Cuomo signs bill prohibiting Airbnb listings in NYC - <AUTHOR> http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/268627/cuomo-signs-bill-prohibiting-airbnb-listings-in-nyc/ <comment><USER2> Airbnb's response: "A majority of New Yorkers have embraced home sharing, and we will continue to fight for a smart policy solution that works for the the people, not the powerful."

I'd be more interested in knowing how New Yorkers feel about regulating short term apartment rentals than how they feel about sharing.

I don't think I'm guilty of being a broken record if airbnb keeps misusing the word "sharing." Although I understand there can be some ambiguity in the word "sharing", the arrangement "you may rent my apartment out for a week if and only if you pay me $1,000" isn't anywhere close to this zone of ambiguity.

It is commerce. It is unambiguously commerce, it is a pure quid pro quo money for services transaction.

New York has passed legislation regulating commerce - in this case, the conditions under which someone may rent out property for under 30 days. Those laws aren't obsolete just because someone wrote a rails app where you can type in an address and click a "create hotel here" button. Also, commerce doesn't become sharing just because the quid pro quo financial transactions take place over the web.

<comment><USER3> This highlights a flaw in the law more than anything else. Who owns your home? If government can tell you who can stay with you, regardless of any private transactions or agreements you make with that person, then government has more authority over your living space than you do.

<comment><USER4> _Who owns your home? If government can tell you who can stay with you_

The government can do all manner of proscriptions for your residence. For instance, no, you cannot run a brothel from your house. You cannot turn it into a bouncy house park. And you cannot have short-term rentals in an area that the community has decided to use for permanent housing.

It's called "zoning", and collectively we've agreed to the allowed uses of our property. You live in a community of others, and your property lines do not define "The Independent Republic of JJordan", so yeah, the government does have some authority over your use of your property. You might not like it, but you'll be going against the flow. Because, personally, I'd rather not have the house next to me used for short-term rentals "shared" with those that don't give two shits about the community they'll be leaving on Sunday afternoon.

You also don't get to just decide not to follow the rules after the fact. One moved to a community, and directly or indirectly agreed to abide by the community standards. If one decides that's just not really working for them anymore, well, move to a community that has standards more to your liking. There do exist places that will have no problem with you throwing all the loud parties you like, and renting to college students on spring break. Those places are not in SV, however, so good luck in your search for remote work.

<comment><USER5> > short-term rentals in an area that the community has decided to use for > permanent housing

It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent it out. We're not talking about someone running a business out of their home, where the zoning laws actually apply.

> I'd rather not have the house next to me used for short-term rentals > "shared" with those that don't give two shits about the community they'll be > leaving on Sunday afternoon.

How about the ones who let that druggie sister down on her luck move in, she's ok because it's for over 30 days?

This is just whiny bullcrap from someone who wants to be able to control their neighbors.

> You also don't get to just decide not to follow the rules after the fact. > One moved to a community, and directly or indirectly agreed to abide by the > community standards.

We're not discussing a housing authority here. If you and your neighbors get together and decide the community cannot abide someone allowing another person to use their house for less than ... what 6 months? a year ... you write that into the bylaws, set out the financial penalty, and then you enforce it.

And that's your right.

But when these kinds of things become illegal across an entire state, there's a problem. This law should have never been on the books in its current form to begin with.

<comment><USER6> > It shouldn't be legal to tell someone who owns a home that they cannot rent > it out. We're not talking about someone running a business out of their > home, where the zoning laws actually apply.

Short term rentals _are_ a business, by definition.

<comment><USER7> Parent made it sound like the government has a moral right to zoning laws. I would argue that zoning laws are more often abused than used properly.

<comment><USER8> The government does have a moral right to zoning laws.

We, as citizens, have ascribed them that right. And it is what protects me from having my neighbours run a brothel or smelting plant in their house.

<comment><USER9> That's not a "right", that's a power struggle. What protects the brothel owner from being kicked out of town?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The legislation allows you to rent a spare room in your house. What it disallows is having an apartment you rent out in full on AirBnB, either doing that exclusively as an income source or yourself staying elsewhere whenever you are renting it out.

Put in that context, the legislation seems pretty well-aimed at its goal of creating more affordable housing in the city.

If you are renting an entire apartment out on AirBnB full time, you are deciding to run an unregulated hotel rather than rent a traditional long-term lease. The city doesn't like that.

<comment><USER11> >Put in that context, the legislation seems pretty well-aimed at its goal of creating more affordable housing in the city.

At the cost of higher temporary housing costs for people that want to visit. Addressing supply by ripping supply from a different market is a bandaid.

This benefits hotels much more than low income people.

<comment><USER12> > At the cost of higher temporary housing costs for people that want to visit. > Addressing supply by ripping supply from a different market is a bandaid.

That's not such a bad thing. The market has demonstrated that hotels and similar will be built until supply mostly meets the demand.

No one will build affordable housing when they can build expensive housing instead.

<comment><USER13> > No one will build affordable housing when they can build expensive housing > instead.

This problem is due to restrictions on supply. Consider the statement, "No one will build affordable cars when they can build expensive cars instead"

<comment><USER14> Cars can be moved and occupy shared spaces. Dwellings are anchored to the earth and exclude other dwellings from the same location.

<comment><USER13> Yup, that's one restriction on supply. Other restrictions include:

1\. Limits on the height of new buildings

2\. Limits on the ability to demolish or extend existing buildings

3\. Limits on the minimum size of new apartments

4\. Limits on the number of people who can live in an apartment

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While I typically would support a tech company, and this is not to say that I'm not pro-technology and want smarter legislation to keep track with technology advances, the opposition does have some good points.

Having only recently become able to afford my own apartment, it appears to me that this legislation is, at its core, designed for the purpose of renter protection. Housing prices are literally insane in metropolitan areas across America. (LA here). Illegal sublets are already endemic, and were I to own property, or even have a year long lease, the ROI from AirBnBs/subletting would definitely be enticing. I won't assert I'm a moral paragon, but there are many landlords less scrupulous than I am.

The problem is that, with AirBnB and sublets come ever increasing rent, eventually pricing huge numbers of people out, which drives down productivity and growth. Uninhibited illegal sublets/hotels create a weird bubble at the very bottom of the housing market, which serves to exert upward pressure on prices across the board, since if one room is now worth $800-$1000/month, a studio apt jumps from $1100 to $1300, and so on and so forth.

<comment><USER16> > The problem is that, with AirBnB and sublets come ever increasing rent, > eventually pricing huge numbers of people out, which drives down > productivity and growth.

AirBnB aside, the cities with the highest housing prices, and the highest recent increases in housing prices, also have the highest economic growth by far.

In theory, people like service workers will be driven out, the local economy will suffer, yadda yadda yadda. In practice, that has never happened. In San Francisco area, for example, rents have more than doubled in the past five years, the economy has boomed, thousands of new jobs were created, and there are still enough service workers, restaurant workers, municipal employees, etc. to do the jobs that need to be done. If you look at the most expensive cities worldwide, e.g. London, Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, etc., you will find similar situations.

If you want to argue for affordable housing on the basis that it is a social good, that's fine. But there is no evidence that high housing prices have driven down productivity and growth.

<comment><USER17> Except those service workers probably now have significantly longer commutes. Their quality of life suffers. I don't know how broadly your definition of service workers goes, but this affects teachers, police officers, firefighters, etc.

<comment><USER18> I don't think the parent poster would disagree with you. What they're saying is that the decreased quality of life for service industry workers hasn't lead to a negative effect on the economy.

I'm with you that it's a bad thing.

<comment><USER19> Growing at 10% instead of 20% is still "a negative effect".

"That which is not seen" and all that...

<comment><USER16> What evidence is there that growth would increase _in the areas with high housing prices_ if the housing prices were lower?

<comment><USER19> Less deadweight loss in the form of rent, and more towards people doing productive things is one completely obvious one.

<comment><USER16> I asked for evidence, not what seems obvious.

I already addressed this in my original post. It seems obvious that the displacement of workers would hurt the economy. However, it does not seem to actually happen -- the cities with the highest housing prices have the highest growth of any cities in the world.

<comment><USER20> I think the causation goes the other way: Cities with high growth get high housing prices because people want to move to cities with high growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's a shame it's come to this, but I'm sympathetic to NYC here. AirBnB had the time, resources, and advance notice to modify their policies and offerings in ways that allowed real homeowners to use the system but keep greedy land owners from running unregulated hotel chains.

AirBnB chose to keep the money hose pouring instead. They implicitly encouraged owners to operate in a way that violated the spirit of moderate, sensible couch sharing.

This is well deserved.

<comment><USER22> Agreed -- I even tried to contact them as the legal representative for our building to give them a chance to "fix" the situation and they refused to take down rental ads in our building after we stated it was both against building by-laws and NYC law.

<comment><USER23> Wow. That's crazy. What did they tell you?

<comment><USER22> "Although we are unable to evaluate private contract terms and cannot arbitrate these disputes, we will share your letter with the user responsible for the listing."

Gee, thanks. Notice -- no mention of violation of NYC law in the response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Everyone usually frames this debate as compensating the little man instead of lining the rich pockets of the hotel industry. I have personally not seen this. I am a NYC condo owner and I do not know a single other condo owner that I have met that welcomes illegal short-term renters in their buildings. We enacted a $1000/day fine in our building against the owner on record if we catch someone doing this. We invested in real estate in this city and all signed contracts agreeing that only long-term subleases would be allowed (>= 12 months), and so we are upholding those contracts. Just because someone wants to visit the city and not stay in a hotel does not mean that all the other unit owners in a particular building want you there. It is _not_ just a transaction between you and whoever hands you the keys. The last 2 Airbnb cases in our building were legal long-term subletters themselves listing the apartment on Airbnb without the owner's knowledge. There is so much straight- up illegal activity going on it's not even funny.

