skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I agree that there certainly could be an argument towards classifying drivers as employees. The fact that the app would not function without drivers is definitely a meaningful one, though it also raises troubling questions over whether Ebay sellers (for example) should also be classified as employees.

Like you said, it's a multi-pronged and complicated test. I actually think Uber could meet a majority of the IRS factors.[1]

Namely:

1. Instructions: Uber does not instruct drivers about when, where, or how to drive.

2. Training: by most reports, Uber provides no training to drivers. (In fact, this is an argument which Uber detractors often use against it.)

3. Services Rendered Personally: as far as I know, Uber doesn't forbid you from hiring your friend to drive your car around with your Uber account open. (HIRING, SUPERVISING, AND PAYING ASSISTANTS might also apply here.)

4. Set Hours of Work: You can drive whenever you want.

5. Full Time Required: You can only drive a few hours a week.

6. Doing Work On Employer's Premise: This test is somewhat less applicable, but Uber doesn't require their drivers to (for example) come to a company HQ at the beginning of their shift.

7. Payment By Hour, Week, or Month: The bulk of driver payments depend on miles driven for customers, not hours "worked."

8. PAYMENT OF BUSINESS AND/OR TRAVELING EXPENSES: Uber does not compensate drivers for any of their (substantial) expenses.

9. FURNISHING OF TOOLS AND MATERIALS: Drivers provide all their own equipment.

10. SIGNIFICANT INVESTMENT: This is arguable, but many drivers are known to buy new cars just to drive for Uber.

11. REALIZATION OF PROFIT OR LOSS: This is definitely plausible. If drivers don't keep a firm grasp on their expenses or spend too much time driving around looking for riders, they can definitely suffer a loss.

12. WORKING FOR MORE THAN ONE FIRM AT A TIME: Uber drivers often simultaneously work for Lyft or other ridesharing services.

This isn't cut-and-dry and we shouldn't treat it as such.

[1] https://www.mdc.edu/hr/Operations/AFS/IRSFactorTest.pdf
I agree. Sometimes though pressure from management puts an engineer in a no-win situation. I'm not saying this happened in this accident.

If management pressure forces an engineer to do something which will risk the lives of others, then the engineer must have saved enough of an emergency fund to quit as that is the only way out of such a situation.
That might be because the Physicists had help from Mathematicians before and are just passing it on. I don't think that's quite true though, i like to believe that polymaths and university aren't quite dead in academics.
I was a huge Amiga fan in the 80s, but I'm really not seeing anything beyond nostalgic value for the brand in 2015. That value is strictly limited in cash terms.

When Jobs came back Apple stopped being beige and started producing fun, quirky, colourful computers with iconic visual design. Jobs didn't try to re-release the Apple Mac - he tried to produce a product that had the USP of the original Mac, but with newer technology and better design.

A successful Amiga reboot would have to reinvent the Amiga difference and not just produce something average that happens to run AmigaOS. You'd have to introduce technology maybe five years ahead of the market mainstream and dramatise it with show-stealingly awesome demos.

That's a hard thing to do in 2015 - possibly harder than it was in 1985 - and anyone planning to do it probably won't be aiming at any of the current computing form factors.
An app to create 360 videos
Thanks - I doubt it will happen any time soon (or at all), but it is always something on the back of my mind. I'd be willing to work around existing hardware potentially. Primarily I would be interested in creating a really simple, elegant OS/IDE/compiler/language/etc - even if that means limiting it to one set of hardware (I am totally a custom-built PC guy, but console-ish devices have their virtues). I'd really like to bring back CPU-based graphics programming (even if the means to it is GPU-style parallel architecture).
Hey, I'm a software engineer on Cloud SQL.

We hear you. We know this is a problem. Unfortunately, there are non-trivial infrastructure changes that need to happen before we can make progress, but it's high on our list of priorities. Once we can make it happen, we will.

