Amtrak Could Turn a Profit for the First Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/11/15/amtrak-profit-train-ceo-richard-anderson <comment><USER3> It's worth pointing out that the intent of transportation infrastructure isn't to turn a profit, but to be a potent multiplier for economic gains in other segments of the economy.

There's barely a road in the entire country that's turned a profit (gas and vehicle registration taxes don't come close to covering road construction costs, and of course most roads aren't tolled), yet we still rightly consider roads as being worth it. We should treat our rail, transit, and other transportation infrastructure similarly. Expecting a profit is completely missing the point, but doing so is a nice bonus.

<comment><USER4> Nobody is expecting Amtrak to turn a real profit. Even when Amtrak breaks even in operating costs, Congress still pays all capital costs. Amtrak got a $1.8 billion subsidy in 2018.

The real issue is how much we're paying in subsidies compared to how much we're paying in subsidies for other forms of transportation, and perhaps what other people are paying in subsidies for the same kinds of transport.

Highways get about $75 billion in subsidies (what's not covered by gas tax). A lot more than Amtrak for sure. But highways carried over 3 trillion passenger miles last year. Amtrak was just 6.3 billion. We spent 50x as much on highways as Amtrak, but got 500x as much mileage out of those highways.

(You can throw in pollution externalities, etc., but even if you use current carbon recapture methods to suck out CO2 from driving, and ignore the fact that Amtrak's mainly east coast operations are not powered by renewables, driving still comes out ahead.)

<comment><USER5> This country has been reconfigured to force almost everyone to drive. Comparing the two on that basis is not fair. Finally, the full cost of car dependence beyond just pollution which is a big one is not bourne by the government but by drivers, just look at the car insurance industry.

<comment><USER6> Its not been forced, driving is just more flexible and convenient and practical. This is especially true when get kids.

<comment><USER7> I guess it depends on where you live (hence the downvoting), but even in a place like NYC, I imagine managing small children on the subway would be pretty challenging.

<comment><USER8> I live in Brooklyn in NYC and I purchased a car when we were expecting. It is impossible to take a baby on public transit to most places. Buses are not equipped for strollers. Train stations are crowded and inaccessible to strollers. It takes a lot of physical energy to move a child through public transit. Our family, friends, the doctor, babysitter, and schools are not all walking distance and not all at expensive real estate near the train. Having a vehicle is empowering for my family and most like it.

<comment><USER9> Although I'm all in favor of cars, taking just one baby on public transit isn't much different from going by yourself on public transit. The trick is a sling. Don't even buy a stroller. There are several types of slings for babies. You can use one with a padded pocket and strap, one with fancy parts, a big long strip of cloth, or even just a folded bed sheet with a knot behind your shoulder.

<comment><USER6> You can't do slings when the kids are older and you still need it if you are going to walk even if they can walk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I honestly really like Amtrak, at least on the Northeast Regional. No baggage fees, large comfortable chairs (I thought coach class was business the first time I rode it, then I discovered business class had tables), no real security restrictions (yet), the notion of quiet cars, and nice scenery. Maybe it's because I don't ride Amtrak regularly and so every time I ride it it's a novelty, but I underrated it and it exceeded my expectations every time so far.

If you're not going between D.C. and Boston then maybe it'll be different, but if you're riding on the one line Amtrak has to keep operational or it'll die completely, I think it should be fine.

<comment><USER11> NYC to DC round trip is 6 hours scheduled time by train or 3 hours scheduled time by air. Granted Penn and Union stations are more convenient than Newark and Reagan airports, but not _that_ much more convenient.

It is a nicer trip though, I'll give you that. But not nice enough to mean an extra day away from home.

<comment><USER12> The actual train trip from NYC to DC is 3-3.5 hours each way, and both ends are smack in the middle of the city.

If you're flying, Dulles and BWI are 45 minutes from downtown DC (or more); ditto for the NYC end, and you need to factor in another hour+ for security. I think air travel might end up slower—-and it's certainly less pleasant.

<comment><USER13> > and you need to factor in another hour+ for security

Just an anecdote, but with TSA Pre, I haven't needed more than 15 minutes for security, flying domestically and internationally several times per year for the past few years.

<comment><USER14> > _with TSA Pre, I haven't needed more than 15 minutes for security_

Same. With Clear, that goes down to 5 minutes tops. Add in airport lounges, and showing up a bit early goes from being a nuisance to a pleasure (or opportunity to be productive).

I'm a huge fan of trains, but they're only marginally competitive for passengers in the Northeast.

<comment><USER15> At least for the north or south subset of the Northeast Corridor the type of transportation honestly boils down to preference. Train is in the comfortable but relatively pricey and slow end of the equation. I could drive from Central Mass to New York cheaper and faster than train but I hate doing that drive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If Richard Anderson is walking with a bit of a swagger today, now you know why. Congrats to him. We should put this guy in the White House. He has done the seemingly impossible.

> "Our biggest challenge is I go testify in Congress and all we talk about is > French toast on dining cars or food," he says. "We aren't talking about the > really big infrastructure issues and transportation congestion issues that > all the people in this country want a solution for."

Of course! It's a waste of time talking to these people. Please keep the subject on french toast, because if they're going to screw something up, let it be a breakfast dish. And lets extrapolate this out to all other subjects and consider how they would do with all the policies the progressive left are dreaming up.

</comment><comment><USER17> I just used Amtrak to travel across the US as I didn't want to bring my electric skateboard on a plane.

It is a very high quality service.

<comment><USER4> Did you get there on time?

<comment><USER18> I don't think you pick Amtrak to arrive somewhere on time. You bring some books, read them, relax, stare out the window, chat with people in the dining car, and eventually reach your destination. Chilling out on the train is part of your vacation. (I rode the California Zephyr from Chicago to Oakland when I was like 10, and still remember most of the trip. It was amazing, even for an easily-bored 10 year old.)

The reality is, intercity trains are not an efficient way to travel in the United States. Most of the important cities are far apart, because it's a very large country with a lot of empty space. If you need to be somewhere, book a flight. It's less expensive and if you give yourself a day of leeway you will probably never be late to your thing, barring some sort of natural disaster.

I am a huge railfan but I have accepted that the geography of the US doesn't make train travel as viable as say, Japan. Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka are the three largest cities and are comparable in distance between each other like Chicago, Springfield, and St. Louis. If New York was where Chicago is, Chicago was where Springfield is, and LA was where St. Louis is, high speed rail would be enormously popular in the US. But New York and LA are 2500 miles apart, 10% around the world from each other.

I even question California High Speed Rail. San Francisco / Silicon Valley and LA are both big metro areas with a lot of money, but SF/LA are 41% farther apart than Tokyo and Osaka. Japan got very lucky that its two largest cities are actually very close to each other. Building the Shinkansen was an enormous engineering challenge, but one that was very clearly profitable. It's so profitable they're building another Shinkansen between the two cities, taking a shorter route and using faster trains. In the US... such a city pair does not exist.

OK this is going very off-topic from your exact comment... but it's something I wanted to talk about. Sorry.

<comment><USER19> Your entire geography argument goes out the window if you look at China's high-speed rail system instead of Japan's.

E.g. Shanghai - Kunming is more than 2200 km and takes between 10-12 hours[1]. At that speed LA-SF would take around 3 hours. For context the flight time is an hour and a half, so when you account for airport overhead, taxiing etc. the train would take around around the same time, and be a more pleasant mode of transport.

The density argument also goes both ways. A country like Japan is going to find it much harder to find empty space to place rail than somewhere like the US.

There's a lot of reasons for why the US isn't doing what China's doing with high-speed rail, but those reasons are mainly political, not geographical.

1\. [https://www.travelchinaguide.com/china-trains/shanghai- kunmi...](https://www.travelchinaguide.com/china-trains/shanghai-kunming.htm)

<comment><USER4> China isn't a good example to point to because we have no idea whether China is making intelligent trade offs about how to use its resources. It's an authoritarian economy. It could end up that in 50 years the whole thing collapses from its own weight.

Europe is a better example because it least the government must be somewhat accountable for its guns versus butter trade offs. And if you look at things like Macron trying to privatize SNCF (with its massive unsustainable debt levels), that should give us pause about the long term viability of rail even in dense places like France.

<comment><USER20> From a cursory glance it seems to me that SNCF's debts are due to them financing all of their infrastructure instead of the French state paying for it (directly, it of course is indirectly), and then the argument goes back to the current top comment here: The real value of a good transport network is the add-on economic effects.

Also from a security perspective, you can't hijack a train and crash it into some building (it has to stay on the tracks), so that's a plus for trains.

Finally a domestic train causes about 41 g/km of CO2 emissions, while a domestic flight causes about 254 g/km (accounting for altitude) [0]

[0] [https://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-49349566](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Where we want to be as America's railroad is to cover all of our operating costs through our revenues," [the CEO] says, "and then use the grant that we receive from our owners, the United States government, to invest in the infrastructure, the rail infrastructure across America."

That's some unconventional accounting. Most GAAP accountants would tell you that capital investments should be amortized over their expected lifetime, with the first depreciation hit in the year they're made. That would of course mean an additional expense to cover before calling yourself profitable.

<comment><USER22> In that quote the CEO's describing operating cash flow, a GAAP measure. Nothing about it is unconventional. And it includes real-world depreciation to a large degree since maintenance costs are part of operating expenditures. The problem is the article's author omitted discussing profit per se, not that the CEO's goal is having positive operating cash flow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've commuted on Amtrak quite a bit - sac to bay area...