<comment><USER24> I'm curious why you desire 12 month leases over, say, 4 month leases. What's the major difference from an owner's perspective?

<comment><USER22> It's extra work for the management company / Board, but one of the primary drivers is that all the people in the building don't want a constant stream of people moving in/out. Expanding it to minimum 12-month leases means less disruption to people living in the building.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> _Krueger noted that the legislation does not prohibit those who use sites like Airbnb from renting out a spare room while they are in their homes._

So if the sharing economy is REALLY about sharing, there's no problem!

<comment><USER26> What about going away for work? I don't have a spare bedroom (uh, there aren't many of those in NYC), but I do travel quite a bit.

I get the gist of the law and wholeheartedly support it. I just wish there were a way for it to be a bit more targeted (say, a days/year stipulation).

<comment><USER25> It is - this legislation from 2010 is about lets of <30 days.

<comment><USER26> You don't take trips for less than a month at a time?

<comment><USER25> You would need to be away for at least 30 days and your prospective tenant would need to sign a lease for at least 30 days. Then, under this legislation, it's kosher, and would be governed by your own tenancy agreement/coop board/whatever.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, I'm not asking for an explanation of the law. I understand how it works, and that's the problem. It bans the usecase of allowing people to rent out while they travel, which wasn't the stated intention of the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If Airbnb had rules regarding non-share rentals that restricted repeated listings of them they wouldn't have this problem. Yes this law is slightly heavy-handed in that it blocks someone that goes on a trip from time to time from booking their places out, but that is not the majority of listings on Airbnb. The majority of full apartment rentals are people that are running illegal hotels basically. This is hurting real hotels that have much more regulation, and decreasing availability of housing in a city that is getting more residents every year than the entire population of most other places in the USA.

Also when you are living in Manhattan, you do not want to have someone different in the place down the hall or above you every day. These people staying short term have no onus to respect neighbors. Airbnb knows that professional illegal sub-letters are the bulk of their business and is not stopping it. Renting a ski cabin out weekly is a lot different than renting out an apartment in the most densely populated city in the USA.

</comment><comment><USER28> Our tiny town had creative citizens stop the only ab&b house on a residential street.

Tell an&b tenants they are not wanted and to state that in their reviews

Take all their street parking spaces

Call the police nightly to say strangers are in neighbors house and she is away

Eventually the city council ruled against the homeowner due to zoning (not a business)

The situation was very ugly.

Perhaps there should be an an&b companion list where potential an&b renters can see if the property is "friendly neutral or hostile" I would have used that

<comment><USER29> What city was this? Just curious. Sounds like a lot of work for everyone involved, and could defocus the police.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The way I see it is: you can either have a city where ALL the residents of the city can afford to live (esp. service workers, teachers, elderly folks on a fixed income, etc), or you can have one where those with the expendable capital buy up most of the available housing to use a short term rentals to increase their income further. I'd rather live in a city where many different kinds of people can find a place to live than one where only those with the most money can stay.

To be clear: I'd support density limits for AirBnBs without an outright ban and am totally fine with people renting out extra rooms on a short or long term basis. Unrestrained short term rentals seem to clearly drive up the price of property and end up benefiting mostly those who already have the means to own a place to live.

</comment><comment><USER31> > _This is an issue that was given careful, deliberate consideration, but > ultimately these activities are already expressly prohibited by law_

So basically the city/state failed to respond to AirBnB illegal activities in short period of time hence letting them thrive and built a multi-billion dollar business.

Would that be a key to successful startup? Same thing happened with Uber. So is there any other branch of industry one can try to disturb that would violate local/state laws but such violation would take decent amount of time to stop you in reasonable time before you are "worth" billions? (okay, other than selling drugs which most of us and Ulbritch know will put you in jail for a long time).

> _In typical fashion, Albany back-room dealing rewarded a special interest — > the price-gouging hotel industry_

Wow, that's pretty strong allegations. Does he have any proof of such illegal activity? If so, did AirBnB did anything to report it? In all seriousness, I frankly doubt there is such a big monopoly so that its impossible to open your own hotel and compete price-wise with others.

> _and ignored the voices of tens of thousands of New Yorkers_ Okay well I can > find millions or criminals locked in jails saying it should be fine to kill > people - is that a good enough reasoning?

They also claim Cuomo action infringe on 4th amendment. Can someone stretch it hard enough for me to actually see it Peter's way??

</comment><comment><USER32> What is the proper amount of short term rentals in a city?

Should a particular building be used for housing or rentals?

I know I don't know the exact answer, but the reality is that politicians don't either. These questions are better solved by pricing, the mechanism that actually directs resources to their most valued ends rather than political edict (which as we all know is influenced heavily by whoever is able to grease the most politicians).

Politicians can't react accurately and quickly to rapidly changing supply and demand. The market has an actual signal that does this rapidly and provides incentive to do so.

Anything that disrupts this is just another example of corrupt government benefiting their contributors to the detriment of real prosperity.

<comment><USER33> Agree 100%. I think that the city of New York has no business putting limitations on how a property (that you own) can be used and leased. If you have a community/association that's making those rules, fine... that's fair. It's fair because you agree to their terms prior to purchasing the property. If you rent a property and the lease explicitly disallows subletting, fine. That's fair too. Rules and laws should be granular, specific to their locality, rather than vast sweeping blankets.

I'm also in favor of zoning for residential and business, that makes sense. But there's a big difference between someone operating a high foot-traffic business out of their home, and seeing an occasional stranger walk into a residence every other day or so.

If there are no specific rules that a localized community has agreed on, then Airbnb should be fair game. Why should the municipal government make the rules?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/22/technology/new-york- passes...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/22/technology/new-york-passes-law- airbnb.html)

> '"In typical fashion, Albany back-room dealing rewarded a special interest — > the price-gouging hotel industry — and ignored the voices of tens of > thousands of New Yorkers," said Josh Meltzer, head of the company's New York > public policy.'

> 'New York City is the company's largest market in the United States. The > city's hosts generated about $1 billion in revenue last year, and the > company took a cut of that amount in fees.'

From this article, AirBnB wasted millions of dollars lobbying to go against the will of the people. Amazing.

The quote is wrong. New Yorkers value their safety. They don't want transients in their buildings. There are children, there are elderly, there are women. Perhaps AirBnB should have hired someone who lives in a NYC apartment. They would have explained the importance of safety to the AirBnB executives.

It seems impossible that executives of AirBnB do not understand that safety in apartment buildings is important. Perhaps their vision is blurred by the fees they make on the $1 billion in annual revenues.

</comment><comment><USER35> There are laws in New York City that say (with good reason) that you can't just turn your home into a hotel. New York is simply enforcing the law.

If Airbnb really has the public support they claim then it should be easy to change the law. The reality is a lot (likely vast majority) of New Yorkers really don't want the status quo to change. The politicians know this and hence why they took this path.

<comment><USER36> Maybe this is good law in New York City because its so dense and everyone is stepping on one another, but its not good law for the entire, gigantic state of New York.

My cousin does cleaning and management of vacation rentals in the Catskills, in parts of New York that used to be vibrant but are now extremely economically depressed and taxed exorbitantly.

Forbid vacation rentals that violate noise ordinances, don't cast generalization blankets and act out of prejudice.

<comment><USER37> What are you talking about? The law only affects the city, not the whole state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> As someone who's spent the last 3 months living in AirBnB units and sublets in NYC and doesn't have any desire to commit to a year-long rental lease, this is disappointing.

AirBnB makes the market more efficient by increasing the supply of housing that otherwise wouldn't be available and provides more alternatives to signing a lease and wading through scams on Craigslist.

If NYC is serious about providing affordable housing, then this would at best be a temporary band-aid patch while they actually tackle the real problem - building more affordable housing. Of course the government isn't actually interested in solving the problem, so blaming AirBnB is more convenient.

<comment><USER39> You can still rent an airbnb for a period of over 30 days (so, 31 days) legally with these regulations. Do you find yourself wanting to move around more often than that?

I think this is a pretty good compromise all things considered - I've gotten very tired of people spending 72 hours in the apartment across the hallway from me and generally being nuisances the entire time.

<comment><USER40> as a tourist that really likes nyc, i can't stay for 30+ days and 15 days at a hotel is too expensive (as in, i can't cook my own meals at a hotel) this affects me a lot. i guess i won't be going back to nyc so soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Very surprised to see all the (or any) Airbnb negativity here. I've been living in an Airbnb for about 2 months now (as a tenant, not a host) and plan to continue doing so indefinitely. The experience is infinitely better than renting from your typical rental company (and at a comparable price, with Airbnb's monthly discounts), and I don't think I could ever go back.

Unfortunately, this just sounds like NYC is making it more difficult for visitors to come check out the city, which is regrettable at best.

Hopefully this bill does not also apply to long-term Airbnb rentals also.

<comment><USER42> Indefinitely? Are you sacrificing the rights and protections put in place for tenants? I'm not sure where you are located, but where I rent I have legal protection for stuff. Temperature control, eviction warning and so on. Seeking out a proper rental agreement with a landlord (not company, just a property owner) seems like a far better idea.

<comment><USER41> Honestly, I've never had to directly deal with the rights and protections put in place for tenants when I rented from landlords/companies (for the past ~6 years), and had experiences ranging from negative to "meh".