Right now, the proxy linked below is a good solution, particularity for Managed VMs.
There are 3rd-party sites that already do this, not to mention some or all of the travel sites.
But what is the relevant "duck" here? What actual dynamic is the law trying to enforce? Any good law tries to align individual incentives with a social optimum, and I don't see how it's doing that here.

As best I can tell, employment law is trying to achieve the goal of "to the extent that you make a person economically dependent on you in the short term, you must provide that person some benefits that make up for that dependence". Hence why contractors get treated one way and employees another.

But then the law goes about it the wrong way by having a sharp discontinuity that encourages employers to make the relationship such that they get all of the advantages of such dependence, but stay just on the side of "you're still a contractor". For example, as it stands now, employers strengthen their case by making the worker bring their own tools.

A sane law would be more continuous: as you introduce more dependence of the worker on you, you most provide increasingly more benefits to cancel the problem that introduces. Though I admit that would involve a huge refactoring.

Trying to resolve whether someone "is" a contractor is (in the grander scheme) asking the wrong question, like debating whether alcoholism "is" a disease (cf Scott Alexander's "non central fallacy" or "worst argument in the world").
Why do you suppose Uber created a reputation system and vets their drivers? They certainly weren't required to, but they profit from reducing asymmetry because consumers want to know their ride will be a pleasant experience.

Mandating the features Uber voluntarily chose to add will only hold future competitors back when some new type of technology moves beyond our existing capabilities. And good luck removing those regulations once those are in place. You'll have powerful companies like Uber fighting tooth and nail to keep competitors out of the market.
I don't think the point of the article is that gentrification isn't actually happening. I think it's that while people often talk about gentrification as a bad thing - something that hurts the poor - gentrification is actually more often a good thing:

"McKinnish and her colleagues found that gentrification created neighborhoods that were attractive to minority households, particularly households with children or elderly homeowners. They found no evidence of displacement or harm. While most of the income gains in these neighborhoods went to white college graduates under the age of 40 (the archetypical gentrifiers), black high school graduates also saw their incomes rise. They also were more likely to stay put. In short, black households with high school degrees seemed to benefit from gentrification."

And while people, including myself before reading the article, think of gentrification as a widespread phenomenon that is happening all over the US, it's actually only happening in three cities: New York, Chicago, and Washington.
Yes, and this will only get passed by the legislatures of red states.
> Anything more than the simplest scheme is going to fall over at production scale.

Then we need a simpler scheme that still allows people to understand that two can work at the same time. Everyone hates merging regardless of their technical ability, even software developers, but I refuse to believe that it's a hopeless task to build a tool for merging artwork.
Totally agree with you. As I mentioned in another comment, I'd like to kind of rethink things on the software end (and possibly the hardware end if that were in the budget). Anyhow, I doubt I'd be involved in such a thing with current obligations stretching out several years already, but it is nice to think about. :)
CNT (carbon nanotube transistor) is an unfortunate acronym. I can't imagine explaining that to my Mother.
The cars could easily have some sort of universal function to figure this out. Off the top of my head: The northmost car could go first, and if two cars are both "equally equally north" then the eastmost car could go.
Uber will kick you off if you refuse to many rides. That's not an open marketplace and interfears with using Uber and Lyft at the same second.
Diet = 99%
Other Factors = therest%
All you need is to capture and view the traffic at the network level. You can easily do that off-device when using wifi.
Could you elaborate? How can it wreck one's thinking? I mean, maybe I'm wrong but your writing as if it is dangerous to read for the untrained to read.

I agree with singularity being like a religion. I think the singularity is nonsense. On the otherhand I don't think the rest of your accusations are accurate.

First, I'm not sure I would name Yudkowsky the leader of the singularity culture. Of lesswrong certainly, but lesswrong is dead. Yudkowsky is about as much a leader of the singularity stuff, as P.G. is of "hacker" culture. A big name with writings on philosophy and the culture. Honeslty I would name Kurzweil as a far bigger person w.r.t singularity stuff. He is far more known.