And I have looked into using them even more - but their is a litany of reasons why its impractical:

THeir ticket prices, staffing, schedules, lack of full-through-connection services, and delays all but make it hard to use as a service for all but one specific type of commuter.

Lets look at staffing.

They will know that its the commute hour; yet they will schedule ONE ticket agent at the counter in a major station - who has no incentive to be efficient with their tasks, and have made myself and MANY others miss the trains they were trying to get to. When you complain to the staff, they immediately take an attitude. Once when I asked why they only had one ticket teller during the major rush hour, the ticket teller didnt answer me, but called the Amtrak police to come question me. (I was being polite - and asked matter-of-fact why they would make such an oversight.)

Pricing: The tickets are way over priced for the service. Also, lets look at the "rewards" benefit - and the "10-pass" packets.

1) The rewards - it costs $19 to go from Sac to Martinez. You get (2) reward points per dollar you spend. For that same $19 leg to redeem points for a "free" ticket costs 900 points. -- That means you have to spend $450 to get ONE $19 reward.

2) A 10 pack ticket expires after 45 days. No matter what. Last holiday season - with validations, office shutdowns, holidays etc - there was no way to use the tickets I had until after the new year - yet they would "expire" on 12/31 - no matter what.

Their rewards points often fail to show up on your account - and its a tedious process to rectify - and even when you do rectify, it take more than 3-weeks for them to hit your account.

The pricing to go any distance, is just absolutely too high.

Now, the good things about Amtrak:

They have power, wifi and a snack car. The cars are clean (generally), and the ride is smooth - and actually faster than driving (more relaxing at least) along 80.

\---

I really want Amtrak to succeed - but I wish they would address the problems they do have.

<comment><USER24> You can't buy the tickets in an app or similar?

That's why you do in Norway, and I guess large parts of the developed world

<comment><USER25> Yes, you can. You can also show your ticket to the conductor via the app. I have never interacted with a human when buying an Amtrak ticket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Amtrak is only somewhat successful when it is essentially a regional carrier, like LIRR in New York or Metra in Chicago. When it is a long distance train, it is a miserable failure from the financial side and customer experience. The Northeast corridor acts like a regional route, focusing on commuters, and that's what saves it. People in America refuse to use Amtrak for travel.

<comment><USER27> Amtrak's long distance service is more akin to the Essential Air Service, in that it connects lots of small, otherwise unconnected rural areas and is not expected to make a profit.

Amtrak has always been a company with two halves, and Congress really should just split it to stop this Jekyll and Hyde tug of war about what exactly the company is supposed to do.

<comment><USER28> > Amtrak's long distance service is more akin to the Essential Air Service, in > that it connects lots of small, otherwise unconnected rural areas and is not > expected to make a profit.

If that's true, it seems like those communities would be better served by subsidized long distance bus travel instead.

I understand that doesn't make a whit of difference to congress, though.

<comment><USER29> Amtrak does contract with regional bus carriers:

[https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS- RCED-95-138/h...](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS- RCED-95-138/html/GAOREPORTS-RCED-95-138.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Big if true, but I don't know whether to trust these figures. The Rail Passengers Association has accused Amtrak of cooking its books - [https://www.railpassengers.org/happening- now/news/releases/a...](https://www.railpassengers.org/happening- now/news/releases/amtraks-route-accounting-fatally-flawed-misleading-wrong/) \- but of course the RPA isn't an unbiased source either.

</comment><comment><USER31> > _"Our biggest challenge is I go testify in Congress and all we talk about is > French toast on dining cars or food," he says. "We aren 't talking about the > really big infrastructure issues and transportation congestion issues that > all the people in this country want a solution for."_

This is infuriating.

<comment><USER32> Almost literally bikeshedding. [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding#Etymology](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding#Etymology)

<comment><USER33> I miss the previous team where the issues are literally titled "X bikeshedding". Much better than having meetings where bikeshed issues get recycled for months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It is a lie.

Counting subsidies from eighteen states as revenue does not make you profitable and Amtrak does exactly that. Plus they have such a huge backlog of repairs and maintenance so any "profit" claims are meaningless when you keep putting off maintaining your system and cars. However they make sure where the most noise is where the most investment goes.

Plus fleet age is a real problem[0] and requires billions of investment to bring that up to date

I love trains as much as the next person but Amtrak isn't profitable and they don't strive for actual profits because they know they are protected.

[0][https://www.bts.gov/content/age-and-availability-amtrak- loco...](https://www.bts.gov/content/age-and-availability-amtrak-locomotive- and-car-fleets)

<comment><USER35> What happens if we consider the massive subsidies given to fossil fuel companies -- Are they still profitable, when you factor in the massive damage their products are inflicting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Still, when you travel with trains in US, it's like traveling back in time compared to Europe and Asia.

<comment><USER37> That's largely because automobiles, buses, and airplanes are better suited to the geography of the United States. There are corridors and regions where trains make sense in the U.S, but many rail lines went from necessary to obsolete with the natural progression of technology.

AmTrak was created when the private passenger rail operators were failing, and they were failing for a good reason: demand for long-haul passenger rail service declined sharply when better alternatives entered the market.

The one thing that rail can do better than these other forms is _comfort_ and _service_ , but for the vast majority of people, they would rather be able to afford to make it to their destination.

<comment><USER38> > better suited to the geography of the United States.

China has a similar geography to the US, and similar sizes and run lengths of their high speed space. The US has decided to build roads and highways instead of investing in other transit options. It's not that it makes "more sense", it's that the US has intentionally built things this way, for a variety of corporate and historical reasons.

> many rail lines went from necessary to obsolete with the natural progression > of technology.

What? You mean, except for literally every other developed country has well developed rail lines that transport billions of people with levels of unmatched efficiency?

> when better alternatives entered the market.

Only because the market was intentionally weighted against that form of transit.

<comment><USER37> > _China has a similar geography to the US, and similar sizes and run lengths > of their high speed space._

China has extreme restrictions on domestic flights, and a great deal more population; and on top of that, so much is different about the way things are done in China, the state will just bulldoze things for looking too "towny".

> _What? You mean, except for literally every other developed country has well > developed rail lines that transport billions of people_

Britain is a developed country with well developed rail lines, but probably few there would tell you that it's great right now. Some of the failure there can be attributed to their poorly-designed pseudo-privatization of the trains and crews themselves (but not the rails or facilities, which remain national), but a big part of the reason that was politically viable was that the rail services weren't all that great when they were national either. France's TGV is really cool, when the operators aren't on strike.

Up here in Ontario, we have one relatively useful rail corridor, but the further you get from Toronto, the less the passenger load. On my morning train from Hamilton, there are (charitably) a couple dozen passengers on the whole train for several stations. As for _national_ rail in Canada, it is rare to hear that anyone has used Via. I've used it once in my life, but I found out later that a bus on the same route would have been faster and dramatically cheaper.

Long-haul rail networks are attractive to politicians because of what they represent, but to transport consumers, the reality of long haul passenger rail is that it is rarely the best option. When passengers bear the cost, long-haul passenger rail is, by natural means, rarely the best option in the U.S.

> _with levels of unmatched efficiency?_

"unmatched" by what? High speed rail is extremely capital intensive, and expensive at the point of sale, and that's when you don't have any trouble clearing land for it. In the U.S, most of the viable places for passenger rail already have rail lines, but they are not appropriate for high speed rail. Conventional passenger rail is too slow to attract fares, and is still very expensive.

Dude it's alright to like trains, trains are cool; but none of what you said justifies the subsidies that would be required in order to make a comprehensive U.S. long-haul passenger rail network that's worth using, and no policy would make it worth the cost.

If you have some brilliant business practice, policy, or idea that will change this, I implore you to develop it! :- )

<comment><USER39> I mean, absolute statements like yours can be easily disproven. If carbon is taxed, gasoline or kerosene becomes expensive, a rail system is justified for cost.

So you're just saying give up on the dream, its too Late. Commercial rail is expensive, too slow.

Several big cities can be interconnected in a profitable way if NIMBYism changes. Why argue about an extensive rail network if even big cities like Houston and Dallas don't have rail?

<comment><USER40> > Several big cities can be interconnected in a profitable way if NIMBYism > changes.

It's not even NIMBYism. Consider the utter hate that California's high speed rail gets on HN despite very much no one being negatively effected by it. Then consider what a freeway does when it's run through a city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I hope one day we stop comparing rail to cars on passenger-mile basis - <USER2> infrastructure costs per passenger-mile. These are apples and oranges. There is zero similarities between riding on modern trains and driving.

I've taken hundreds of trips, anywhere between 2 and 8 hours, on TGV, ICE, and Eurostar trains in Europe. I loved it every time and came out refreshed even after longer trips. At times when I wanted to get work done (probably 60-75% of total time spent on trains) I was as productive - likely more productive, due to lack of distractions - as at the office. In contrast, I don't think I can remember any road trip lasting more than 2 hours when I could say I enjoyed it; many times I was so exhausted that I needed rest upon arriving to destination.

So, if we are going to try to fit this into some sort of economic model let's not forget about countless billions of hours of productivity loss due to people stuck behind the wheel staring at traffic.