I've only had positive experiences with Airbnb (so far at least). I rent the entire home so things like temperature control aren't an issue, and in the two instances where 1) a host was unavailable to check me in on arrival, and 2) a host needed to end a contract early, Airbnb went out of their way to rectify the situation (calling the tenant every 10 minutes until they responded for #1, and offering equal-cost-per-night lodging at a hotel of my choice for both #1 and #2). I would never expect a landlord to go through that, honestly.

FWIW, I'm located in the NL but I've also stayed at Airbnbs in the US and Canada, and have the next 7 months of Airbnb rentals (3 months per place) already booked.

I would definitely (honestly, not being facetious here) be interested in what rental rights I'm missing out on by renting through Airbnb, and how realistic it is that I'd actually need them outside of something crazy happening (I have insurance for most of those cases).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> > "For too long companies like Airbnb have encouraged illegal activity that > takes housing off the market and makes our affordability crisis worse," she > said. "They have sat idly by while unwitting 'hosts' are evicted for > breaking their leases, unscrupulous landlords drive out tenants to profit > off the short-term market, and tourists are put in danger by staying in > unregulated, unaccountable, and often dangerous illegal hotels."

I think the danger is exaggerated but otherwise, I tend to agree that Airbnb is perfectly happy to profit off of tenants who break agreements set by their city or community organization and play innocent about the legality. And now, in my city at least, units that are owned and operated purely as short-term rentals which in addition to making it less affordable for people who actively want to purchase a place, also disrupt residents. One condo building for example is pretty much known as a Airbnb hotel as residents often see visitors clogging the lobby with luggage and/or endure loud parties. There's something to be said when residents are delighted when Airbnb'ers have a crap experience so that they stop coming to the building.

</comment><comment><USER34> I live in NYC and I can tell you that New Yorkers do not want AirBnB. We do not want transients in our apartment buildings. We want our safety. Many of us have doormen that keep people out.

There are children, there are elderly. The executives and the VC firms that fund them show absolutely no respect for New Yorkers who value our safety.

> "Cuomo's signature underscores a concern from companies that operate within > the "sharing economy" that New York remains unreceptive to newer > technologies that threaten some within certain industries, such as the > hospitality and taxi industries."

This quote from the article is false. We highly value Uber/Lyft/Gett. New Yorkers love high technology: we have the only 24/367 Apple Store in the nation. We have a 24 hour Best Buy. Same Day Delivery from a number of different vendors. ClassPass, MealPal, MoviePass, CUPS, the list is a long one and some of these firms were first started in NYC.

What seems clear to New Yorkers is that AirBnB executives do not value safety.

<comment><USER44> There's no way to not come off as snarky here, but you keep saying 'New Yorkers want this' and 'clear to New Yorkers' that. Do you have polls to back this up? Otherwise this rhetoric reads like a quote from a politician or talk radio. My question is, how do you know the majority of people agree with you?

<comment><USER37> Airbnb doesn't seem to mind saying that New Yorkers want airbnb because "thousands" of them say so. Doesn't seem hard to imagine there are a thousand New Yorkers who don't, justifying the opposite claim.

<comment><USER34> We all value our safety. Many, many buildings have doormen to keep people out to help protect safety. There is a lot of crime in big cities. I don't know anyone that wants transients in their building.

The people AirBnB is referring to are simply those who want to rent their places out for additional money.

I think AirBnB could care less about the safety of children, elderly, women, and others. I have seen no acknowledgement that people living in apartment buildings value their safety.

<comment><USER45> Please don't put words in other people's mouths.

I don't think my safety is in any way threatened by allowing my neighbors to rent out their apartment while they're on vacation.

<comment><USER34> From my statement:

> I think AirBnB could care less about the safety of children, elderly, women, > and others.

Well, I'm very happy to hear that you, living in NYC, do not feel threatened by transients. I wasn't referring to myself but children, elderly, and women.

If if physically able men don't feel threatened, there are others that should be protected from harm from transients.

EDIT: I see by your other comments that you don't even live in NYC! You are complaining about hotel rates > $60. Those of us that live here _in NYC_ value the safety of protecting children, elderly neighbors, women, and our property from transients.

For short term stays, go to Union City NJ which is just across from the Lincoln Tunnel (42nd St). A simple priceline search shows $60 per day.

Please show sensitivity to others that value their safety and those of their neighbors.

<comment><USER45> I do live in NYC.

This talk of "transients" is preposterous and, frankly, dubious. What do you think "transients" are? Roving bands of criminals?

Your comment is the most pathetic example of "think of the children" I have ever seen. Do you have _any_ examples of material harm being done to children by Airbnb guests?

<comment><USER34> Well, I was responding to your comment about not being able to find a $60 hotel room: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12768260](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12768260)

As someone in NYC then, you know that Union City, NJ is very close to Times Square by transit and has low-cost hotel rooms, so I don't understand your complaint. Transit-wise these hotels are much closer to Times Square than many places parts of NYC.

I don't know anyone that wants transients in their buildings and the threat to children, women, and children is a real one. Let people go to Union City, NJ and get their hotel rooms.

<comment><USER45> Stop using the ridiculous term "transients." Airbnb customers are not homeless criminals.

Once again, I'd like to see you provide any evidence of actual harm caused to children by Airbnb guests.

<comment><USER34> Correct use of the word:

[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/transient](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/transient) noun (1st def): a person or thing that is transient, especially a temporary guest, boarder, laborer, or the like.

They are transients and one of the reason for doormen is to create a protected environment. We don't have that with transients. Is there a reason why they can't go to Union City, NJ and use a proper hotel/motel?

Honestly, the only people I know of in NYC that are for this are those that want to rent out their apartment, room, etc. on AirBnB which can risk the safety of their neighbors, esp. the vulnerable ones.

> evidence of actual harm caused to children....

I said children, elderly, women. These are all vulnerable populations. There is also the chance of theft once someone is beyond the doorman or is inside the building.

I am honestly baffled why anyone would want transients in their apartment buildings unless they were making money from the transients.

Incidentally, this crazy idea that AirBnB is trying to sell that is the unions and the hotel industry that only want these regulations seem to leave out inexpensive hotels that in places like Union City, NJ are very convenient to Times Square and are very inexpensive. These hotels are in a convenient location and they are inexpensive and available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I am glad that this bill was signed because I'm tired of having people in my building who I don't know and do not trust. Everyone in my coop is vetted by the Board of Directors before living here - why should AirBnb users be any different?

<comment><USER47> And yet the people your coop vetted are the very ones bring in AirBnB'ers...

<comment><USER46> Not necessarily. Many buildings including my own have rent- stabilized/controlled units that are still managed by the original owner of the building. The Board of Directors has little influence over these units.

Additionally, some of the people who have been caught AirBnBing are original members of the coop, so no vetting was required 30+ years ago.

Interestingly, instances of Airbnbing went down significantly after all residents were sent reminders that they could lose their proprietary leases if they were caught running hotels out of their respective apartments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> AirBnb can't be surprised, NYC is one of the most contentious markets for renters and landlords. There's far more tenants than potential AirBnb landlords. While the hotel industry may well have made campaign contributions to sway the legislature & governor, the fact is that rental regulations are the third rail of NY/NYC politics and anything that screws tenants, as the rise of AirBnb has, is bound to get slapped down.

<comment><USER48> LOL. Down voting.

Look, if you come into a highly regulated and highly personal market as AirBnb did in NYC, you simply can't be surprised at the reaction by politicians, if you are then you are incredibly naive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Airbnb profits from high volume and turnover, just as landlords and Realtors get their cut every time there's a turnover in occupancy. Interestingly, this is the root problem at both ends -- from people living in poverty (Portland's sidewalk tent campers who get shuffled around), those suburbanites affected by the housing "crisis", and those who can afford to own in any upscale hip-n- trendy neighborhoods where Airbnb rentals are desperately sought. Those rooting for turnover are usually those who profit the most from it.

Sure, people travel and need to rent rooms once in a while. People like to rent while they're young and mobile, but the two use cases need very serious and separate delineation from each other. Airbnb is pushing them more into "overlap" territory. Airbnb's expansion into "subletting" was the kicker.

So, long story made short: it's an interesting economics problem I've been working on solving in my spare time, as a very long and iterated side project with Ecosteader (ecosteader.com). Some of the details emerging need a better format for communication; however, the most clear thing to come from my research is that people need to _own_, and they need to be able to transact with each other directly. Middlemen (Airbnb is the middleman here) taking significant commissions is part of the problem.

But the middlemen problem has sort of an obvious solution: to tax rental _income_ so aggressively that it's just not an appealing source of investment to people who invest in rentals. Use the tax generated from over-inflated rents to build properties for sale, and/or figure out a way to use that money to grant-deed land on which people can build. This last option seems the more fun opportunity to me, and is what I originally had in mind building an eco- site.

The homesteading movement needs to come back, adapted a bit for the 21st century.

</comment><comment><USER50> If anyone is interested, the Attorney General did study this and the report is freely available [http://www.ag.ny.gov/pdfs/Airbnb%20report.pdf](http://www.ag.ny.gov/pdfs/Airbnb%20report.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER51> Prohibiting _some_ Air Bnb listings. Which were already illegal.

Mine would still be just fine.

</comment><comment><USER52> I don't see what the big deal is. AirBNB can turn normal citizens into landlords. The best hosts will actually _take care_ of their apartment. So in theory the Free Market protects the interests of both hosts and renters.

