This is how I feel about online shopping. I used to naively dream that a retail aggregator like Amazon would crack the problem. By having large numbers of customers leave reviews (or even return unsatisfactory products), I imagined that the good products would rise to the top. To my surprise, Amazon hasn't seemed particularly interested in advancing this area. Search results are dominated by freshly minted sellers with randomly generated names. I often receive products with a piece of paper inside that begs me to let them know if I have any problems so that they can basically bribe me to keep quiet and not put a negative review on Amazon.

The obfuscation arms race, as you so aptly put it.

Programming is writing code at one snapshot in time.

Software engineering is mapping that code backwards and forwards through time, making sure it works with what comes before and what comes after, in both technical and business aspects.

1. Early VC funds are used to subsidize Uber rides at a loss to Uber.

2. The deep discounts made Uber attractive to drivers and customers.

3. Uber's soaring popularity attracts more investment in Uber stock.

4. Uber's early investors cash out. Society is harmed as later investors lose their money, Uber drivers who invested in vehicles can no longer get work, public transit ridership is hollowed out, etc.

Disclaimer: I work on Google search.

“Here, you see, it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.”

-Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass

I appreciate the sentiment, but five hours?! That's your example of an acceptable low level of performance for someone working from home with a child with no possibility of childcare?

I'm splitting card of my toddler with my spouse, and on my BEST days, I get 3 hours of actual work done. 1.5 is more typical, and that's only because the toddler takes 2 hour naps.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21434578

Points: 190

# Comments: 278

I suspect induced demand is more of an effect with highways than housing. People can change their driving habits from day to day more easily than they can change their living habits.

Expand a highway, and more people in the area start taking more car trips on it.

Add housing, and more people don't instantly come into existence to occupy it. (Maybe, over a few years, people stop cramming themselves into crowded roommate arrangements as much, and over decades they have more kids.)

But if I granted that induced demand applied to both...

Driving is a means to an end. People stuck in traffic are suffering.

Having a home is an end in itself. People need shelter, and living near your community/job/family is a huge quality of life improvement.

Plus, when you expand a highway, strictly more mileage is created. It's not like the additional car trips in this city are taking the place of car trips in another state. It's a net loss for society and the environment.

Whereas, when you add housing, even if it induces more people to move into that city, they're moving out of some other city, easing the demand in the housing market there.

I'm also a biker. In 2013, 4,735 pedestrians and 743 bicyclists were killed in crashes with motor vehicles. http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/data/factsheet_crash.cfm

In the future when self-driving or at least augmented driving is commonplace, I hope that number will be a lot lower.

Suppose you want to write a function that returns all the nodes in a tree that satisfy some property. In C++ you have to define two different versions (or use templates to make the compiler clone it for you):

  vector GetGoodNodes(Node* root);
  vector GetGoodNodes(const Node* root);