Not to mention both emotional and physical strain associated with driving (nope, can not stand up when you like, or walk over to the buffet car for a coffee), respective health care costs, and more productivity losses. Once we do that, the picture will be very different. It's sad we in the US haven't realized this yet.

</comment><comment><USER42> I use Amtrak to go to nyc all the time. It's a pleasure. If they (or some scrappy start-up) could halve the price and halve the time, it would be revolutionary.

<comment><USER43> I take the Acela for work all the time and love it. It's too expensive for me to take it with my family though.

<comment><USER44> What route do you take?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Amtrak's lack of profitablity isn't the issue per se.The lead here is who ultimately benefits. These subsidizes don't benefit the masses. They are an entitlement for those who don't need entitling.

</comment><comment><USER46> FTA

> The host railroads have been obligated to give the company preference over > freight trains so Amtrak can run on time, but that statute has not been > enforced, he says.

Anyone know the details on this? It's something I've experienced to a degree and a complaint I've heard from other riders.

<comment><USER47> [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/24308](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/24308)

[http://blog.amtrak.com/2019/05/why-are-amtrak-trains- delayed...](http://blog.amtrak.com/2019/05/why-are-amtrak-trains-delayed-by- freight-trains/)

[https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/270612-amtrak- prot...](https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/270612-amtrak-protests- move-to-prioritize-freight-trains)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Short flights are fine until they're canceled and you go to the rental car counter and they charge you $500 for a day rental because, hey, supply and demand amirite?

</comment><comment><USER49> Well now there is no excuse for not upgrading the northeast corridor.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why do we care about public transportation turning a profit? The benefit of a good transit network is massive and far above simply the fare fees.

</comment><comment><USER50> It shouldn't be pseudo-privatized and should be further subsidized, the fact that it's become extractionary shouldn't be celebrated.

<comment><USER51> I agree. Almost all nations have their rail subsidized. Really all transport has to be subsidized by the State, going back to the Roman era.

Toll highways cover a fraction of operating costs. In most cities, your bus fair pays for 50% or less of the cost to run the bus. States use transport to build commerce, and it's difficult to measure what revenue that generates.

Funding needs to be pumped into AmTrak to help expand some of the very limited high speed rail we're just starting to see in the USA, including Florida's Brightline (now Virgin Trains) and the half-canceled California project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> > Have you ever actually taken Amtrak?

Yes I have and your statement is correct. Amtrak is almost entirely dysfunctional but rail as a concept is not dysfunctional and actually works in many other countries.

It's like healthcare, which is an absolute shitshow in the US, however in the rest of the developed world it's not a shitshow.

Likewise with the military.

What is it about the US that makes so many fundamental services needed for the functioning of society into shitshows?

<comment><USER53> With the military, I think other countries around the world intentionally don't invest much because they know they can rely on the US's military to scare off attacks.

Healthcare might be the same thing. US residents pay a lot for healthcare, and that's used to fund healthcare research. Then the products of that research are given to other countries without them having to pay much.

<comment><USER54> > I think other countries around the world intentionally don't invest much > because they know they can rely on the US's military to scare off attacks.

Ukraine has proved that's not true for US-friendly countries facing US-hostile foes, which is essentially the optimal scenario short of actual formal alliance, so I don't think that actually is a plausoble explanation except _possibly_ for formal US allies.

<comment><USER55> This is a really insightful example. It pretty near demolishes all the self- serving theories pushed by MIC-underwritten think tanks etc. So what are we left with? Maybe most other nations have just rationally decided that human life can and should be more peaceful, so it's not necessary to stockpile enough armaments to kill all humans fifty times over.

<comment><USER56> How much more would Korea have to spend on their military if they left the US shield? Or Japan? Or Taiwan? Or the Philippines?

And the US did provide substantial aid to the Ukraine. The US has provided over $1.5 billion to Ukraine. How much did Germany provide?

<comment><USER57> About $860 Million from Germany since 2014. That's on top of $3.8 billion from the EU where Germany is the biggest net contributor.

Source: [https://www.csis.org/analysis/not-contributing-enough- summar...](https://www.csis.org/analysis/not-contributing-enough-summary- european-military-and-development-assistance-ukraine-2014)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I'm pretty sure they'll find a way to lose more money by next Saturday.

</comment><comment><USER59> Good for them. No wonder they're not focusing on cross-country, the US is _huge_ compared to Europe.

<comment><USER60> Depends on what do you mean by "Europe". The continent is slightly larger than the US.

<comment><USER61> Copenhagen is closer to Zurich than Chicago is to NYC. Even Paris/Berlin is closer than Chicago/NYC.

The US's major cities are not close to each other, with the exception of the North-East Corridor, and the distances involved are far larger than most corresponding distances in Europe--you have to be talking about trips between Spain and very deep into Russia to start to compare against the NYC/LA pairing.

<comment><USER62> Some data: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8713324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8713324)

<comment><USER59> This is exactly what I meant by my initial comment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Negro Motorist Green Book - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Book <comment><AUTHOR> This was a very powerful clipping from the book, and made me want to share it: [https://i.imgur.com/fo8vKHO.png](https://i.imgur.com/fo8vKHO.png)

I'm not sure it's a good fit for HN, since there's not much to say about it. We'll see.

You can read the full book here: [https://archive.org/stream/history_green_book/87_135_1736_Gr...](https://archive.org/stream/history_green_book/87_135_1736_GreenBk)

And there's an article here: [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/read- these-chillin...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/read-these- chilling-charming-guides-black-travelers-during-jim-crow-era-180957131/)</comment>


Ask HN: Just finished coding my new startup; need ideas for getting traction - <AUTHOR> http://www.meshipu.com
The concept is simple. Millions of cars on the road everyday, many traveling long distances. Millions of package delivery shipments everyday. Match these two groups and everyone wins.
Value proposition: Instead of traveling with an empty trunk, you could offset cost of gas by carrying a small package for someone at maybe 50% discount from what they'll have to pay UPS,USPS, or FEDEX.
Major competitor: www.uship.com
My other project: www.colabopad.com
Any ideas on how I can go about getting traction for something like this? I have built what I think is a bare minimum of functionality (staying true to lean-startup idea), no pretty UI stuff.
follow me: http://twitter.com/twitlooter <comment><USER2> Do you understand why your competitors work? They've spent decades building up brands like "When you abso-fricking-lutely have to have it there by the day after tomorrow, or it's your job." There are _movies_ about their core value proposition and brand messaging.

Now after you understand how they work, do you understand which of their customers don't need to pay for that? Can you identify a group of folks currently shipping through FedEx who can switch to "eventual, best effort, may not actually arrive" delivery? An addressable group? A _big_ addressable group?

If not, scrap the idea and do something else.

P.S. I think you are missing the "last quarter mile" problem, too, although it won't be a quarter mile for your implementation. I assume that in any given day there are a lot of packages going from somewhere in LA to somewhere in New York, but _not one single package_ going from "somewhere in LA" to "somewhere in New York". They all have to go to a specific address in New York -- which means you need to find someone going to that exact address.

<comment><USER3> Spot on.

The problem space being addressed is more complex than what it looks like. Customer perception of reliability is everything. Shipping companies have made their offerings as reliable as banks. There's numerous safeguards in place to protect the customer in case of an accident and you have professionals handling your valuable items.

Perhaps an ebay-like system of feedback will help eliminate some of the wariness that accompanies a total stranger delivering your package, but even then the event of loss, theft, and damage will be much higher than it is with the existing shipping companies. That alone would make it difficult to get this idea off the ground.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _It's safe, secure and reliable._

You will seriously need to expand on these points to get customers. Looking at the idea blind, I can't see how it can be any of these things. No pretty UI stuff will be needed until it's a viable business, and addressing these three concerns strikes me as paramount.

<comment><USER5> This.

I can't imagine why I'd want to give a package to a person I've never met who has no obligation to deliver the package to it's destination. If I didn't care too much about the item being shipped... I wouldn't be shipping it.

<comment><USER6> If you could link this idea up with a social network you may be able to increase the trust level by searching within your social network, perhaps by extending that network by one or two degrees of separation. If everyone that you know and all of their friends entered their vacation plans into a database so that you could find someone that you have a chance of trusting who could deliver your package, you may be able to make it work. On the other hand, now people have a way of finding out who's going to be on vacation and when, that could be bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> One way I intend to ensure trust is to have shippers use either Paypal or Amazon payments to accept shipment payments... By proxy, a shipper's identity will not be anonymous anymore since those services do require bank account information which is a thorough form of ID.

<comment><USER7> I suppose the payment is done after the package arrives...

<comment><USER8> Then the shipper could get ripped off.

<comment><USER9> Most of these concerns are the same as with any site that deals in blind transactions (ebay, used things on amazon, paypal in general), but these sites only require you to risk your time upfront where as in the case of this site the customer is risking something they already own with the hope of future payment. Essentially its like requiring people on ebay to send items before they receive payment.

The most basic way I can think of to deal with this imbalance is to have the shipper make a deposit up front to "insure" the item being ships. Upon arrival the shipper gets their deposit plus payment. There is probably a more elegant way to frame this so that the shipper does not feel like they are risking so much.

<comment><USER7> Can't you just turn it into a crime not to deliver?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just finished frying my steak and now I need some ideas on how to build a restaurant around it.

