skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think almost certainly their profitability is dependent on a future of driverless cars, and I'm sure that's what they are pitching investors.

Fearfully, since their survival means going driverless and they are now losing $800 million a quarter, they will race to get driverless cars on the road, it will be rushed, and it could be reckless. I'm thinking the two driverless cars filmed blowing red lights in SF recently (at the very start of their SF driverless program), not to mention possibly many other traffic violations that no one happened to be filming. They are going to wrangle regulators and skirt laws to make it happen with urgency. They now have an advisor to Trump.

I'm just here watching the rushing of driverless cars onto the road by Uber so that their company doesn't collapse. We'll see what happens.
Would the monopoly plan really work? Is there something that would prevent competition from reappearing when prices are raised? At least from customer perspective it would be pretty easy to use couple of apps and shop between different providers. For drivers this might be of course more difficult, since Uber can use contracts and other mechanisms to prevent them from working with other providers.
> regulations are vital for ensuring human health and happiness

I agree. The regulations created for the war on drugs has lifted millions of African Americans out of poverty and into group-oriented communities that promise shelter, free food, and at least one hour of happiness per day.
You can't just throw away the law for the sake of your definition of progress...

Sure you can. Laws aren't magical and there's nothing about the State that gives it any actual innate authority.
New blockchain-powered free speech tool
> This comment is not constructive and should be suppressed

I can't think of any comments 'Dead' because of disagreement.

I really think this is a non-existent issue.

If anything the grey-out attracts users to read it. I read these more than middle comments.
In most industries you're right but the autos have always included R&D in COGS instead of OpEx. Tesla is the only auto manufacturer who does it the other way.
I've never seen a $25 authorization hold before. Usually Lyft does something like $5. In any case, once the charge is captured, the rest of the authorization should go away (and the charge is captured as soon as you rate/tip the driver, or after 24 hours, whichever comes first).
Digging Your Own Hole
It would probably be more efficient to make predatory pricing illegal.
It looks like they're pretty much on the side of government/against Uber in the story about Uber flouting DMV regulations:

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/12/15/1559226/uber-we-don...
Welcome to the 2017 Nutanix Technology Champions (NTC)
How do you set up your node environment using Termux? I could only install my npm dependencies when using private storage for Termux --> meaning I couldn't edit my files from an another editor app, forcing me to code in vi / nano.
Actually, HN already has a separate "flag" link. The only real change needed would be to dim based on flags rather than downvotes. Then downvotes could go back to their original meaning (disagree).

I would abolish karma. It turns HN into a silly game.
Are you asking if there's someone who looks over the driver pool and decides who looks like they should not be driving for Uber?
Its funny how the Left (i.e. the NYT) suddenly realizes, now that their gang isn't in power, that maybe mass surveillance wasn't such a good idea after all.
All what you are saying is true but it's missing the point I was trying to make originally which was that what it can do now is more than enough to be very useful for many of us.

I don't think you are appreciating the things that used to be which got lost with digitalization and now can get back.

It's not just about what the AI can do, it's how it gets expressed.
Still don't understand the appeal of anything in the electric space not named Volt.
Strange that you would respond with that, given that I'm arguing exactly against "following dogma". What I'm saying is that, as hackers, we have traditionally taken on a mindset that says "we can use our intellect, reason, science, etc. to figure out better solutions" without regard for dogma. And more and more people seem to be drifting away from that and just punting and saying "fuck it, the State will make everything OK". That's what gets me, is the way hackerdom seems to be losing that spirit of independence that it used to have.
I disagree. My habits would be so hard for a computer to learn, mostly because they already frustrate humans who are much smarter. When the sun goes down, I don't want all the lights to turn on. I don't even necessarily want all the lights on in the room I'm sitting in. Many times I sit in a lit-up room just because I can't turn the sun off. Once it goes down, it's nice to sit in the dark watching TV.

That is unless I'm reading a book, in which case I need a light on. But not just any light, I'd probably just lamp next to me to shine on my book instead of the one that lights the whole room. I don't need the whole room lit, just my book. So now the contextual system needs to have cameras to see if I'm reading or just watching TV or playing on my phone or napping.

And when I walk into the bathroom in the middle of the night, I'm fine with the nightlight above the toilet. Turning on all the lights will wake me up and ruin my night vision. But my wife likes the light on. So now we need facial recognition to tell who is walking into the room.

Right now I have to get up and turn on a light if I'm on the couch reading. If we're talking effort, that's a hell of a lot more effort than saying "Alexa, turn on my reading lamp". And don't get me started on the effort it takes to try to find the missing remote...
Have talked to a number of drivers who seem to like Lyft a lot better than Uber.

For one thing, Lyft takes less of a cut and passes more to the driver.

More than one driver I'ved talked to complained that Uber was in the habit of delaying earned payments to drivers. Some complained that Uber was in the habit of under-paying and making drivers spend time to fight for money they've already earned. They do not seem to have similar experiences from Lyft.