Maybe? That's one possible way it can play out. NYC really tries to protect the landlord's interests rather than the tents. NYC would be a different place if normal people (who aren't millionaires) actually owned their places.

Free market could drive prices even higher than they are today. I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER53> It's unbelievable how many people in this thread are supporting AirBnB with ridiculous arguments like it's not a business or the government can't regulate what you do with your house.

Isn't there a point where the quantity of astroturfing becomes counter- productive?

</comment><comment><USER54> I've still not been able to figure out how in many cities I can rent a room in an apartment for less than a room in a hotel. How does the hotel industry not have huge economies of scale? Are the hotel taxes and cost of extra fire codes impacting the price that much?

</comment><comment><USER55> Anyone know if it is still legal to rent one of your rooms on airbnb if you are also staying there at the same time? Like if I have a two bedroom apartment, can I still rent out one of them on a daily/weekly basis if I am staying in the other?

</comment><comment><USER44> Anyone know if this applies to two-family houses?

As far as I know, the Multiple Dwelling Law applies limits to 3 and 4-family homes, limiting specifically rentals that are less than 30 days.

Now, it seems that one and two-family homes are excluded?

</comment><comment><USER56> Wasn't there a study done that shows Airbnb hosts actually account for a small fraction of the homes? I'd really like to see these politicians back up these claims with some data. Where do they get this information from?

It seems highly suspect that this could cause a decrease in units on the market that is anywhere close to affecting the housing problems in NYC.

Whenever I see a politician throw out the word "senior" and "quiet enjoyment" I smell a rat. The more obvious answer is the hotels don't like this kind of competition (staying in an Airbnb is infinitely better than a Hotel) and have bribed these politicians.

Wasn't Andrew Cuomo in the center of all the mortgage scandal stuff years back? Can this guy just go away?

</comment><comment><USER57> This is just New York politics, right?

Here's how it works. We in NYC send all our tax dollars upstate, and then as a favor, they make all the laws for us.

</comment><comment><USER36> I escaped NYC and moved to a neighboring state, along the coast, in a tourist town in a relatively economically depressed area.

I grew up in this town, and it used to be vibrant and vital and full of young families. It has gotten older, as the younger generation has not been able to afford to take on the homes of their parents, as the job market is not strong.

I bought a waterfront three family house, a house that used to be one owner, and one or two tenants on the other floors.

I renovated the house, and furnished the other floors. It took me all summer, doing the work myself. I have been renting the other two floors out on airbnb and other sites. I love it.

I feel like I have reclaimed my house from other tenants. I own the whole house, yes I let in guests for a few days on the other floors, but they leave, and I can go back into the floors when they are not booked.

I can have a change of scenery, and I get income from this whole thing.

I love this. I don't want to rent to long term tenants. Its a house, but divided into apartments for each floor. I want to control it. I like taking guests but I dont want to sell a floor for a year.

It books well on these sites because its waterfront and in a tourist area. Its a lot of work. A lot of work. I have to scrub showers and toilets and make beds, and I only get a few hours in between guests many days. But the money is good and its a form of early retirment for me.

I don't see any externalities to the neighbors, in fact the neighbors are better off living next to a vacation rental than a multi family house.

In a multi family investment propery the incentives are all about putting in as little money as possible. In a vacation rental its all about making it look as nice as possible.

The extra margin of the vacation rental makes all the difference. Now I care about reviews, so now I want the outside to be professionally landscaped. Now I want the lawn to be perfectly manicured. I want the siding to be nice cedar shingles, I want it to look perfect.

Because people rate your house on the basis of whether or not its nicer than their house at home. If its nicer, they give you 5 star reviews and that helps your listing SEO, if its less nice than their house they give you 4 stars and that hurts your listing.

So if I lived in this neighborhood, I would want to live next to a vacation rental. It is a higher class of occupant. Instead of working class tenants that can afford 1000 a month, you get professionals that can put 1000 on a credit card 4 months ahead of time for their kids graduation weekend.

So its a form of gentrification. But its also a service to the community. In the spring, summer and fall months where demand is high I am doing short term vacation rentals. But in the winter months I am opening up a fully furnished place to people who may be between houses.

The working class renters have plenty of options in the less desirable, more inland parts of town. And those options will stay because the only reason I can get decent occupancy rates are because the house is waterfront and in a tourist area.

And at the end of the day this is my house! I want to be able to do what I want to do with it, and I like having short term guests. I like meeting all of these people. Its like international travel without having to go anywhere.

So I raise my middle finger to Cuomo and his lackeys, I support homeowners rights. The battle cry is My House! My House!

Punish people for bad behavior, not for uses you don't like. And maybe in a city where everyone is packed in like tuna in a can its impossible but one size fits all law is unjust.

There are plenty of communities in upstate new york where vacation rentals are completely appropriate. My cousin does cleaning and management for vacation rentals in upstate NY, and Cuomo just fucked her, a working class person running her own business in an economically depressed region.

So Fuck you Cuomo, fuck you.

<comment><USER58> I'm a little confused by your comment. Are you saying that you're running an illegal AirBNB rental? Because that's what this is targeting, people already breaking the zoning laws. Also, are you saying that your cousin will lose her job because it services people who are breaking the law? Because those are the only people affected by this law. Is that a bad thing?

<comment><USER36> Luckily I don't live in NY and short term rentals are perfectly legal in my town and state.

What I am saying are the laws in NY are too strict and strangling growth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Wait a sec, can homeowners still rent out their primary residence when they are away?

I thought the law only prohibited hotel-like stuff.

</comment><comment><USER60> I wonder what would happen if there was a spot and contract market for housing like there is for DRAM.

</comment><comment><USER61> How the fuck does Cuomo have the power to ban Airbnb only in NYC? isn't he a state governer?

<comment><USER62> NYC has in the past pushed state laws that just affect NYC. Gun laws in particular I'm more familiar with [state preemption - except for NYC where they can enact their own gun laws], but some taxing is specially allowed for NYC too. It's not unheard of for state-level legislators (from NYC) to push for something to the state either because 1) the state constitution doesn't allow a city to do XYZ, or 2) because the city government doesn't see eye to eye with the state representatives living there

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Great, another government overreach. Hopefully someone finds a clever solution around it that protects this peaceful and voluntary economic activity.

</comment><comment><USER64> I hear they'll make an exception for veterans. You _have_ to house soldiers. Says so right in the constitution. ;)

</comment><comment><USER65> How many posters in this thread work, in some capacity, for the hotel lobby?

<comment><USER66> Likely none, but plenty of us seem to live in apartment buildings in appealing areas of cities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> The title seems like clickbait, especially given the fact that the legislation isn't targeting those who use Airbnb to rent out a spare room.

</comment><comment><USER68> So if I have to stay in NYC for 3 weeks, I am screwed.

Thanks Cuomo, you just made me have to cough up double the price for a shitty hotel.

<comment><USER24> When I visited NY recently I found that hotel pricing was competitive with AirBnB.

Some people prefer AirBnB so they can feel like they live in the cities they're visiting, this certainly sucks for them.

<comment><USER69> > When I visited NY recently I found that hotel pricing was competitive with > AirBnB.

This didn't used to be the case, so you can thank Airbnb in part for finding a reasonably priced hotel room.

<comment><USER24> Indeed!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> I rented my Manhattan studio for a month using a Craigslist post. It took less than 10 minutes to make the post, and the place was rented by the end of the day. I had no pictures, and five sentences describing my place. As another poster has already mentioned, Airbnb just made the process safer and more efficient. That efficiency has final affected the bottom-line on hotels, making this a political move. New York will never be "Silicon Alley" with moves like this.

<comment><USER71> > New York will never be "Silicon Alley" with moves like this.

Tragic. Guess we'll just have to settle for being the greatest city in the history of world civilization.

<comment><USER72> Ancient Rome, home of 20% world's population, is going to be hard to beat, but yes NYC is pretty cool too :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Airbnb is great because it allows people to circumvent stupid, expensive, and counterproductive government regulation on hotelling. Airbnbing is vastly superior to traditional hotelling per dollar spent.

This is what people are talking about when they refer to "common sense" regulation or regulation to "protect consumers"; they mean taking economic and social autonomy away from people. Even if a given bill doesn't cost much when amortized over tens of millions of people, they cost a lot to society as a whole, and they start to add up. I don't care what your political theory about regulation is; it is _extremely_ apparent from comparing Airbnbs to hotels that, at least in this area, regulations have made society worse, not better. I hope Airbnb beats this.

</comment><comment><USER74> I am disgusted but not surprised. When I was commuting back and forth between SFO and PDX I had apartments in both cities. I was able to dramatically offset my costs by Airbnb'ing the apartment I wasn't in at any given time... this helped me launch my business and I'm so thankful for that! The first time this worked out it was an obvious win/win for me and the renter. Right after being excited my next thought was... "wow this really let's the little guy do a little better"... I'm sure this won't last...

<comment><USER75> At the risk of stating the obvious, if you're commuting back and forth between SFO and PDX to launch a business you are not the "little guy".

The "little guy" earns minimum wage and can barely afford to keep their own apartment, let alone rent out a spare one when they're travelling regularly between two cities. All AirBnB does is raise the "little guy"'s rent when the other apartments in their building become short-term hotels for tourists.

<comment><USER74> You should have seen these apts. Not fancy. You're right I'm not working at Taco Bell, but you almost certainly make more money than I do. I was able to live a multi-city life on a shoestring budget thanks to a narrow window provided by AirBnb. I'm disappointed others may not have that opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> I regularly go to NYC for a month with my partner and son so that the grandparents can interact with their grandson. I always AirBnB a place near the residential neighborhood that my parents live in.