I'm sorry but you are approaching this from the wrong end. A project like yours is 99% a business effort and 1% technical. I am not even sure the market for something like this exists. There are convenience issues, there are trust issues, there could be regulation issues (google for a recent car sharing project and how it got shut down because it went against taxi licensing bylaws). You are effectively asking for help building a business plan, while all you have is a very basic undeveloped idea.

<comment><USER11> I agree with what you're saying, but would argue that if you're opening a restaurant, the steak _should_ come first. :) In this case though, you're absolutely right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Before you get carried away with how to build the site, I think you need to think a bit about the economics of this business.

1\. What would you charge someone for postage? It would have to be less than UPS etc., otherwise there's no point not using them.

2\. What would a driver earn for carrying a package? Some amount of money not greater than the postage charge (otherwise you'll go broke).

3\. For what amount of money would a driver think it is worthwhile to pick up this package, or several packages, and deliver them to where they need to go? Surely more than just a few dollars.

4\. What are the extra costs of your business, such as insurance?

I don't know the answer to any of these questions, particularly postage (I don't live in the US, so I don't know what the cost of sending a parcel is there). But you might want to think about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Shipping can be quite expensive through the usual channels (UPS, USPS,FEDEX). If you have ever tried to ship a used textbook then you know what I am talking about. The application allows the carrier (ie person carrying the package) to specify a rate(per pound per mile). Obviously the intent is that such a service should be significantly cheaper than what the existing shipping companies charge otherwise no one should use it.

<comment><USER13> Perhaps. But shipping a used textbook via USPS Media Mail usually costs <$5. That's fairly inexpensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not to rain on your parade, but I'm having a hard to understanding how you'll undercut shipping companies. Their prices are so low because they rely on economies of scale (large trucks and a very sophisticated supply chain) and complex algorithms that determine the optimal route for delivery.

First, there's the problem of paying the couriers. I can't speak for others, but I would never carry a package in my car for $5 -- it's not worth the hassle. I might carry 10 at once for $50, but even that payout is very low for my time... not to mention that the likelihood that my route intersects with 10 different packages being shipped on the same day is extremely low. Drivers working for shipping companies make a relatively low wage, and they ship lots of packages. You'd have to pay couriers per-package, and at a much higher marginal rate than shipping companies pay. That means additional overhead, which means your prices will go up.

Then you'll have extremely high overhead with respect to fraud, insurance, etc. UPS/FedEx packages are handled by professional drivers, and I'm certain that their insurance costs are still astronomical. This means more overhead, which again means higher prices still. In fact, I'm willing to bet that even if you could find an insurance agency willing to underwrite your operation, the cost to insure each package would be higher than the overall cost UPS/FedEx charges their customers to ship.

Finally, you're going to have a hard time convincing customers that your service is reliable and safe. That means even for the customers you will get, your cost per acquisition will be _much_ higher than UPS/FedEx. That won't hurt you too much right now, but it will be a major barrier to scaling -- and scaling is the only way you're going to compete with the shipping companies.

Maybe you can compete on some other way than price?

</comment><comment><USER14> Some random ideas to salvage your idea a tad (which seems to be very difficult to make work given it's difficulties):

* Start with a niche like used books and perhaps partner with a book swapping site (e.g. bookmooch or bookcrossing or something) to get the initial tests done on something people don't mind losing. Other second hand material would be good, too.

* I think you'd also do much better with such a service if you treat your site more like a craigslist for "package hitchhiking" and reverse the process. I.e. travelers post where they're going on their next road trip and they say they're willing to take a few odd things. So you'd get a lot of random trip listings perhaps all on your front page until there's enough to break them down. People browse the site when they have something to ship (especially second hand stuff, etc) and if they see someone going the way they need, they make a bid/offer to the person going that way.

* On the security angle you might look into the "friend of a friend" and "church group" organization like <http://www.goloco.org> does. Targeting widespread organizations or friend networks may make this more palatable to people worried about trust.

* Posting some examples of "what people shipped" on the page, with a constant stream would help people feel more comfortable.

* I assume there will be ebay like ratings and reviews, etc?

* Overall, I'm not sure this "disrupter" is going to work unless you can plug it into the thriving secondhand market as an extremely thrifty for low-value items. Positioning yourself initially would do you a lot of good.

* Finally and not most importantly, the website (unless owned by craigslist) will need a much more polished design to make people thing this is a "real deal" enough for them to try it out. I don't think that alone will help you, but your traction issue isn't going to be helped by your current design (usability and visually).

Best of luck-- regarding the other comments, sometimes the naysayers on Hacker News are wildly wrong and harsher than they used to be, but they often have very good points that will let you adapt your vision and save it. Take all the advice with a grain of salt. You're going to learn the best from your users once they start giving you feedback, so testing your idea and site is far more important than our responses.

 _Edit_ : To that end, give something like feedbackarmy.com a try a few times and see what random people think about the idea and see what percentage you could get to say they'd give it a shot.

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice website. I think, unfortunately, the concept may have some fatal flaws...

1\. If you need to ship a package across the country, don't you think it would be much faster to go with a major carrier because they can ship your stuff by air?

2\. Would people really trust just any person with a car to deliver stuff that might be important? What if it got stolen by the driver? What would you do then to make the situation right?

3\. Would you provide tracking information for packages that are shipped? What about day estimations on delivery?

4\. How would it be profitable for the driver? Usually the major carriers are able to use economies of scale to spread out the fixed costs over many packages. If your driver had 3 packages to deliver and their delivery addresses were in different parts of town, wouldn't your driver lose money on gas and the time it would take him to drive around town to deliver the packages?

<comment><USER7> 1\. Perhaps something similar could be done with people travelling on airports? (Ok, it's very dangerous to just carry random stuff, but perhaps would work for books or things like that)

<comment><USER16> I've run into that very model before. There are courier services that effectively pay folks to carry things on to planes. They then drop it off on the other side at the courier desk and go on their merry way. I did that a bunch of years ago (mid 90's).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Given the last mile problem which others have mentioned, could you not try a hybrid solution where people drop packages at post/courier offices in the destination towns? They can then be delivered by regular post or courier but at the local rate. So, basically you are turning passenger cars into long haul delivery vans for the postal service.

I don't know if this is economically feasible, but something to think about anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much... very sound idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of the big challenges in shipping is distribution. Even though someone may be going from place x to place y, they will have to go 'the last mile' in both the x and y locations to complete the transaction. Anything like this that adds complexity also adds both time and money.

Obviously you can't have people who fly do this as the air carriers prevent bringing packages which you did not pack.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah... I made provision for carriers (people carrying packages) to specify by how much they are willing to deviate from their planned route. That is a key aspect in the search algorithm i developed. Say you are willing to deviate 5 miles then any package that is within 5 miles (both pickup and delivery points) of your planned route is a match. There are other issue of last mile that will be addressed only if the site grows, mainly how do you deal with receivers who aren't available to pickup their package at time of delivery, considering that carrier is traveling?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> You should pick a specific niche market (students, small businesses that need to ship stuff, ...) and market to them, try to get actual real customers. If it doesn't work, ask them why not, and/or try a different niche market.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd ship many empty boxes at the beginning, to test how many of those arrive the destination.

</comment><comment><USER20> Dare I say, I think you are attempting to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

As a customer, what do I gain? As I see it, I take a significant risk in shipping with an unknown entity. The cost of shipping within the US is already fairly low, so why would I take the risk. You can't go international, even into Canada or Mexico, because I sure wouldn't take a package from an unknown person across the border for them.

You've created an opportunity for a driver with an empty truck, but you haven't (I don't think) really solved the question of why a customer would use the product. You say 50% off the cost is the benefit. But what is the average price of a product that can be moved in the manner you are describing?

If you are talking about getting door-to-door service, that is going to add up for the driver as well.

UPS, USPS, FEDEX, DHL, etc. all operate on a hub and spoke type system which is efficient with a large number of packages.

For local direct shipping, there are often lots of local options which may be cheaper than the big names. If you could link up the drivers across regional locations and offer them something so they can compete with UPS, etc, then you might be on to something.

An interesting annecdote, my great-grandfather got into the trucking business exactly as you are describing. He had a truck and was driving from town-to- town in Southern Ontario looking for work. People started recognizing him and asked him to take small packages for him on his travels. Then one day somebody asked him if he could deliver a Piano, and he clued in that this was a good thing. But that was in the early 1910's (I think), so there weren't a lot of shipping options.

</comment><comment><USER21> Checkout <http://www.shiply.com> too.

I'd solve the initial chicken and egg by finding a few shipping companies and promising to find them business for free. Get some packages posted on the site. Get them delivered. Get some shipping companies some ratings. Rinse and repeat. Start charging.

<comment><AUTHOR> sounds like a good idea!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The question is, if a transaction does go sour who foots the replacement bill, if it is irreplaceable what happens then?

Seems like there would be an accountability problem, in a big shipping company the drive would lose there job taking anything, to much risk for them, here if someone takes something what would be the repercussions?

</comment><comment><USER23> Your target customers are probably going to be young people, college students, and the like. Businesses and older people may be more worried about the security of their package. You might try making a YouTube or Vimeo video about your service. Make it sound cool and efficient. It might get you a few customers.

<comment><USER24> Or drug dealers looking for mules.