Furthermore no where does Yudkowsky say anything like "if you follow me you'll be saved". In fact he probably believes the singularity will save everyone (if friendly a.i).

This is where I expect you to bring up Roko's Basilisk. For those unaware, Roko's Basilisk is the idea that a A.I may retroactively punish people who didn't assist in it's development. Therefore if you don't want to suffer you should donate money and time to creating A.I.

First of all, this was idea was created by a guy called, Roko. Not Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky doesn't believe it. Yudkowsky's response among other things was to say that it was not ethical of Roko to write about the basilisk, if Roko really believed it to be true.

Kind of like how sometimes atheists will say that Christians shouldn't proselytize to people who have never heard of Christianity, because if they don't know about it, God can't very well send them to hell for their disbelief.

Anyways I am interested to hear why you felt so strongly you had to warn us off him. The hate Yudkowsky gets is something I don't understand but want too.
Amsterdam has very good rent protection. That slows down gentrification. Also, the Netherlands subsidizes rents for low income people.

Without rent protection, landlords would in many cases more than double rents overnight. That would almost immediately drive out the less well-to-do people, even in the presence of subsidies on rents.
I cannot find full fat yogurt in any of my local grocery stores. Is "low fat" as good as it gets? Seems like the low-fat diet craze of the recent past, and the current greek yogurt phenomenon, mean that "zero fat" and "low fat" are the only two options.
>sometimes these audits are people asking the managers "do you do this?".

I work for one of the large pro services firms that does internal audit, compliance/risk projects, strategy consulting, etc.

I'd argue that unless there are explicit sets of controls that HAVE to be tested as part of the project scope (which is usually defined by regulatory requirements), most audits are just people asking questions and ticking off boxes on a checklist. Most of the bigger firms even staff these projects with fresh graduates that often know absolutely nothing about what they're auditing.
As a note, there is a longer study, weekly for 3.5 years, that has been published, in part, at: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.....

The results in this paper relate to the functional MRI aspect of the study.
One million requests per second: Dependable dynamic distributed systems at scale
I have a friend who's been directly supporting a single orphan in Kenya and put him all the way through school making sure he was fed, clothed, and taken care of. Such programs take stable governments and some level of state infrastructure, but seeing him grow up happy, healthy and educated has been worth every penny to her.
I just want to say, as an Engineer this is why you don't willingly break the law for a company. I had a job where I stayed for less then 3 months because they wanted me to use the community version of Visual Studio. Except it broke the terms of service and I could be liable if they tried the "blame the engineer game." Otherwise it was a great company that was doing innovative and fun things. They just wanted me to break the law, and I said no.

P.S. This was innocent on the companies part, they thought it was OK and didn't read the TOS, when I brought this to their attention they entered "talks" with Microsoft to get a new set of licenses, I just wasn't willing to accommodate them in the short term. I also didn't know what the talks were so I had to cover my butt and get out.
Your writing implies you think Yudkowsky believes/promotes the Basilisk. Are you not aware he thinks that is nonsense?
Unrestrained
The blockchain Gold rush
I still don't really understand this all discussion around Telegram. MTProto is used just with the regular chats and they decided to use a custom protocol "In order to achieve reliability on weak mobile connections as well as speed when dealing with large files (such as photos, large videos and files up to 1,5 GB)" (from the FAQ). There is also a pretty long discussion here http://unhandledexpression.com/2013/12/17/telegram-stand-bac... between Telegram developers and another "security expert", where the practical reasons for their choices are explained (might be outdated, but it's still interesting to see why certain more secure algorithms might not be always the best solution). Providing cloud services, robustness and reliability can come at a cost unfortunately.

If you care about having a really private conversation, just instantiate the Secret Chat. It's state of the art in terms of security. Just one of the many benchmarks https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard.
I find that eating something with fat and protein does a better job than fat alone. On days when I add in a mozzarella cheese, I feel satiated much longer than a fruit+nut bar alone (also have a tablespoon of coconut oil in my coffee).
How do you regulate Uber to not take the mindshare of ride sharing services so it doesn't become a monopoly?