Because we have a young child, we prefer our own apartment, rather than staying with the grandparents, nor would the three of us be able to stay in "someone's spare room".

This new bill is absolutely terrible for us, because it limits us to staying in expensive hotels, for a month!

EDIT: There's no mention of 30+ days limit anywhere in the article as far I can tell.

<comment><USER75> Actually, no - the legislation allows rentals with a minimum of 30 days.

<comment><USER76> There's no mention of that anywhere.

<comment><USER75> There is in this article: [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbnb- regulation-insight-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbnb-regulation- insight-idUSKCN12L0DY)

> Existing New York state law bars most urban apartment-dwellers from renting > out their units for less than 30 days if they are not present.

It appears this new law is relating to the _advertising_ of such rentals - presumably as a way to more effectively clamp down on those that were already illegal.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Are AI based stable coins the future? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@YulinLiu20/ai-based-stable-coin-7bdac0ea0a6b <comment><USER2> Neat perspective. I wonder how a (presumably public) model for transaction fee pricing could be audited or gamed on-chain.</comment>


What it costs to sack a worker - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=7933596&story_id=12209771 <comment><USER2> In the US, the real cost is the fear of litigation.

<comment><USER3> But it costs so much more to keep a cancerous waste around who poisons the environment.

I'm all for workers' rights (I once belonged to a union), but sometimes the axe has to fall.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Economist has lost lots of credibility with this one.

I have lived and run companies in Shanghai for 8 years. The number for China is completely wrong. Firing someone in China is straightforward. There are rules to guard against improper firing, but they are fair and balanced.

The current maximum is 2 years salary and that is under rare conditions. Normally, you pay someone between 2 weeks to 2 months. The new labor laws generally stipulate 1 month pay for each year of service.

This is further negotiated, and generally reduced, by contract with the employee. And that assumes you did not fire them for a "reason" which can be put in contract as well.

You could have a contract saying employees must follow company policy. Company policy, in turn, may say employees must be clean and follow certain dress codes. You break company policy, you get fired, no excessive payout. Its very simple.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Zimbabwe figure is kind of misleading, unless it's corrected for the insane inflation of the Z$. I just did a quick calculation, and assuming 10M% yearly inflation, that works out to about 20 weeks.

<comment><USER6> It's not just misleading, including Zimbabwe on the list right now is just silly. Their currency is essentially meaningless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This list is VERY inaccurate and completely misleading. I don't know who the dolts where that published it.

<comment><USER8> This is just a largely unfounded guess based on my feminine intuition -- and note that I'm a dude -- but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it was the Economist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Has the cost of firing in France come down recently? I thought they had one of the highest costs of firing in all of Europe.

Allegedly, it was cheaper to keep people on indefinitely then to fire them. (That might have been government or union workers, not sure.)

</comment><comment><USER10> Odd how rich countries that function well are interspersed with countries that don't work quite as well (at least in terms of ease of doing business). Italy is fairly low on the list, yet I'd take Canada or Britain's economy any day.

</comment><comment><USER11> There might be no legal requirement to pay someone after firing them, but by convention you usually get one month of pay for each year on the job. That would make the US fifth on the list.

</comment><comment><USER12> The chart could do without the stupid graphic. I've heard of workers being sacked by text message, but never by Post-it note. (If it _is_ a Post-it note, why the drawing pin?)

</comment><comment><USER13> I nominate taw's dead comment for "Most mysteriously dead comment of the week".

</comment><comment><USER14> How common is it, really, for someone to stay with a company for 20 years? And why do I care about data that won't affect me on either end until, at the least, 2028? Presumably, all these numbers will be very different by then.</comment>


ChilledLime - A new way to ask decidable questions and crowdsource opinions - <AUTHOR> http://chilledlime.com/sorry.php

<comment><USER2> Their usage example is terrible. It makes you focus to its subject (android vs iphone) instead of their platform.

They should replace it with a question that most visitors are neutral and/or not too interested to.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. Most people don't care about the platform, they care about the content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not a fan of the logo, it looks very amateur. I hope it changes before this launches.

<comment><USER5> Because, I made it :D Will change it before launch!

<comment><USER4> Haha cool deal. Appreciate the honesty there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "ChilledLime" takes site-name-doesn't-match-site-purpose to a new level. Sorry, cherry.com.

<comment><USER5> Just a random and juicey name that I love ;)

</comment></comment><comment> jmcdonald-ut I think it looks cool, but also seems like it has potential for conversations to quickly degrade to nothing useful.

\- What are the plans to maintain relevant, and insightful conversations?

\- I may be missing something, but how is this different than something like Quora?

I do like the striped colors at the top representing what items have been voted for. Overall this looks cool. Good work!

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the kind words and the suggestions!

Well, yes.. today after somebody posted this to HN, the unregistered unknown internet surfers some spam opinions too. But I think, when we launch the registeration recquired site, the ratio of spam and unuseful opinions and comments will drop.

Quora is knowledge based, ChilledLime is opinion based. Delivering the same, or better knowledge in a more democratic way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> \--I am the founder--

Thanks Karika for submitting! Looking forward to the thoughts of the HN community here!

</comment><comment><USER7> I like the concept. Can you say what you mean by 'decidable'? I had assumed that you meant something that could eventually be empirically determined, but your example makes clear that that is not what you mean.

<comment><USER8> I guess it just means ones that people can answer for themselves in this context? Almost the opposite of what it usually means.

<comment><USER5> Yeah they could answer them by themselfs. We are making ChilledLime to help people who can't decide on their own!

(Here is the scenario: You are at a sports store and you see 3 sneakers you really like but not sure which one you want so.

\- You pop open your "ChilledLime" app (it sorta looks like instagram)

\- You pick number of sides to your discussion (In this case 3)

\- You can simply add the sneakers and then post

\- You can also select the camera icon

So you take lets say 3 consecutive shots each for the sneakers.

Then you wait for opinions of the ChilledLime community. )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I guess I'm late to this? It hits the sorry page and then redirects to another project.

<comment><USER5> Got some hijackers who want to get the traffic for themselfs.

UPDATE: Fixed it. Got rid of the hackers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do fix your domain.</comment>


Encryption doesn't stop the FBI - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2015/09/28/hacking/ <comment><USER2> I think this title is a little misleading. The article says nothing about the FBI's ability to beat encryption, just that they have more success with keyloggers and backdoors than they're willing to admit. Encryption used correctly is still able to "stop the FBI".

</comment><comment><USER3> Title is rather clickbaity, and the article itself has little to do with encryption so much as going _around_ encryption.

In short, it can be summarized with the following XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/538/](https://xkcd.com/538/)</comment>


EPYC SAP-SD 2-tier benchmark results - <AUTHOR> https://www.realworldtech.com/forum/?threadid=186584&curpostid=186630 <comment><USER2> Good for Linus. I'm honestly surprised that he doesn't try to get more involved in promoting more competition and openness of hardware vendors, but I do appreciate his general neutrality and style in the community that he has fostered. However, he could potentially create more positive influence within innovation if he took a more stern stance and really pushed back, but I'm guessing he has to walk a pretty fine line to politically operate at the level he does, or he would risk corporate backlash that has near infinite money to set the narrative.

I do wish though that he would take more of the Stallman approach, and advocate for more open-source activism via tech, especially when it comes to politics and governance. There is so much potential to really improve the environment, social justice, and create a society that prioritizes innovation over greed, but unfortunately it seems like it would take someone like Linus to really push the agenda in the position that he is currently in, rather than wait to see what happens after he is gone, because there will be a lot of disingenuous people that will try to take his place.

<comment> dfeojm-zlib On the post, if Linus is referring to low-end Xeon and workstation non-Xeon lacking ECC, I think it's completely idiotic. Nearly all infrastructure should be baking in ECC as standard rather than some "option" to not have silent, unknowable, probabilistic corruption that is realistically realizable on a near-daily basis given the orders of magnitude of network, storage and computational volumes of today (and the future) by ever lower tiers of end- users and common examples of network infrastructure.

 _DEFCON 19: Bit-squatting: DNS Hijacking Without Exploitation (w speaker)_ [https://youtu.be/aT7mnSstKGs](https://youtu.be/aT7mnSstKGs)

<comment><USER3> The sad thing is that I have seen signs of AMD starting to do the same. When I was shopping for a motherboard lately, I've begun seen motherboard manuals that state "ECC is only supported with PRO CPUs."

See [http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Manual/X570%20Phantom%20...](http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Manual/X570%20Phantom%20Gaming- ITXTB3.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I think taht Picasso is actually an APU (CPU+graphics) and before Ryzen/Zen they never supported ECC. So, I think that ECC is for PRO APUs is an improvement.

<comment><USER5> > before Ryzen/Zen they never supported ECC

Incorrect; there were a bunch of AM3(+) boards which advertised ECC support back in the day. The IMC of AMD's desktop processors always supported ECC if I'm not mistaken.

<comment><USER4> AM3 is not for APUs, though. FM2 is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I imagine lots of high fiving over at AMD. If you could wish for an endorsement from anyone for your new x86 processor, who would you ask for?

Someone over there should immediately ship him 3 or 4 badass systems.

<comment><USER7> > Someone over there should immediately ship him 3 or 4 badass systems.

The last thing someone on a $10m/yr salary needs is a few "bad ass" systems that they don't have a use for.

<comment><USER6> Busy people tend to neglect basic stuff.