<comment><AUTHOR> very funny:) I have considered all those things, I think they are mostly knee- jerk reactions. You could pretty much make similar arguments against any web- initiated transaction, but as has been demonstrated by the incredible success of e-commerce I think concerns about safety are mostly just that. I don't see why a drug dealer would want to risk so much by trying to use such a service, on so many levels it will make no sense.

<comment><USER25> Why doesn't it make sense? Drug dealers spend megabucks moving drugs. A largely anonymous network of couriers with no idea what they're carrying would be ideal. They wouldn't move a ton at once, they would spread it out over many smaller shipments. Since the oversight is zero and the cost is so low it would be worth whatever extra hassle it might add. Imagine an undercover fedex that didn't ask questions. I'm sure you'd be the go-to network for a while until you got shut down.

<comment><USER26> I wonder if you could successfully apply an onion routing protocol to the distribution of physical objects, with an economy built-in around risk tolerance. Mundane shipping could then be subsidized by the more expensive contraband.

Distance yourself by connecting client & courier directly with a distributed P2P app (like Tor), and sell the authenticity and financial escrow services. Keep no knowledge or record of the actual transactions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I would not have written all that code without testing out your hypothesis first or at least in parallel with your products iterative construction.

Use your friends and family or your "extended network" first and see how / if people use it, if they like it, what is missing, etc. Sorry if this comes off as negative, it's not meant to - I can't tell you how many times I've written a web-service that does X, only to find out it needs to be implemented differently to do Y or realize the bigger challenge is in reaching my target audience or even finding who that audience is.

Customer discover and development is just, if not more, important than product development imho.

Also, take a long, hard, and honest look at your proposed business model and make sure it makes sense (using your friends, family, and extended network can help provide some data around this).

</comment><comment><USER28> Scott Adams (Dilbert) wrote a blog post about how to match people who would like to travel together, instead of packages, a couple of years ago. But the problems, namely trust, are essentially the same.

[http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/how_...](http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/how_i_solved_th.html)

His idea to connect people with GPS is something you could use. His screening idea's are something you could also incorporate.

To make this an succes I would create a social networking site so that everyone who wants to participate can be publicly hold accountable. If all my personal data is known to you I would think twice before I'd steal a package. A scoring system would bring up the most reliable people to do business with.

</comment><comment><USER29> The comments in this thread are interesting, and I think that all the reasons brought up as to why it won't work are accurate.

That said, I think there's a slight chance of value in making this a really premium service. Don't try to make it less expensive than USPS, make it lots more expensive than FedEx.

Find the people who _like to drive._ Pitch it as _having an adventure._ There's an old movie, Bed of Roses, where Christian Slater is a former lawyer turned flower delivery guy, because he likes seeing people's faces when they open the door and see the bouquet. You're not delivering a package, you're _meeting a stranger and taking a package on a secret mission!_ Don't make it anonymous, have people meet in coffee shops right before they drive off to feel each other out. It's a _daytrip_ outside of people's routine lives.

The people buying the service are people who hire traditional couriers, like bike couriers in cities, but for longer distances, when it has to be hand- delivered and you can call the guy on his cell phone and such. It's a premium service.

And then there's even a tier above that. A really expensive alibi service, where you pay someone to drive somewhere far away and have something mailed from a traditional Post Office there, to get the far-away postmark.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER30> Maybe your key difference could be ship people instead of stuff. Kind of like an AirBNB but replacing Taxi's and busses instead of replacing hotels.

</comment><comment><USER31> Aside from the concerns I share with others of your deliveries being safe, secure, and reliable, here's how I think you should focus your product. I see no possible way that your product could initially address the needs of someone needing to ship something outside of their local city/town. If I'm travelling San Francisco to Manhattan, and your site has matched me up with someone who needs a package shipped from San Fran to the Bronx/Queens/Brooklyn etc, you would have to offer me a pretty high price to deliver that package.

I have two suggestions: First, start with deliveries that need to be made within a certain territory. I could maybe see something like this working in a big city like NYC since there are millions of people moving around and your chances of finding fairly precise matches for delivery routes is much higher.

Second, I think you would need some sort of drop box system where shippers check in their packages and deliverers check-out the package, deliver the package to the closest drop-box to the destination, and the customers pick up the package from there. I know this second point adds a huge layer of start-up cost to something like this, but it's the only way I could see it working. When the delivery person checks out a package, their account would have to be liable for damage deposit, lost/stolen package/etc and when they deliver successfully, their account would be credited whatever fee you pay them. If you had a network of redbox-like machines in public places for drop-off and pick-up then maybe something like this works.

I know what I've just described is probably a completely different idea, but when people are in their cars going somewhere, they've budgeted almost an exact amount of time they need to get where they're going and delivering a package to an unknown destination that may only be a little bit out of the way could completely throw a wrench in that time budgeting.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think this is a viable idea.

I would focus on niche areas, perhaps where you would waive all fees (and the shipper would also) to get some users. What comes to mind are parents visiting college kids may be willing to bring care packages for other parents at the same college, and the same for packages going to military bases.

There may be other niches: fanciers of a particular dog or parrot breed may be willing to help others transport those animals, and those animals may be impossible to ship; among the heirloom plant type people, fruit tree sapplings might be good; people who are into a certain type of old car or motorcycle are also often community oriented enough to help haul something if they are going the same direction.

I would disregard the skepticism in the comments. I have found start-up types to be sort of passively hostile to co-operative type setups that are not crassly commercial enough for them -- there's nothing wrong with that.

I would not make the "safe, secure and reliable" guarantee, because you can't really do it, unless you offer package insurance (which might be a good add on). I would just say "select shippers with a reliability rating that suits you" or something like that.

You should also take the 1 - 2 - 3 steps on the left hand side, for people with packages, and replicate them on the right hand side, as in "1: you are traveling to a distant city 2: you find someone who needs a package sent there . . . . "

Also, I would suggest that for an unrated people the package must be inspected and sealed in the presence of the hauler, it will keep out some of the drug shipper types.

In your about page or further explanations, you might make reference to the way old settlers used to pass mail and packages to whomever was traveling in the right direction (in thinly settled places that is still sometimes done).

</comment><comment><USER33> Hate to be another naysayer, but...

You're probably also incurring a lot of liability just by contracting the individual shipper to take an action on your behalf. Say your person is dropping a package that's just off their route to wherever they're going. They pull off the freeway, and _BAM_ get hit by a semi. Congratulations, you're going to be the recipient of a huge lawsuit.

Easy to dismiss that as, "Well how often does that happen?" Accidents happen, on average, one per every thousand driven hours. So if you've got a thousand en route today that are taking more than an hour, you get to have this problem once a day, on average (v weak extrapolation, I know).

Some things can't be done as a lean startup. Some things cost major money before their first day (e.g. airlines, long-haul data services, auto manufacturing). You managed to pick a non-lean industry.

<comment><USER34> I'm also wondering about liability, though not quite in that way.

First, what If something happens to the package that I'm carrying? I'm not going to carry something if I'm going to be liable if I break it, that risk won't be worth the gain.

Second, are the people carrying stuff for you going to be classified as employees? I don't know much about tax stuff but if you run the risk of the IRS classifying all these people as your employees, you might be running into a lot of administrative and liability problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> You've got to target a different kind of customer than those players. How about if you toss out "safe secure and reliable"? You were apparently inspired by packet switching networks, so why not follow their lead: don't guarantee delivery. If you can get your prices low enough you can certainly find whole classes of customers that could accept an 80% delivery rate. Junk mailers might love you, for a start. And lots of goods are so cheap these days that some lossage would be acceptable to save a lot on shipping.

But the bigger point is to identify a particular sort of customer who you can serve.

<comment><USER36> _Junk mailers might love you_

Please don't cater to junk mailers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I would partner with shipping companies. Not Fedex or USPS but the thousands of other companies shipping goods in large trucks. There must be extra space in these trucks and it can be monetized.

</comment><comment><USER38> Sometimes, you need to focus on the bueinsuess idea, as noted below, along with the coding. Also, the coding isn't everything. Coding is a small part, but also is user interface design, from scaling good images, picking easy-to- read fonts, and spelling. People automatically distrust services that have a misspelled logout button for instance. Coding is a small part to a process. Building traction is a final goal, of which coding is a small part. Coding isn't everything for a web startup.

</comment><comment><USER39> I work for a large geographically diverse company and we often carry company stuff between offices on our trips to save on the cost of couriers. Perhaps you could whitelabel this service and hook into tripit.com or something similar and demonstrate to a client that with your system you could save $X,000 of money in courier fees by having your staff carry stuff internationally or even just interstate.

</comment><comment><USER40> you can think of it as a market place for existing logistics providers who auction off leftover slots.. so if one can afford to send stuff without too much of a hurry, shipping costs would be greatly reduced, win , win for logistics provider, shipper as well. Clearance businesses would love it :)

</comment><comment><USER41> Think you definitely need to combine it it with some social / hobby sites for it to have half a chance of being used. It can't compete as a courier company.

Start ups are actually businesses that are starting up, not software applications or websites. The way to test this is find 1 customer.

</comment><comment><USER42> Why don't you test it to see if it works first?

1\. Post an ad on craigslist for personal delivery tasks and find people who would want you to deliver their package.

2\. Post an ad on rideshare and see if someone can deliver your package.

Validate your minimum viable product first before you invest more energy in this.

</comment><comment><USER43> What differentiates you from your competitions? What makes it safe to ship with you? How are you going to get the consumers and the producers?

