem by passing measures to incentivize building more supply, the SF government has taken the easy way out by placing more restrictions on what can be done with existing units. This is a convenient regulation for politicians because it appeases certain people and attacks an easy scapegoat, but it will have a minimal effect on the quality and quantity of housing available, and on the price of rent.

<comment><USER3> Where do you propose "more supply" be built? Pretty much every inch of SF is already occupied by something[0].

I suppose we could start landfilling part of the bay a la Boston.

[0] [https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Francisco,+firstname.lastname@example.com...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/San+Francisco,+firstname.lastname@example.com,-122.4049461,7687m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x80859a6d00690021:0x4a501367f076adff)

<comment><USER4> There's a third, woefully underutilized dimension I can think of.

<comment><USER3> Which would typically require demolition of existing structures. Most property owners don't have the capital to destroy their current structures just to replace them with taller buildings. It would also require displacing current residents, who won't have anywhere else to live while the new building is constructed.

<comment><USER4> > Most property owners don't have the capital to destroy their current > structures just to replace them with taller buildings.

There are those that do who would gladly fork over a good chunk of change for their lots.

> It would also require displacing current residents, who won't have anywhere > else to live while the new building is constructed.

Yeah, lets inconvenience 99% of people just so those few won't be.

<comment><USER3> Who exactly is being inconvenienced? Those who do not currently live in the city?

<comment><USER4> Current tenants- paying insane prices for rent

And yes, those that would like to live in the city but can't because of the ridiculous rent or simply lack of rent-able places.

<comment><USER5> And the people who would like their pensions to be fully funded due to investment gains from new tech companies in SF, currently hindered by rent. And people who want to use exciting new products built by SF companies which are limited or don't happen due to lack of office space. It's a drag on not only the city but the state, nation, and world.

<comment><USER6> Are you being sarcastic? Or do you genuinely think the lack of office space in SF is a drag on the world?

<comment><USER7> Not office space so much as housing.

"But for the tight limits on construction in California's Bay Area, they reckon, employment there would be about five times larger than it is. In work that has yet to be published they tot up similar distortions across the whole economy from 1964 on and find that American GDP in 2009 was as much as 13.5% lower than it otherwise could have been. At current levels of output that is a cost of more than $2 trillion a year, or nearly $10,000 per person."

[http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21647622-land- centre-...](http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21647622-land-centre-pre- industrial-economy-has-returned-constraint- growth?zid=311&ah=308cac674cccf554ce65cf926868bbc2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is actually much worse than it could be, because of this:

> • Treating all short-term rental hosts equally by striking the current > difference in the law between "hosted" and "un-hosted" short-term rentals.

Hosted rentals SHOULD have lesser regulation and restrictions. Nobody's going to turn your spare bedroom into a meth lab with you in the apartment. Most of the negative externalities of these types of rentals come when people are able to provide 'unhosted' rentals.

<comment><USER9> I think you're quite right that unhosted rentals are more problematic. Every short-term rental horror story I've heard has involved unhosted rentals.

However, from an enforcement standpoint, I can see how difficult it could potentially be to have to make distinctions in each and every case. If a host is there to let you in the door and then leaves, is that a "hosted" rental? Does the host need to be in the apartment 100% of the time you're there to count as a "hosted" rental? What if he steps out for an hour? Does the host need to employ some sort of time tracking system as evidence of his presence? What if a host and a guest dispute the amount of time the host is present?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it'd be more productive if the city was more focused on improving regulation to build more housing in the city for actual residents rather than trying to stem the loss of units to permanent Airbnb'ing. It seems like every policy maker and lobbying group seems to be ignoring the biggest elephant in the room which is this city needs dramatically MORE HOUSING than it is building (and the infrastructure that goes along with it).

Build more housing please.

<comment><USER11> I can count off the top of my head at least 8 different housing projects/towers being built. It's going up, and the city is doing everything it can (whist being actively undermined by NIMBY groups).

Also addressing the rampant issue of people taking up rental units with quasi- illegal short term rentals is perfectly fine.

<comment><USER12> By the numbers, SF simply isn't building fast enough, nor has it over the last 20 years.

      Units built in 2014: 3,514
      Jobs created in 2014: 23400
      Permitted units (at any stage): 3756
      Submitted units for review (not permitted): 8000

Source: [http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2015/04/housing- productio...](http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2015/04/housing-production- in-san-francisco-highest-in-over-20-years-but.html)

Further, many of the buildings are squat, short, and low density, even near transit. SF suffers from 20 years of planning failure.