<comment><USER7> He said he has an i9-9900K (released in the last 10 months), and that he plans his next desktop workstation to be an AMD Zen 2. I don't see any patterns of neglect there.

<comment><USER6> [https://www.businessinsider.com/linus-torvalds-workspace- tou...](https://www.businessinsider.com/linus-torvalds-workspace-tour-2014-7)

Happened in the past...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> PCI-e Gen 4 is the biggest leap that got me excited. Grouping NVME drives and high-speed network interfaces is the future, being able to do this reasonably without the need for server or "enthusiast" grade hardware (i.e. Threadripper or LGA 2066) is awesome!</comment>


Show HN: Frank is a REST API automated testing tool works in command line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/txthinking/frank <comment><AUTHOR> Also can auto generate markdown API document

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Postman alternative</comment>


Renaming is the killer app of distributed version control (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/123 <comment><USER2> Losing a file's history when it's modified _and_ renamed via an IDE or plain ol' mv (as opposed to _git mv_ ) is one of my biggest pain points with Git - it tries to detect the renaming, but sufficient content modifications seem to break its algorithm.

It's a bit of a case of the tail wagging the dog when you find yourself coding in a certain style to please a version control tool.

<comment><USER3> I don't really see it is changing coding style to simply have the rename be a discrete commit. I've never had a problem where it didn't recognize a rename when I do this. Any further changes I want to make to the file come in subsequent commits.

<comment><USER2> > I don't really see it is changing coding style to simply have the rename be > a discrete commit

Depends on your language, I guess. Changing a Java class name typically involves renaming a file. So if you're doing a refactor, where renaming a class may only be one of several changes you're making 'in the flow', you have to consciously pause after renaming that class and commit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That would be nice, but handling of large binaries would be killer as well.

<comment><USER5> Barring some amazing breakthrough in data compression to the tune of P=NP, I just don't see how this problem could possibly be solved within the constraints of the "D" in "DVCS".

The best thing we have now is to centralise large binaries and to use specialised binary-diffing tools for handling their changes. As discussed in Lobsters[1], that's more or less how Facebook has handled this particular problem[2].

[1] [https://lobste.rs/s/tekiod/unorthodocs_abandon_your_dvcs_and...](https://lobste.rs/s/tekiod/unorthodocs_abandon_your_dvcs_and_return_to_sanity)

[2] [http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ScaleMercurial#Concern:_La...](http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ScaleMercurial#Concern:_Large_files)

<comment><USER6> Does git-annex[1] solve the large file problem? I know Gitlab suggested it as a solution.

[1] [https://git-annex.branchable.com/](https://git-annex.branchable.com/)

<comment><USER5> It does not solve the large file problem. It only changes the problem parameters so that a solution exists, by breaking the "D" in "DVCS".

Its interface is kind of ugly, though. I don't know if gitlab gave it a better interface.

The corresponding extension in Mercurial is largefiles, in case you still think there is room in the world for a DVCS other than git.

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty agnostic regarding scm, so long as I have lightweight branching and lots of tooling built with love.

I only use the basic functionality in git (eg. no submodules, central master repo), so I wouldn't notice the difference between Mercurial, Bazaar, etc and git.

Git may not be the best, but (probably because of Github) it is the winner in this generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've never understood why you have to re-upload if you rename a folder in many systems. I've had git reupload huge assets folders after renamaming them, and the same happens with dropbox.</comment>


One Twin Exercises, the Other Doesn't - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/one-twin-exercises-the-other-doesnt/ <comment><USER3> Fulltext: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/gfch760k1ratwo3/2015-rottensteiner...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/gfch760k1ratwo3/2015-rottensteiner.pdf) / [http://sci- firstname.lastname@example.com....](http://sci- email@example.com@generic-FD16BBD9129B.pdf)

Buried some interesting points there:

> The researchers were looking for young adult identical twins in their early- > to mid-20s whose exercise habits had substantially diverged after they had > left their childhood homes. These twins were not easy to find. Most of the > pairs had maintained remarkably similar exercise routines, despite living > apart.

Besides the testament to how 'everything is heritable' inherent in that observation, it also raises the question: if they are so unusual, doesn't that make confounding more plausible?

> Interestingly, the twins tended to have very similar diets, whatever their > workout routines, so food choices were unlikely to have contributed to > health differences.

Also very interesting, and counter to the usual narratives about health. (Everything is heritable...)

> The twins' brains also were unalike. The active twins had significantly more > grey matter than the sedentary twins, especially in areas of the brain > involved in motor control and coordination.

Warning sign: 'significantly'. Does this mean, as any ordinary person would take it to mean (in conjunction with that lazy stock photo), 'a lot' or does it mean 'p<0.05'?

Trick question, of _course_ it means the latter, which is useless! Take a look at the fulltext, pg6, table 2, which spits out the _actual_ differences between the twin pairs. I hope you're ready to be wowed by how much difference an exercise regimen makes when you control for genetics (picking out a few I recognize):

1\. BMI: -0.8

2\. VO2max: 6.3

3\. weight: -2kg

4\. waist circumference: -3.3cm

5\. fat percentage: -3.3 (!)

6\. lean mass: 1.4kg

I'm not sure I've seen such a damning indictment of exercise in a long time. (Less than 1 on BMI? 2kg of weight? I fluctuate more than that on a weekly basis...)

<comment><USER4> There are several sayings in fitness circles that are similar to this: "You can't outrun your fork." Diet is the primary reason people are obese, not lack of exercise.

<comment><USER5> "You can't outrun your fork."

I can.

People who can't outrun their forks aren't running hard enough.

Hunting down a lot of calories and eating them is part of being a mammal. I bicycled across North America one fall on a mostly mountain route. Four times a day I ate full meals and added as many Dove bars as I could without being sick in between. I biked up and down hills with 30kg of gear all day. And I lost a lot of weight.

Sure it hurts to work that hard, but it's supposed to hurt a little. Being comfortable all the time isn't part of being a mammal.

<comment><USER6> I look forward to your enlightening anecdote based debunking of other sayings, such as that time you made a great broth despite too many cooks, or that time a gathering didn't get merrier with more people.

<comment><USER5> I'm a little too busy to entertain you with vignettes right now; I need to supervise this pot closely until it boils.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >But eventually the researchers homed in on 10 pairs of male identical twins, one of whom regularly exercised, while the other did not, usually because of work or family pressures, the researchers determined.

That "work and family pressure" sounds like stress and a pretty important confounding variable.

<comment><USER8> It's also a choice, or even an excuse. Nearly everyone has work and family pressures. Some find relief in exercise.

<comment><USER9> > It's also a choice, or even an excuse.

Alright, get off your high horse. Just because you "excercise" doesn't make you better. There are plenty who don't need to because they work with their hands and plenty more because they have active hobbies. And while it's a popular notion that constant activity makes you healthier, it's just common sense that the body is a machine and the more you stress a machine, the likelier it is to break. See athletes for common ailments.

<comment><USER10> > it's just common sense that the body is a machine and the more you stress a > machine, the likelier it is to break

Except a biological system gets stronger if you stress it in a progressive manner. While athletes constantly pushing themselves certainly do get injured, doing nothing seems to cause far more harm long term. Everything from heart health to bone density is usually better in an athlete.

Almost everyone in my family is obese with a host of maladies. I've been running 23 years and am incredibly healthy despite the occasional hamstring pull or achilles tendonitis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The full data set seems to show that the strongest argument in the article is that propensity to fitness is mostly a result of genetics and upbringing - <USER2> was apparently very difficult to find twins where the level of fitness was different, and very difficult to find twins with significantly different dietary preferences. This seems to indicate that in most cases, your level of fitness is basically pre-determined by age 18.

<comment><USER12> Propensity and pre-determination are very different things. The whole point of the article is that someone who makes fitness a priority and exercises regularly has better health and fitness indicators than someone who doesn't, all else being equal.

Being active is a choice (for most people). Certainly, some people are more likely to do it naturally, but that doesn't preclude the rest of us from doing it.

<comment><USER13> It might also show that someone who has better health and fitness indicators is more likely to exercise regularly.

Maybe environmental concerns (eg: stress) impact your health and fitness indicators, which causes a lack of motivation and energy for exercise that you would normally have without the stress. I know, as an overweight and highly stressed person, that I often feel that way about exercise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _we can "move more,"_

surprisingly this is difficult, not impossible.

Back in 2007 I did a simple experiment myself asking, _' at what point do you fail when repeating exercising?'_ The idea was pretty simple: pick a arbitrary impossible distance to cover and move each day to reach it. The impossible distance I chose 1000km in a year.

So I selected a difficult 10km source and set out each day moving 10km per day until I complete my target. I reached my target by late November and decided to push-on to 1000Ml (1600Km), the last 400 in 20 days.

The key failure point I found? Just before I started. If you could psychologically push through _any_ excuse made not to go, just before you started, It's pretty likely you will start and finish. I keep this up averaging about 2000km/yr using that insight into failure. Up to 300km so far this year (with min/max 1kg weight and 8kg pack).

</comment><comment><USER15> I'll admit I didn't read the study but the results summarized in this post don't seem very interesting:

 _The sedentary twins had lower endurance capacities, higher body fat percentages, and signs of insulin resistance, signaling the onset of metabolic problems._

 _The active twins had significantly more grey matter than the sedentary twins, especially in areas of the brain involved in motor control and coordination._

Isn't this expected to anybody not exercising vs. someone who is?

It would have been interesting to see if there were results beyond the obvious effects of exercising.

<comment><USER16> what's interesting is that this comparison controls for genetics, given that they're twins.