These are the fundamental questions that I would ask you and addressing them might help you in getting more ideas in achieving traction.

</comment><comment><USER44> What's wrong with uShip?</comment>


Flash Co-Creator Responds to Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://coldhardflash.com/2010/05/flash-co-creator-jonathan-gay-responds-to-steve-jobs.html

<comment><USER2> It's somewhat annoying to me that Flash proponents seem to muddy the lines between app development and website development. I've seen so many arguments lately that either Flash is more open than the App Store, so Apple should allow Flash in the browser, or Flash is more capable than HTML5 so Apple should allow Flash apps in the App Store.

Flash is less open than HTML5 in the browser, it churns the battery, it's slow, and it's unreliable. It crashes on the Mac often, it doesn't support hardware video decoding (yet) and there isn't a stable version released for ANY Arm platform yet. Adobe is so far behind it's not even funny, and the arguments that Apple should have allowed Flash from the start are ridiculous because three years later it's still not ready for prime-time.

As for app development, Flash produces much larger apps that run slower and use more memory than native iPhone apps. There's no way to provide a truly 'native' UI (CocoaTouch) so developers will have to re-invent everything in ways that doesn't work or look like regular iPhone apps. Like Adobe Air apps, Flash apps on the iPhone would end up working and looking different not only from other native apps, but from each other as well. Users would have to get used to different behaviour from every app, instead of having a uniform set of behaviours that they can quickly learn and internalize.

If you're going to complain about Flash on the iPhone, it would behoove you to specify which specific implementation of Flash you're referring to, and compare it just to the equivalent offering for the iPhone. Otherwise, you're just making confusing arguments that don't hold water.

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing how groupthink works. Even people that don't work at Adobe now refuse to see the issue from the other side's perspective.

This guy says that Flash performs consistently across platforms, when it doesn't. That's the main reason for the whole argument, Adobe neglected Macs for years. They did not improve things that could have been improved without Apple's help. Like <http://blog.kaourantin.net/?p=82>

And why should Apple devote resources to Flash when they're working on a technology that does the exact same thing in WebKit, canvas, etc..? Flash is not a standard, no one agreed to improve it or support it. They only agreed to support HTML/JS/CSS web standards. No one owes Adobe their support.

Microsoft could ignore Flash and push their own Silverlight instead. The lack of cooperation might make Flash inferior over time, but that's the risk Adobe took by not agreeing to become a standard when offered the chance.

<comment><USER4> _This guy says that Flash performs consistently across platforms, when it doesn't. That's the main reason for the whole argument, Adobe neglected Macs for years. They did not improve things that could have been improved without Apple's help. Like<http://blog.kaourantin.net/?p=82> _

Agreed. Why has it taken this long to develop a 64-bit version of the Flash plugin for Linux? Yes it's a difficult software development task, but a company like Adobe should thrive on solving difficult software development tasks where its competitors fail. Apple certainly did. One of the main problems that I see with Flash (and Adobe in general) is they make closed platforms--that are bad! If they were closed and worked great they wouldn't have half as many detractors. If they were more open (so that other developers could fix them), same deal. Instead, they're closed and bad which is, in my view, the worst possible situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> He makes good points about video codecs, but it's nonsensical to imply that a 486 could handle anything like modern Flash usage.

<comment><USER6> Not a chance. I remember PCs from that era struggling when playing MP3s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm getting tired of those discussions. From Apple's point of view, Flash is like MSDOS: they don't want to support antiquated apps.

If Flash is so great, just port it to the iPhone and install it (with ad-hoc distribution) to the 100 top journalists and bloggers, and see what they think.

<comment><USER8> It is tiresome now in itself. It is a far more interesting topic to look at from a different point of view though. It is amazing how people will ally themselves zealously when really the sides they are picking are corporate entities vying for future profit margins in one way or another.

It's kind of a holy war of pure capitalism in a way.

<comment><USER9> Except it isn't just between apple and adobe. I wrote a little browser called Arora and constantly had to deal with the pink elephant in the room that was flash. While my browser ran good on arm boxs, tvs, and random embedded hardware eventually those who were messing around with arora on embedded hardware would come and ask me how to run flash at which point my only option was to tell them to give lots of $$$ to adobe who may or may not give them something they can use (assuming x86 or arm to begin with!). On the desktop it wasn't much better. Flash would cause crashes, behave stupid and without the source it made things harder then it should have been. Not to mention memory leaks. I quickly added FlashBlock as a standard feature to Arora. Flash also prevented me from looking into serious process separation (back before it was big with chrome) due to the amount of work involved because of flashes dependency on a top level window. As a user I hate how flash uses memory and cpu. As a developer I just hate flash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The casual game ecosystem is huge and owes its existence to Flash. Casual programmers (i.e. not us on HN) who are more or less graphics designers are not going to be able to grok programming a complex JavaScript html5 app and be able to leverage their graphics skills appropriately. Furthermore, they need their source code and media to be _compiled_ and _closed_ so others don't make quick rip offs of their games and post them as competition on kongregate. Flash is here to stay.

</comment><comment><USER11> "People built it in Flash because there was no other decent technology from companies like Apple, Microsoft or Real Networks that enabled this kind of content to be created and delivered. To say that all this content should be discarded because Steve Jobs is afraid that people will build Flash content that runs on mobile devices running any operating system instead of building content that will only work on Apple mobile devices is doing a disservice to the efforts of all those individuals."

Interesting perspective I haven't seen in other articles on this topic. By existing for years in popularity, its almost a required technology in order to truly maintain internet history, as would be the case with image formats for instance; though, granted, its arguable whether the majority of Flash content is truly worth maintaining in perpetuity.

While certainly it may be displaced as a choice for new content, can Flash ever truly "die" given that a likely sizable portion of the web will never be converted to anything else?

</comment><comment><USER12> Tangential hypothesis du jour: Maybe Apple doesn't want Flash (in the "middleware" sense, ignoring Flash-as-plug-in) on their iAppliances because it would offer a _significantly_ superior development experience when compared to Objective-C/Cocoa? From my experience w/ Flash development, it would be _perfect_ for at least ~50% of the (rather) simple games and applications that are on the App Store nowadays.

In other words: Maybe Apple doesn't want Flash because it's so bad, but because it's too good?

<comment><USER13> As someone who has developed both for Flash and Cocoa: Yes, Flash (and its IDE) is better suited for game development. (2D, sprite-based games, that is. Not 3D.) That said, Flash is _horrible_ for the kinds of programs you would typically use Cocoa for (ones with UI controls, data, etc). Flash's UI controls look and act glitchy. Not a good experience, for developers or users. Flex die-hards may feel otherwise, but I try to stay far away from Flex and any other Flash-based UI-centric apps.

Flash vs XCode is apples-to-oranges. They target different use cases.

<comment><USER14> I've found Flex, particularly MXML+Binding, to be one of the nicest GUI frameworks I've developed with.

However, I'm surprised at how little Apple has emphasized Flash's fatal flaw for mobile: memory use. CPU and Battery are debatable issues, but Flash has serious memory management issues. On a device like the iPhone or iPad, with a max of 256mb of RAM, no swapping, and a browser that has trouble keeping a few "tabs" in memory, adding Flash to the mix seems like a recipe for disaster.

It'll be interesting to see how Android handles this. Hopefully it'll spawn some much-needed improvements to the Flash VM.

<comment><USER15> >However, I'm surprised at how little Apple has emphasized Flash's fatal flaw for mobile: memory use.

It's because this isn't REALLY about technical issues. If it really was, Apple could easily say "Sure, we'll include Flash if you give us a version that performs to our satisfaction under these scenarios, otherwise too bad", and that would be the bulk of the argument for not including Flash. I haven't seen much evidence of this happening.

<comment><USER16> But isn't this pretty much what Jobs said in his rant. To quote: "We have routinely asked Adobe to show us Flash performing well on a mobile device, any mobile device, for a few years now. We have never seen it." The way I see it, "we have ... asked" implies Apple were at least somewhat open to the idea to include Flash support.

<comment><USER15> I stand (partially) corrected. This doesn't seem to be the main argument in all of the stories (see, for example, "freedom from porn"), but there has been a lot of noise in the discussion, so point taken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Drama, drama, drama.

Why don't we just get rid of Flash for good and end it all?

</comment><comment><USER18> Even Apple users does not find this reasonable. And also here is an opinion pool which shows most of the people thinks that this is a wrong move: <http://www.applevsadobe.net>

<comment><USER5> Wow. That is not even close to being a legitimate poll.</comment></comment>


Useful Meteor resources to get started - <AUTHOR> http://themeteorbook.com/2013/02/10/useful-meteor-resources/

<comment><USER2> FYI: There is a book on Meteor by Isaac Strack already out (released in late December). It's called Getting Started with Meteor.js.

It's a decent book for getting your hands dirty with Meteor. I'm looking forward to the book in the link also.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't seem to be available anymore, sadly. Link for the lazy: <https://leanpub.com/getting-started-with-meteorjs>

<comment><USER4> still available on Amazon [http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Meteor-js- JavaScript-F...](http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Meteor-js-JavaScript- Framework/dp/1782160825)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Using statistics to restore pixel art images - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/victorqribeiro/pixelRestorer <comment><AUTHOR> On my way to create a color cycle like this one - [http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/](http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/) \- I end up creating this "app". The goal was to restore pixel art images. In order for me to do that I needed two things: figure out the "size of the pixel"* and coloring that pixel with the most likely color (of all it's neighbors). So i wrote a basic algorithm that tries to figure it the "size of the pixel"* and then color that pixel using mean, mode or median. I then make the whole thing happen as if it was "rendering" so you can see the affected pixels one by one.