The problem with Uber, and Facebook, and Twitter, etc is that to have competition you need users, and to have users you need mindshare, and whoever is on top always has the mindshare.

Its also a modern phenomenon. You could Xerox it while competing copiers could effectively compete in the market by making a better product for value and getting fewer sales as a result of less marketing and brand recognition than what Xerox had, whose customers than pay an advertising and brand premium. Same with kleenex, or even search. The dominance of a competitor does not impair the competitions ability to compete unless those competitors use force of law to break a free market.

With Uber and Lyft, the more dominant Uber is, the less likely Lyft can get drivers and thus the less likely Lyft can get customers because Uber has all the customers and drivers. Its the same problem you have with operating systems, where you need the software users want, but the software also needs users to justify the investment, which is how Microsoft can continue to dominate with a demonstrably inferior product.

I'd love for there to be a way to break up mindshare monopolies, but destroying Uber through tax regulation and killing an entire fledgling industry is anything but a solution.
London 'hoverboard' bus crash teenager dies
Or just have people mail you a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE)? Then you can just put the stickers in it and drop them in the mail (plus, you don't have to buy or address envelopes)
http://www.heifer.org/gift-catalog/animals-nutrition/index.h... lets you donate the amount for a specific animal to give to a family. I'm not sure if the money ends up getting spread out or is actually used to buy X goats, but it's pretty close to what you're looking for. They're doing exactly what this article calls for too.
I've seen that before, but it's what I was referring to as "recruitment tactics." It seems pretty clear that the primary thing these people were trying to was to recruit drivers (and canceling drivers they'd already spoken to), not systematically disrupting Lyft service. For one thing, the scale is just too minuscule to matter. In a market where Uber is doing a million rides per day, 5,000 rides over months is nothing.[1]

That being said, disrupting availability on sensitive days (ex. holidays) could make a lot more sense in terms of sabotaging a competitor, which is why I was keen to see evidence of that. Unfortunately the link you provided has no evidence of holiday cancellations.

[1] http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/uber-statistics/
Same here, and with the lowercase "the", my mind kept reading it as "How the Food Industry Engineers Need to Eat". Unfortunate but I don't think it's wrong.
How would you find this individual? You'd need some sort of organization to run a vetting process to find someone who is optimal for your criteria.

Just that first step makes the process fairly expensive. Which is why charities exist.
Facebook security warning over expiring algorithm
If anybody is interested in this kind of thing, here is an hour-long talk with a freelance analyst who disassembled the BMW i3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDr4L6BzpP8&feature=youtu.be

His agency is selling that report for $500,000. I found the whole thing quite fascinating.
Is it 2013 all over again?

This book is old news.
My main takeaway is that financial crises affect everybody (ex: oil recessions from low cost tend to limit damage to oil producers and economy of cities reliant on them, whereas everybody depends on money and the availability of credit) and at greater levels than other kinds of recessions. When credit crunches, people who were on the margins or even comfortably in debt end up in precarious positions where there is little help available, and the only bailout beneficiaries are big banks.

I suppose the reason far-right political groups benefit is because when people lose their possessions, all they are left with is their identity, and a lot of anger. This can feed resentment at any "other" group responsible for their travesty, whether it be a foreign power (WWI victors), internal distinct subgroup (Jews in Germany; Muslims in America/Europe; welfare recipients), or even religion (Arab Spring and ISIS being correlated with the global recession and rise in food prices).