<comment><USER15> I get that, but I feel like we've known for quite a while that people who exercise can run longer and have lower body fat, regardless of genetics. Genetics can affect how long you can run compared to others, but you will run longer if you exercise than if you don't.

If you take anybody in the world and have them exercise, they'll lower their body fat, everything else being equal, no? And that's not only the same genes, it's actually the same person.

<comment><USER17> I thought, too, that genetics only controls for something akin to a few percent of your potential, and that to bump up against that limit you would have to already be in the 99th percentile for a particular capability. So your endurance is controlled by past training almost exclusively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I always find it interesting that whenever exercise/diet topics come up on HN that people will go to the n-th degree to try and discredit or rubbish the studies. Could it be a bias in the stereotypical geek which shuns both these habits and so seeks an intellectual reason to justify his sedentary lifestyle?

<comment><USER19> It's a cynical view, but I'm afraid to say I feel it too. This whole 'body acceptance' movement (in the context of obesity) that's happening at the moment is detrimental to society and should probably be shunned as overweight people justifying their inactive lifestyles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can someone explain to me why an identical twin is allergic to mushrooms and the other one is not? Also why a symmetric identical twin is more friendly/outgoing and speaks fluently while the other one is opposite?

<comment><USER21> Because your immune system, a highly complex interaction between countless cells, is not fully determined just by your genes or your environment. There is also a stochastic factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if they took in account the fact that, as they say, the twin that stopped exercising did so reluctantly and in response to some social or family pressure. In other words, they're comparing a person who keeps doing what he always liked to do with another that had to give up. I'm not sure the result can be transferred to people who never felt the urge and benefit of exercising. How would compare two twins, one of which has only in recent years being forced to exercise?

<comment><USER23> Whats your point here, motivation is necessary to realize benefits from training? And the absence causes body fat to accumulate?

<comment><USER24> Actually, yes. There have been several studies that seem to point towards significantly less benefit from exercise when people don't enjoy it.

Obviously, this is really hard to control for since those who enjoy exercise less are less likely to do it, push themselves, etc.

That's not to say that exercise doesn't help at all, but since many of us are concerned about efficiency of exercise that's an important finding.

<comment><USER25> Another key one would be, less likely to do it well... The more I learn about exercise & fitness, the more I discover it is a learned skill.

For a simple example, despite the fact that my push-ups looked ok, I was in fact doing them terribly wrong all my life which meant they did absolutely nothing to strengthen my pectorals. You might think something as simple as a push-up would be hard to do wrong...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> From the report:

"The scientists invited these twins into the lab and measured each young man's endurance capacity, body composition and insulin sensitivity, to determine their fitness and metabolic health."

Shame they couldn't find twins that took part in strength training, but not surprising given the difficulties in finding any participants.

</comment><comment><USER27> "But eventually the researchers homed in on 10 pairs of male identical twins, one of whom regularly exercised, while the other did not, usually because of work or family pressures, the researchers determined."

Oh boy... How can 10 possibly be enough?

</comment><comment><USER28> > The active twins had significantly more grey matter than the sedentary > twins, especially in areas of the brain involved in motor control and > coordination.

Is that good or bad?

<comment><USER29> That looks good to me.

What I'm wondering if that it only means that people have better motor control or coordination, or that it can also help people be good at math, for example, or at least help them if they decide to learn math?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Would have been great if some pictures were shared. Mere numbers do not tell full story that gets shown in actual pictures.

</comment><comment><USER31> Amazing. The twin that exercized looked different and was more healthy.

<comment><USER32> Is that an actual picture of the twins?

<comment><USER33> My guess is that that's a picture from the art department.

<comment><USER34> It's attributed to Getty Images, so it's actually a stock photo.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


While the Tech Press is busy with other things, The Senate passes patent reform - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/senate-passes-patent-bill/2011/09/08/gIQAvmM8CK_story.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The Main Points of the bill as I can tell:

1\. Patents are awarded based on first to file not first to invent. 2\. More funding to decrease wait times for filers 3\. Patent Review process for challenges

Why, did I hear about this first from WaPo/AP an not TechCrunch?

Oh. yea.</comment>


MartinLutherKing.Org is Owned by Neo-Nazis - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/martinlutherkingorg-is-owned-by-neo-nazis <comment><USER2> Going here was part of my curriculum in my first year of high school. We had a year long class broken into quarters that taught things like research techniques, basic stats, and other skills that would be useful later on in high school and college.

We were given a list of websites and asked to discuss their credibility and why. Most students got tripped up on this site by not doing a closer reading and evaluating the source.

<comment><USER3> It's an awesome idea. Critical thinking has always been important, but might be a bit absent from modern curriculums. It's naive to assume algorithms can solve this. Education is always the better option.</comment></comment>


China 'holding at least 120,000 Uighurs in re-education camps' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/25/at-least-120000-muslim-uighurs-held-in-chinese-re-education-camps-report <comment><USER2> So IF the future favours China, and IF the west lets it happen without outright/proxy war, and China wins... with all these ML techniques in hand, and with all of our digital footprints slapped around everywhere, am I paranoid to assume that even this comment can be construed to have 12% negative sentiment towards the CCP? And the cut off for "Normal Dissident Sentiment Levels" was 10% so I'm going to one of their camps?

<comment><USER3> That assumes China becomes the world. Seems far fetched. But assuming western countries would not follow their practices also seems far fetched. I feel the west already does much of the surveillance China does, only not as openly. Our camps are reserved for terrorists for the time being. Pray that term does not get expanded.

<comment><USER4> It does not seem so far fetched in current times. Nationalism, Racial/political/group supremacy, opinion extremism/supremacy leads to wide scale divide. And has always been the achilles heal leading to the fall of many nations throughout history.

Unity, even the unity found in Russia, China, and North Korea, has caused nations to reach higher levels of greatness and prosperity.

Hence, the reason China is so concerned about dissent.

<comment><USER5> Authoritarians don't quash dissent so that their nation can achieve higher levels of greatness and prosperity. They do it to maintain control.

<comment><USER4> maintain control

TO

achieve higher levels of greatness and prosperity

Atleast that is what the Chinese Communist Party is all about. They are significantly engineering and technical backgrounds, not politicians. They cannot weave and deceive through people issues.

<comment><USER5> So what you're telling me is that all the politicians figured out that they need to get an engineering degree in order to have viable political career?

<comment><USER4> Actually what I am trying to say is that politics in China runs very differently than it does in other countries.

<comment><USER5> What I'm saying is that "we're doing this bad thing to further the greatness of China" is a justification for what's going on, not an explanation. I mean, if a thief took your wallet, would you believe them when they explained that they did so for safekeeping?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> castle-bravo What's the difference between a re-education camp and a concentration camp? Under what circumstances could Chinese treatment of Uighurs be considered genocide? Is there a red line of moral outrage that if crossed, would result in a boycott of Chinese products, or will we continue to buy iPhones no matter what crime is perpetrated by the CCP?

<comment><USER6> If we look back to WW2 and Nazi, US did still conduct trade with Nazi Germany, but the trade volume fell between 1929 to 1938, when US started putting up protectionist policy (soooo eerily similar to China today). when Nazi invaded Czechoslovakia, FDR slapped a 25% tariff on Nazi (but it wasn't an embargo).

Let's hope this time if China invades any country (Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam), we contain and hopefully counter right away.

<comment><USER7> If that happens get ready to watch ram/ssd prices to go through the roof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Laojiao and laogai have been something that China has done since forever. Probably just as many Han in it as well, it's a nice way for officials to make some extra spending money. I don't see anything new in this article, those camps have probably been there forever. Why do you think many Uighurs hate the Chinese government in the first place?

<comment><USER6> But with the (official) dictatorship in China, is this concentration camps reincarnated? Nazi reincarnated? Xitler is a real thing?

<comment><USER9> For now, I would say no, only because nobody is getting exterminated. For now.

<comment> castle-bravo This is a hypothetical question unrelated to China's activities in Xinjiang: If I take an ethnic group off their land, put them in camps, force them to perform hard labour and prevent them from raising children, but do not murder any of them, could that be considered extermination?

<comment><USER10> Culture extermination. They're basically trying to erase the ethnic Muslim culture but not necessarily the people. In that respect it's not much different than what the US OR Australians did to indigenous peoples.

<comment><USER6> Are you seriously whataboutism events that happened few hundred years ago???? Wow. And you work for google. God help us all

<comment><USER10> Hell no and you are interpreting what I said in a crazy fashion. I said they're trying to exterminate their culture, likening it to similar attempts in the past is not whataboutism.

If there was a holocaust happening where people were being put into camps and gassed and I said "this is just like what the Nazis did", it would not be whataboutism.

If I compared it to the Japanese internment of WW2, it would not be "whataboutism"

I don't think you really understand what "whataboutism" is.

Whataboutism seeks to divert attention and justify what is being done by the fact that other wrongs are being done. My comment is not trying to diminish in anyway what they're doing, but explain what it is they're trying to achieve by analogy to policies like Stolen Generations or forced assimilations.

I'm not trying to say "we're just as bad so don't criticize them", I'm saying "this is horrible, here's why, look up the history of how this turned out for others"

sheesh

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Guardian citing a US-funded propaganda outlet reporting on an ethnic group that the US/Saudi Arabia use and fund in order to undermine the Chinese state.

Forgive me for being skeptical, but this is likely a propaganda piece, and no more credible than someone simply writing what they want on the internet.

<comment><USER12> Do you know what sort of paper the Guardian is? Favouritism towards the US is not something they're famous for.