*pixel is the smallest part of an image, when I say size of the pixel is that the artist may define a square of 8 by 8 real pixels as a pixel on its work.</comment>


CVE-2014-6273: Buffer overflow vulnerability vulnerability in apt-get - <AUTHOR> https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2014/msg00219.html <comment><USER2> The old code (see patch: [https://gist.github.com/AGWA/4069e45856ed261ac0af](https://gist.github.com/AGWA/4069e45856ed261ac0af)) was using sprintf and strcat on a fixed size buffer, which are huge red flags of a type which security-bug-hunting analysis tools know about. The fact that a bug like that was still there means that people are just recently taking a close look at apt, and there are probably more findings to come.

</comment><comment><USER3> I noticed that Ubuntu only gave the patch for this vulnerability a "low" priority[1]. Furthermore, they state that "The default compiler options for affected releases should reduce the vulnerability to a denial of service". Can someone enlighten me 1) What was the compiler flags used to harden this flaw? 2) Was the same compiler flags used to compile Debian packages?

Thanks,

[1] [https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/trusty/+source/apt/1.0.1ubuntu2...](https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/trusty/+source/apt/1.0.1ubuntu2.4.1) [2] [http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-2353-1/](http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-2353-1/) [3] [http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu- security/cve/2014/CVE-20...](http://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu- security/cve/2014/CVE-2014-6273.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there any evidence of this having been used in the wild anywhere? If I understand correctly it could have been exploited by people running http apt repositories, or those intercepting the connection?

It seems all my default repositories are http, and not https as I had initially assumed, so this seems pretty bad.

<comment><USER5> [https://wiki.debian.org/SecureApt](https://wiki.debian.org/SecureApt)

Upshot is, apt doesn't need to be served over https because when it fetches Release, it also fetches Release.gpg and verifies the signature contained therein. If it can't fetch or the sig doesn't verify, it squawks.

<comment><USER6> I was going to say: "but if you get MITMed, the attacker can replace the Release.gpg as well", but clearly I didn't understand GPG signage: an attacker won't have Debian's private keys and so won't be able to produce valid signatures.

Spelling out my derp in case someone else had the same thought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How did they even discover this in the first place? Fuzzing every software they use? I know Google has a team dedicated to find exploits...

<comment><USER8> They may have found a way to automate testing software that's more in-depth then say valgrind. Maybe involving machine learning.

Most buffer overflow exploits likely rely on common patterns in source code (if you ignore variable names). Which could be taught to a computer.

Actually 90% of buffer overflows result in the length of your read and the place of read coming from highly independent sources.

<comment><USER9> I just got a shiver thinking about Google's machine learning ingesting most of GNU/Linux source code from distros, and "learning" how to write software better than a human.

<comment><USER10> Machine learning applied to vulnerability research in open source code distributions =/= strong AI.

<comment><USER9> Well, maybe not yet. I think its silly to start discounting what level of AI we'll be able to develop with enough computing power and storage.

Not to say we'll be able to duplicate biological system levels of computing in silicon, but who knows. Technology is moving pretty damn fast.

<comment><USER8> >but who knows. Technology is moving pretty damn fast.

We've been saying this for nearly 70 years. I'm still waiting.

<comment><USER9> You can ask your phone for the weather and to change the temperature of your home. You can store your entire music collection on a device the size of a postage stamp (512GB Sandisk MicroSD card). There are cars that can literally _drive themselves_. There is mini version of the space shuttle that runs completely autonomously _in space_ , and has loitered up there for over a year, waiting to come home when it receives a specially coded signal. IBM has software that is slowly replacing doctors and lawyers.

The future is already here.

<comment><USER11> A lot of the modern changes are a difference in size or extent, but not in kind. I mean to say: A small hard drive replacing a massive hard drive is very, very useful. But it's not, by itself, any smarter than the magnetic core storage that filled a room. You could ask your Nokia dumbphone for the weather using a text message 15 years ago. People were wiring their home lighting systems into the internet by the early 2000s. Of course, it was more ad-hoc and expensive then. Now you can go down to Best Buy and buy a home automation kit for a few hundred dollars.

The miniaturization and extension of digital technology into every part of our lives and waking moments is extraordinary. But it's not, by itself, much of a guarantee that we'll see strong AI. It's probably necessary but not sufficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can't seem to find a link to the patch - I'd like to take a look at the fix. Anyone know where I could find it?

<comment><USER13> This diff appears to contain the patch: [https://launchpadlibrarian.net/185571456/apt_0.7.25.3ubuntu9...](https://launchpadlibrarian.net/185571456/apt_0.7.25.3ubuntu9.17_0.7.25.3ubuntu9.17.1.diff.gz)

For example, you can see the change in cdrom: handling code as mentioned in the security notice.

<comment><USER14> That doesn't contain the buffer overflow fix. You can tell from the diff of the changelog that the fix is already there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is the doubled "vulnerability" in the title supposed to mean anything? As if this could only be a problem when used in concert with another vulnerability? Because if that's what it's supposed to mean, I disagree. This vuln by itself is bad.

<comment><USER16> Nope; that looks like a typo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The official wheezy ISO is 7.6.0, released in August. Thus it doesn't have a fix for this vulnerability or the one from earlier this month. How do you update to avoid this vulnerability without exposing yourself to it?

<comment><USER18> You could mitigate it somewhat by switching your sources to HTTPS, assuming you trust the mirror you're using. (The official ftp.xx.debian.org mirrors don't support this, but some popular mirrors do; you're still at the mercy of your mirror, but not vulnerable to MITM attacks.)

You could also download the package via normal HTTP and install it with dpkg: [https://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/debian- security/pool/update...](https://mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu/debian- security/pool/updates/main/a/apt/apt_0.9.7.9+deb7u5_amd64.deb) (download the appropriate arch, of course)

If you're deploying lots of wheezy systems, you could also rebuild the cd images (especially the netboot/netinst ones) very easily; the debian-installer docs are very detailed, and there are only a few steps.

Note also that there are discussions for issuing a new release in the near future happening on the mailing list: [https://lists.debian.org/debian- release/2014/09/msg00292.htm...](https://lists.debian.org/debian- release/2014/09/msg00292.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if the Google Security Team are reviewing aptitude as well...

edit: though aptitude depends on libapt-pkg, so quite possibly this bug affects aptitude too :(

<comment><USER20> Yeap, I guess they'll do that, if they intend to use it. That's one of the many positive things that come when big corps use open source products :-)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Werbot – a product for easy audit and control of access to servers - <AUTHOR> https://www.werbot.com <comment><AUTHOR> From my work experience (such as software development and daily work with all kind of servers) I know that the most of companies (not only me) are constantly facing the following problems:

1\. How to give access to an employee or a freelancer to the server and monitor their work?

2\. How to provide one-time server access to outsourced developers so that they can perform the work and never use this access again?

3\. How to restrict access to the server by time or by place?

4\. How to be sure that any person having access to the server will not harm or install unnecessary software on it?

5\. How to prevent storing server access in tasks, emails or tables that are not the safest storage place?

6\. How quickly and safely give access to all employees if it has been changed?

7\. How to protect the server resources from hacker attacks?

There are many more problems indeed, so I started to develop a platform that solves these problems and allows developers to do useful work and not use their time worrying about these problems. Having more than 16 years of experience in software development and an extensive customer database, I can state that almost all IT companies, banks, educational institutions, and even government agencies have the same problems. All the contacted companies (banks, outsource developing company, games developing, web and application developing companies) are interested in a simple solution to these problems.

<comment><USER3> I like the UI of this product, but how does it differ from using Vault's[1] SSH secret engine?

[1][https://www.vaultproject.io/api/secret/ssh/index.html](https://www.vaultproject.io/api/secret/ssh/index.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> SSH Secrets Engine most likely acts as an API and uses a different work model than we do. An important fact about Werbot is that there is no need to install additional software on a local machine or a remote server.

Werbot passes all the traffic through itself and all verifications take place directly in the core of the system. We do not change the way you are used to work on servers, we change the way you connect to them. Each connection is made with a single sign on (for example, email@example.com if using our SaaS version) and a user's private key. Once the user is signed on, a list of all available servers is displayed to him and he can automatically connect to one of them by just selecting the needed item on the list.

In the user's profile you can see the user's activity and the working time. Additional server access settings can be also managed through user's profile, for example you can set different access limitations by geolocation, IP, country or time schedule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's very hard to trust some random new company with your comany's servers. Even if we trust YOU, a single bug that leads to leak your certificate, the keys or the stored sessions (which are literally everything! they are literally the company itself) would be a disaster for all your customers, especially when the whole product is managed and closed source. Also Gravitational's Teleport does the same thing and it's FOSS. It's just hard for me to see a serious business that would trust you and proxy their entire SSH sessions through you just for the sake of authentication/authorization while there are many alternative FOSS and more trusted alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problems! Use the Enterprise version on your servers.

<comment><USER4> Why would I pay $12,000/year for a self-hosted closed source SSH proxy+SSO while Teleport, a FOSS and battle tested alternative exists? Also something like Pritunl can does the same functionality along with a zillion more features while being more scalable and supports any protocol since it's a real VPN while only paying $50/month.