History shows that any extreme cannot last forever, but it can do damage that lasts for generations. The extreme right may be wrong, but the conditions make them attractive. And dangerous.
You haven't missed much. The Gherkin is as deprived of a soul as the other towers in the city; and the bar at the top is just a place to bring clients so they can say "I've been to the top of the Gherkin." It's just a really sad place, and I don't miss working there. (If you have to go though, I can recommend Association – a coffee shop around the corner which is really nice. Despite all the cheap suits.)
Here is the best summary I've seen on IF...

http://antranik.org/intermittent-fasting/

btw, I've been practicing IF for 2+ years and love it.
Personally I'm not sure, because it seems like both of you are right. Perhaps it is that lawyers are there to find loopholes but present them as if they aren't.
Art in refugee camp highlights Steve Jobs' Syrian ancestry
Cybercriminals will target Apple in 2016, say experts
IF is by definition just about constraining your food intake to a certain window of time. Most people do this later in the day out of necessity or habit (e.g. 2-7), but there's no reason your window couldn't be 6-10.

The downside is that you are much more likely to cheat if you do this, because now you have to go all afternoon and evening without eating, and then go to sleep. Psychologically it's much easier to wake up and be able to say "only 6 more hours to eat" and go to bed a few hours after your last meal than it is to eat your last meal, have 12 waking hours left, then try to go to sleep with a grumbling belly.

Edit: A lot of people practice IF without even realizing it. The most popular form (mentioned in rob_61's linked article) is 16/8. If you don't eat until lunch and don't do a late dinner, it's very likely you fall in the 16/8 window.
Drivers are like employees in someways and contractors in someways. We currently have square holes and round holes. Drivers are hexagons and don't match either.

Forcing them into either hole will have negative consequences.
Threatened with what? Severe disappointment?
How much water have you had? Eat something fatty and high in protein. Your body never enters fat burning mode - as you get used to fasting once per week this process will get easier, like anything really.
So will most marketplaces. Ex. if you decline too many guests on Airbnb, Airbnb will also kick you off.
Nit, but: it's not actually a Ponzi scheme. What made Ponzi's scheme a Ponzi scheme was not the postal coupons. It was pretending that investors were making huge profits to make them keep their money invested, and paying them with each other's money. At that point the coupons was just an alibi.

Of course I don't know ponzi.es' long-term plan, maybe they'll start taking investment and promising huge returns. That'd be pretty funny. Though I don't know if you can legally run a Ponzi scheme, even an ironic one.
Drone squad to be launched by Tokyo police
Yeah, it's also quite nice it's Clojure, so full JVM stuff at disposal.
The best book to give to each kind of person
Samsung and Baidu are getting into self-driving cars
Detecting Parallel Universes Hidden Inside Back Holes
Can Auto Redistricting End Gerrymandering?
Perhaps we have encountered a "clbuttic" filtering error in the HN news feed.
Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers
Low resource? Thunderbird?

You might want to check out claws-mail. You get notification via a plugin (on debian/ubuntu, the plugin is in another package, but it's very easy to get).
I am trying to promote giving books as gifts because they are affordable, lovable, and easy to gift on afterwards.

I wrote this list of books as a starting point for people who aren't sure what to get. Let me know if you think there are any others I should include!
Baidu Joins Race to Build Autonomous Cars
Would you send it to the EU and take euros :)?
That's because merging two things is inherently complex. You need a complete understanding of both how they work and all the things they interact with. That's why everyone hates merging.

You're welcome to take a crack at it, however you're looking at hundreds of hours of work to reverse-engineer all the formats that Adobe and Autodesk use plus whatever new tools are on the horizon that you don't know about yet.

AFAIK there isn't a single tool out there that can render a PSD to PNG reliably(aside from scripted photoshop) so thinking we would be able to cover the entire suite of tools is a bit naive.
I agree with most of what you've just said, except that it's not like the entire Midwest is suburbs. St. Louis and Cincinnati and Indianapolis and so on all have their hip, walkable, urban areas. No, they're not as cool as The Mission. But they've got all the same stuff that The Mission does, just on a smaller scale. How much are you willing to pay for the extra coolness?

If you want to live in San Francisco or New York or London, then just go do it.

Couldn't agree with this more. If you want San Francisco, then you're not going to find anything like it in the Midwest. But don't be fooled into thinking your other option is a farm.
16 Companies Exposed Customers' Unencrypted Credit Card Data