<comment><USER13> Wikipedia says: Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a private, nonprofit international broadcasting corporation and propaganda apparatus of the United States[2] that broadcasts and publishes online news, information, and commentary to listeners in East Asia while "advancing the goals of U.S. foreign policy."</comment></comment></comment>


Roomlore is lore anent heavenly bodies such as stars, wanderers, starswirls... - <AUTHOR> http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/Roomlore

<comment><AUTHOR> An exercise in writing Anglish: [http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/What_is_Anglish%3F](http://anglish.wikia.com/wiki/What_is_Anglish%3F)</comment>


James Gosling: Quite the Firestorm - <AUTHOR> http://nighthacks.com/roller/jag/entry/quite_the_firestorm

<comment><USER2> This sentence makes me cringe: "There is enough fragmentation among Android handsets to significantly restrict the freedom of software developers."

It uses the word "freedom" in that doublespeak-y way that is used in the "Handmaid's Tale" when they talk about giving citizens "freedom from" social deviants by establishing a totalitarian state.

<comment><USER3> I think he actually makes a good point - remember what James Gosling has been through with the Java/Microsoft scandal. What would happen if Microsoft decided to make their own Android handsets tomorrow, but "embraced and extended" the Dalvik VM to run some special .NET code? If they gained significant marketshare, they could hijack the Android mobile platform as their own, just like they tried to do with Java.

I'm not saying they would do that, or even that they should, but I think this is the line of thinking that Gosling is coming from. Java has always had "write once, run anywhere" as it's motto. Android should try to stick to that ideal as well- it would do the platform good.

<comment><USER4>
         remember what James Gosling has been through with the Java/Microsoft scandal

Yes, I remember Microsoft releasing the first JVM that did JIT compilation. I also remember them having the only usable IDE for Java at the time.

I also remember them wanting to add "delegates" to the standard, with Sun responding with an idiotic reply for all to view here: <http://java.sun.com/docs/white/delegates.html>

Delegates which are now being added through the back-door in the InvokeDynamic JSR ... oh, the irony.

If Java is a standard, then Sun should have let others participate. Imagine if the Javascript standard / trademark was controlled by Microsoft, and they would sue Apple / Mozilla for adding "proprietary" extensions to it.

Want to avoid fragmentation ... then don't build cripple-ware.

<comment><USER3> I'm admittedly not a Java expert, and I'll grant you, Microsoft's VM might have had some cool features - hell I bet if you gave them enough time they would have had GPU accelerated 3d graphics available in a browser through Java - for Windows platforms only.

The problem with Microsoft is that they are a habitual monopolist and their method of choice is embrace, extend, and extinguish. They were already on step 2 of their plan before Sun's lawsuit stopped them.

Do you really think Java would be in the state it is today if you had to target a different VM for every OS? Microsoft always tries to lure developers over to their platform with the "ooh, shiney" factor of new APIs and features. This is like cheese in a mousetrap. Once they have you hooked on their APIs you're screwed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I admire and respect Dr. Gosling. But I don't think he's reached the acceptance stage vis a vis Sun's great sickness unto death: Java. As technology, java is an adequate synthesis (and advancement) of bracey-block syntax and UCSD-p system platform abstraction. Lots of potential that failed to ever materialize. Sun's aggressive marketing of java as the solution to everyone's problem stagnated the language, starved the company's other engineering efforts, doomed them to the reign of a feckless boy king, and drove them into the arms of a suitor that walks the walk Sun was talking since at least the Javasoft era.

Gosling's characterizations of Sun may have applied pre, say, jdk 1.2, but Sun choose to bite the apple, to compete with (and sue) Microsoft, to attack competing technologies, to restrict competitive products--basically to act just like everybody else. The result is a dreadful technology: PL/1 for the 21st century, embedded through every industry, taught in every school; and a zombie Sun persisting in the bowels of a ruthless "devil" they thought to slay.

I'm sure Dr. Gosling knows the changes that Sun went through on its long downward spiral better than just about anyone else, but I wonder if he's willing to acknowledge the role that Java qua product played in sealing Sun's fate and the fate of technologists for whom Java is now the default with which they must labor? An apology for Java(tm) would make the elegies a bit more palatable.

<comment><USER6> I think youre attributing bad intentions where incompetence would suffice. Also since the main selling point of Java was portability I think Sun was correct in going after implementations which diverged significantly. Sun might have fumbled on a lot of different things, ethics doesnt appear to be one of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My recollection of Microsoft J++ was that it was basically a superset of Java, with the added features allowing you to take full advantage of Windows features. This gave developers the option of sticking to the standard Java features, and ending up with a portable application, or using the extensions so as to write an application that would actually be able to compete on an even footing with non-Java applications. Gosling makes it sound like you could not use J++ to write a portable program.

Sun insisted that Java should be "write once, provide the same inferior experience everywhere", and the result is that Java is pretty much completely dead on the desktop.

<comment><USER8> J++ was missing several key interoperability features like JNI (instead it required idiosyncratic native code that no JVM could run) and RMI (it couldn't make remote procedure calls at all, unless you roll your own). And rather than sticking to their own packages, they deliberately poisoned standard classes (I think this even included java.lang.System!) with nonstandard methods whose absence would prevent your code from even loading on a conforming JVM.

<comment><USER9> If I remember correctly, and this was a long time ago, J++ also didn't support .JAR files, and only was compatible with .CAB files for compressed sets of files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a lot of respect for James Gosling but claiming that J2ME is more developer friendly than developing for Android is kind of ridiculous. IMO Anyone who has tried to write apps for pre-Android phones using J2ME and tried Android development would prefer Android any day for both business and ease- of-development reasons.

<comment><USER6> Can you point out where Gosling makes the claim that J2ME is more developer friendly ? From my reading of the article he mentions the fact that J2ME fared poorly on code portability across devices and that android fares even worse. He does not address which is more developer friendly in the article at all. As an aside I do agree with him that Android is more fragmented now than J2ME was back in the day.

<comment><USER11> >From my reading of the article he mentions the fact that J2ME fared poorly on code portability across devices and that android fares even worse.

Well clearly having worse fragmentation would be less developer friendly, would it not? One follows from the other.

>As an aside I do agree with him that Android is more fragmented now than J2ME was back in the day.

No one who actually developed for Android and J2ME would even dream of saying this. Gosling gets too much of his news from Engadget, I suspect.

<comment><USER6> It might be just me but when someone says developer friendly I imagine theyre talking about a solid api, easy development cycle, good documentation , helpful community. If someone were to talk about one use case thats more broken on one platform vs another I would not parse that as one platform is more developer friendly vs another.

Its been sometime since I tried to hack anything on android (i briefly tinkered with it around version 1.6) but here is an example of some cross device breakage that I ran into - <http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1480> .

<comment><USER11> That is the poster child of different behaviors -- bring up Android fragmentation, and it's invariably what gets brought up. Sure, it's a problem. It should behave consistently. It's one very, very, very small element of the platform.

<comment><USER6> Having intents without having a mechanism to specify an interface for applications that handle intents is the part that seems broken to me. As I said I have not been following android so I do not know if this has subsequently been addressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He claims that Apple doesn't like Java because it doesn't lock you to their platform. But Apple worked very hard to support Java as an alternative to Objective C, they basically ported (or tried to port) the entire API to Java but it never really got traction. I'm not sure whether it was because all the folks who were early developers for OSX came from a NEXTSTEP background and already had a legacy in Objective-C, or whether the message-based method invocation of Objective-C was just more flexible, but for whatever reason it turned out to be a dead end.

<comment><USER13> Yup. Apple stopped supporting the Java to Cocoa bridge because developers weren't using it. It is a huge uphill battle trying to make an App written in Java look good and run with a native feel. Apple doesn't like Java on the desktop because Apps look like this: <http://twitpic.com/2djc4u>

Apple still uses Java on the server. For example, the iTunes e-commerce back end is written in Java.

<comment><USER14> There are some success stories. Cisco uses it for their ASDM client:

<http://imgur.com/hvGxp.png>

<comment><USER15> Yeah, but look at those awful buttons and the weird nonstandard border in the top half.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _We survived, but to help protect us from future suits we went on a patenting binge. Even though we had a basic distaste for patents, the game is what it is, and patents are essential in modern corporations, if only as a defensive measure._

This illustrates very clearly just how dangerous (if understandable) this mindset is. Don't fool yourself that you're only filing "defensive" patents. A patent is a weapon and the fact that _you_ don't intend to fire it is no guarantee that somebody else won't later. What's worse, with everybody patenting every dumb thing under the sun out of fear, there's that much more ammunition lying around for unscrupulous people down the road to use.

</comment><comment><USER7> The ads on the left side had me laughing. They are Google ads--and every one of them when I visited the page was for attorneys and services offering to help people get patents.

<comment><USER6> Ad systems currently fair very poorly on content which contains a negative commentary about a topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> _They had very weak notions of interoperability, which, given our history, we strongly objected to._

The trouble here is the assumption that Sun's notions of interoperability were inherently better and that it makes sense to appoint Sun as a global steward of interoperability. Given the history of what, making cellphones?

</comment><comment><USER18> The "How To Patent Your Idea" ad, along with the "Ads by Google" caption, on an article by the creator of Java about Oracle suing Google is slightly ironic...

</comment><comment><USER19> Can't James Gosling afford an ads-free blog? Geez...</comment>


A New Way To Solve Linear Equations  - <AUTHOR> https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2012/08/09/a-new-way-to-solve-linear-equations/ <comment><USER2> Already posted, with a decent discussion, <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4365925></comment>