UPDATE: It seems also that Cloudflare's Access supports SSH and SSO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me suppose that you do not exactly know the price of 1 sever maintenance provided by Symantec, CyberArk or CheckPoint. The VPN or Cloudflare's Access solutions you are talking about, are designed for other purposes. Teleport is working in another way at all. I understand that you are supporting FOSS and it's very good! I do not exclude the possibility to become a FOSS product one day. The most important thing is that you don't need to install any additional software on the client machine or server!

<comment><USER4> >Symantec, CyberArk or CheckPoint

These are huge and public companies and are lots of regulation and scrutiny by the government and investors and are a big target for hackers and adversary governments and that's why they spend a fortune to keep their reputation clean. I don't think you should compare yourself to them.

>VPN or Cloudflare's Access solutions you are talking about, are designed for other purposes

What other purposes? please enlighten me

>The most important thing is that you don't need to install any additional software on the client machine or server

so your product works by authenticating uses via your webapp's SSO for example and then the client has to manually download the private keys and certificates and use them with the ssh command?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The prices are way too high. We run about 50 servers (the number varies between 30 and 70). As a small team we rely a lot on freelancers to handle peaks. Such a tool would be very cool, but is not priced right. In addition, we would have to pay 1000 $ per month, but often dont need all of it. A pay as you use variant would be the minimum. In addition, at least some parts of such a product should be open source. Possibly under strict licenses, but auditable and usable in all versions on your own server. This does not exclude a complementary SaaS offer. Btw: Free trail without CC would be nice. Not giving you any data without showing me something...

</comment><comment><USER6> A similar tool with seamless integration with Github+Gitlab => [http://github.com/samber/sync-ssh-keys](http://github.com/samber/sync-ssh- keys)

</comment><comment><USER7> I came across this on IndieHackers a while back, seems like it's doing a similar thing but is free [https://serverauth.com](https://serverauth.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it's not exactly what we are doing.

Our interaction with servers is different. Every server session is recorded and can be replayed in the user profile. Also the server owner can see in real time who is working on the server.

I have already left a comment here above giving some details that differ us from other existing solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does it work for containers as well? I can imagine it'll be pretty expensive if you need to pay by the number of servers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am testing it on containers. If a container has an ssh server - <USER2> works without any problem.

Maybe I will update the start tariff.

</comment></comment><comment> tim-- How is the screen recorded, and where are those sessions stored?

<comment><AUTHOR> An important note - it doesn't require to install additional software on the server!

Werbot passes the entire user session through itself and records it in asciinema format. All records are stored in the database. In the future, it will be possible to download each session in SVG or mp4 format.

<comment> tim-- What happens then when werbot is down? I'm assuming this is a hosted service? What happens when a session is a day long, and the output is a verbose compilation of Firefox? Is that still all stored in the database?</comment></comment></comment>


Don't run this on any system you expect to be up they said, but we did it anyway - <AUTHOR> https://www.byte.nl/blog/dont-run-this-on-any-system-you-expect-to-be-up-they-said-but-we-did-it-anyway <comment><USER2> So... they're not running any kind of devops system at all. If they were, they could just run the upgrade on the image, test it, deploy it. All the "months of careful planning and many many tests" they did are basically wasted time.

I wouldn't be proud of this, quite the opposite. I would suggest critically reviewing the entire infrastructure management strategy since months lost to a single upgrade is obviously indicative of greater problems.

<comment><USER3> It sounds to me like they are in fact running a giant devops system, all for the purpose of not using virtual static IPs.

Instead of just provisioning fresh VMs and migrating customer data they're doing this massive upgrade in place on existing machines to avoid losing the assigned IPs.

I guess they decided the benefits of being cloud provider agnostic outweighed the downside of spending months of man hours automating in-place OS upgrades.

<comment><USER2> A good system can handle multiple requirements. You present a false dichotomy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A nice writeup of a neat (if risky) upgrade.

> static IPs

FWIW, I personally love Virtual IPs (VIPs) for this (basically, an existing network interface advertises serving more than one IP, and can change that IP dynamically between servers with an arp call). The downside is that there are a lot of cloud providers who don't support externally available VIPs. They do, however, offer their own nearly-identical solution (such as Elastic IPs from Amazon).

The use of VIPs or similar could have potentially avoided the need for such a risky upgrade, potentially also saving millions of dollars in the process. Of course, I could simply be missing some hidden requirement from customers that they _couldn 't_ use VIPs but that's pretty uncommon, even in the finance industry.

<comment><USER5> That's addressed in the article: "We purposely don't employ dynamic IPs to retain multi-cloud deployment capabilities and prevent vendor lock-in with one platform."

<comment><USER6> I was really confused by this. Cloud vendors are not bring-your-own-IP AFAIK, how can they even get a non-virtual static IP addresses on the cloud?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They're still taking downtime for this... Even if they're forced to have a no- VIP no-HA no-LB setup (seems insane to me) it should be much simpler to set the DNS TTL to a low value right before and switch it to the new IP after the new box comes up.

<comment><USER8> That assumes they have control over the DNS. Sounds like they don't with many end customers.

<comment><USER7> They shouldn't be giving their customers a static IP, they should be giving them a 'customername.ourplatform.com' address that the customer can point a CNAME at.

<comment><USER9> This was addressed in the article: There is a tendency within that industry of whitelisting API access etc. by source IP, so their customers do need static IPs not primarily for inbound traffic, but to be able to access the APIs they need.

Now it's still stupid of them to not abstract that away from the individual customer servers but, but this issue isn't solved with cname's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> On the one hand I am very impressed they managed this, but on the other, it does seem very sledgehammer/nut-esque. Even without virtual IPs, it seems a little silly that their customers weren't running N+1 redundant instances that could be taken out, upgraded and then swapped without disrupting normal operations.

Again, very impressive as an academic exercise, especially considering the given script isn't actually that complicated, but wow, they had some serious guts running this in production!

</comment><comment><USER11> "It was like replacing the wheels on a moving vehicle"

That reminds me of this crazy video I once watched. [https://youtube.com/watch?v=Cad8fyYeFnY](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Cad8fyYeFnY)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the authors lost a good opportunity to move towards containers to avoid these problems in the future. While interesting academically, is wrong for the long run

</comment><comment><USER13> Given how much memory some servers have these days, which for an application node is often more than the necessary hard-disk capacity, this is quite a clever approach.

</comment><comment><USER14> My first thought was that it talks about `reboot` binary

</comment><comment><USER15> Very nice!</comment>


Buses on Quantum Schedules - <AUTHOR> http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathtrek_3_26_01.html

<comment><USER2> My experience with micro-bus (Pesero) transport in Mexico City was quite eye opening. If you are able bodied, it is quite efficient transport. The rates are inexpensive and you can get almost anywhere in the city at 60-70% of private traffic speed.

What isn't mentioned in the article is that not only isn't there a schedule, but often times, there aren't even labeled bus stops -- there is just a route. So, it encourages another sort of optimization: people looking for a ride tend to clump. If you're on the corner by yourself and you're not able bodied or don't aggressively jump on the bus, you may be waiting for a very long time. Also, these micro-bus will pass each other by going "express" and skipping whole blocks of potential riders to resolve a clumping issue.

The routes themselves are fixed by some sort of agency, and there is a union that, with seniority each driver/company gets assigned to lucrative routes. The article claims the micro-bus are owned by the driver. I don't think this is that common, typically drivers are hired and paid on commission. Although it is true that Pesero are independently owned & operated.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm currently living in Oxford and can say first-hand that bus clustering is a real phenomenon. It happens here all the time, and also I can relate it to my hometown (Kraków, Poland), where this almost never happens.

In Poland most of the buses have many doors and passengers board and leave vehicles quickly. In Oxford, boarding through front doors means that the first bus may stay on the bus stop for several minutes.</comment>


A Timeless, Lightweight Barcode Component - <AUTHOR> https://www.progsbase.com/industrialcases/industrial-case-a-timeless-light-weight-barcode-component/ <comment><USER2> Will there be 2D symbologies supported, like QRcode?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the library will be expanded with functionality.</comment></comment>


Paul Buchheit amused by Likewithyou's camtoy - <AUTHOR> http://www.iminlikewithyou.com/camtoys/play/1414 <comment><USER2> Hey that's cool. How'd they do it? I guess some sort of logic to look for movement in the image and put the stars around it?

<comment><USER3> Flash (and other) video compression uses a similar algorithm to look for parts of a video that are more static. (To avoid re-sending information about a static background, for example.) I'd guess it's a modification from compression technology.

to avoid re-sending information about a static background for example. I wonder if they built theirs from scratch or just modified

<comment><USER4> They're just overlaying sprites (stars in this case) in areas of high deltas (changes). That's all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> it would be cool if the sprites had some ballistic motion after they were spawned... with velocity based on the initial direction of the delta that spawned the sprite + some gravity, maybe some turbulence and random lifespans and size changes.

I've had too many years making particle effects....

</comment><comment><USER6> Very cool. So this is what Justin was flipping out over at the YC mixer, I take it?

</comment><comment><USER7> Hey, that's one way to flirt with the ladies...casting your spell.

</comment><comment><USER8> That is pretty gosh darn impressive. Good work guys!</comment>