Read the last 10 Socketsite articles to get an idea how criminally mismanaged SF's planning is. The AirBNB regulations are to make the city's power brokers look like they can do something about growth other than build.

<comment><USER13> For comparison: Manhattan issued permits for 4,856 new housing units in 2013 [1], despite having half the land area of SF and already supporting 4 times the population density.

[1] [http://www.nycrgb.org/downloads/research/pdf_reports/14HSR.p...](http://www.nycrgb.org/downloads/research/pdf_reports/14HSR.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If enforced properly this should force investor owned units out of the short term rental market which should help lower annual rental prices somewhat. Big IF.

</comment><comment><USER15> The party is over.

</comment><comment><USER16> "amendments to streamline" oxymoron?

<comment><USER17> Amendments can remove stuff. These amendments seem to just add things though, so... yes, oxymoron.</comment></comment>


Show HN: BrAIMS – Connect with founders and share your company progress - <AUTHOR> https://www.braims.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello there! I'm the founder of brAIMS [https://www.braims.org/](https://www.braims.org/) we are building a web app to help founders in key aspects of starting something from scratch.

So we are betting on a founder's focused network, helping them connect with other people (founder's, talents, investors), and resources (funding, programs, tools) as founders ourselves we see a big void in networking in early stages and only 1% of founders get funded in a 171B industry. We as founders have access to a lot of tools alike, but we are building with an ecosystem approach on 3 aspects: people, needs, resources. So think about putting Angel List + Linkedin together.

By using brAIMS you'll be able to:

\- Create your user and company profile (An unique URL will be given to share your company page with anyone)

\- Protect your company sensitive information (Active, Users, Revenue, CAC)

\- Edit and Keep your company information and progress up to date to share with people who might be interested.

\- Invite your team (Confirmations will be sent to confirm team members in public URL page)

\- Invite partners (Confirmations will be sent to confirm partners in public URL page)

\- Create a Funding Milestone for your company or project.

\- Create a project.

\- Request a spot in any of our upcoming events supporting founders. (Example our upcoming Show-Up event to put founders in front of investors July 2020)

\- Request to view a full company information if you are an investor interested in putting money in the company (Founders will be able to approve who sees their information)

\- Connect with other users in the network page (You'll have access to their contact information in your Network tab in profile)

\- Scroll through a list of the created companies to connect and reach them (Aims page).

\- Keep track of your activity in a notifications page.

\- Advance search of Funding Opportunities filtered by Field, Amount, Modality, Availability, and Location.

Next in our road map is a Feed and Direct messages! We would love to know if this makes sense and get your feedback on the user flows if you get to play a bit with it.

brAIMS is a bootstrapped Entrepreneurs Network, helping founders connect with peers, find funding opportunities and learn about the entrepreneurship field all in one place, if you are related to building something from scratch and all the hurdles that come with it brAIMS is a great space to help people out and connect.</comment>


Want WebP today? Implement it in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://badassjs.com/post/1313384987/weppy

<comment><USER2> damn, I was going to do this! Hah, it's a good idea.

Actually I was going to have something like this: <img src="foo.webp" onerror="makecompat();"> where makecompat gets the webp data and implements the webp algorithm to draw the image onto a canvas which replaces the image element. That way any browser that supports canvas would be able to support webp, and it would 'fail forward'.

But still, this is a cool script, and I'll certainly use it if I want webp images.

<comment><USER3> Your idea would be far more valuable then the one presented here. This script only adds support for WebP images within browsers that already support WebM, which seems like a trivial task for those specific browser vendors to support anyway.

<comment><USER4> I tried porting VP8, but the spec is huge (the allegedly incomplete bitstream specification is 104 pages), and performance-wise, it couldn't compare to a native webm/vp8 implementation. I guess i'll give it another shot.

I'm not exactly sure how much of vp8 is part of the interframe prediction, because WebP only contains a single intraframe, it might be practical to implement a small subset.

<comment><USER2> how about a serverside implementation? Try loading native webp, if that fails, send the webp data to a webp-to-png service and render in png on the client. Performance would probably be fine, and imagemagick or something similar will probably support webp soon so the server won't require us to write a whole webp implementation.

<comment><USER4> That negates the purpose of a bandwidth-efficient lossy image format.

<comment><USER2> even my original idea would require a double-hit to the server, because I don't think you can extract data loaded into an image element through JS, so you'd have to read the src attribute and re-request it via XHR as raw data, and then parse that into a replacement canvas element.

The main benefit is being able to default to webp, and save all your resources in that format alone, and provide a fallback for browsers which don't support it, instead of having to provide 2 sets of images and serve different ones depending on the browser.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>