In general, all else being equal (and the products are pretty close to equal), I'll prefer siding with the working stiff than multi-billion dollar multinationals.
It is. It's a war of cash against other companies. The same way the OPEC has been dumping oil on the market to make its price crash to break competitors. So with a price at the barrel two times lower that their break even, oil companies in particular the US shale companies [1], will suffer or even declare bankruptcy and then the OPEC would have got their market share back and then would have raise its price like in 2012-2014. (They failed [2]).

But for Uber apart of China [3], Uber is winning and all VCs will make it that way anyway. Uber is the clear winner and they will continue to pool cash to the winner until it breaks all competitors. And then it will rise its prices and start piles of cash.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-04/u-s-outpu...

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-10/non-opec-...

[3] http://qz.com/746930/the-battle-between-uber-and-its-fierces...
Hacker News is fairly progressive/authoritarian.

It has become more so over the past few years for sure. It was a lot more balanced in the past, as I recall.
But where's the fun in that.

Edit: Tried the demo, it does look pretty sleek admittedly.
Tesla likes to quote their gross margins because they look incredible at face value. However Tesla doesn't use a dealership model, so they have expenses for the sales process that other car manufacturers don't have. To get an apples-to-apples comparison with the margins of other car manufacturers you have to make adjustments like the ones I described earlier.
> The driver was prohibited, by law, from kicking the passenger out mid-trip

That would really surprise me. And he certainly could have declined the subsequent hailings.
This page used to be a lot more expansive (including nice charts!) before November 2015, when it was radically stripped down. I think the maintainer lost interest.

http://web.archive.org/web/20151009090721/http://benchmarksg...
Yes, I know that, but all of these little inefficiencies add up, and for what? A tiny portion of users who need the developer tools? Not worth it.

This kind of thinking is exactly what leads to our software being as slow or slower than that of two decades ago while running on machines hundreds or thousands of times more powerful.
If anyone is still paying attention here, can you help conduct this experiment by down-voting aaron695's comment to see what happens? I can't do it myself because you're not allowed to down-vote responses to your own comments.
And it's not clear that Uber's strategy is to eliminate competitors, rather than engaging in a scheme to turn investment money into "growth" for raising further investment.
>you really should walk or take a train

Truly reliable and useful public transit is a luxury in the United States that isn't available to a huge majority of the country.

Walking also isn't an option for many people due to safety, health reasons, scheduling, childcare needs, and not to mention just too much stuff to carry.
Growing up in the UK and living in the US has given me the odd distinction of being strongly against online surveillance of private space, and strongly in favor of regulated visual surveillance of public space.

CCTV surveillance can protect the people I care about (especially women at night) from horrible violent crimes I'm actually scared of. It's surveillance of public space, so the privacy compromise seems kind of moot (though uses of the footage should be strongly regulated). It makes policing violent and petty crime extremely cheap and effective (ask anyone who's ever won or lost a fight outside a pub). CCTV makes me feel safe. It has utility.

On the Internet by contrast, the privacy trade-off (my thoughts, political opinions, contacts, location, in real-time) is extremely large, and the benefits largely hypothetical, and at least some part smoke and mirrors.
I guess I wasn't clear enough. Let me try again.

Google has been in the self driving car business since 2009. Uber was FOUNDED in 2009.

Google has a history of starting cool projects, which never make it to market (Wave, Video, Glass, etc.)... That alone, doesn't inspire much confidence that their self driving car project will reach production.

Uber has the incentive, far more than Google, to actually see this through. If they can cut out drivers, their overhead shrinks significantly and their core business grows.
I couldn't agree more. If anything, the pleasant experience argument tends to come up more in the context of discussing a secondary scripting language to be added on top of a fast, already working foundation. Even then, you mostly just end up using something reasonably fast like Lua or one of its cousins. I can't see Clojure really being a good fit for any existing engine I am familiar with as a main or scripting language (maybe ClojureScript if we stretch it for something using JS, which I disagree with), and I love Clojure.

FWIW, scanning the Arcadia source there's also some garbage being created that can be easily avoided. I didn't really trace to see what each thing was "doing" or if it even runs during a game, but it certainly felt eye opening to me to see lots of temporary garbage created in something that is supposed to be lower-level. I am not sure at this point what would get optimized away anyway (ex: foreach loops, extra tolist/arrays used to create garbage in the past), so here's to hoping the devs just didn't get around to optimizing that stuff away yet. Seems to me you would want to minimize garbage from Aracadia itself given Clojure is going to create yet more, not to mention cut stylistic corners for pure speed in this context.
That completely got me. I thought he was talking about green technology which did not make much sense to me. Didn't realize he was talking about profitability.
Oh how you have changed, Apple!

Vaporware announcements of future products?

A ship that leaks from the top?

And yeah, the Microsoft Surface Studio is the competition. Apple used to really own the high end, but I don't feel like they're winning this round.
Interesting - didn't know you were talking on a per city basis. Anything to back up the claim of profitability in these cities?
"you have no idea what the system can and can't do" - shouldn't matter.
That makes sense. It would be really helpful if the user is notified if an authorization hold is required for the next ride, though.
Case in point, my area got 11" of snow overnight recently and my wife got yelled at for being late to work because subcompact cars don't do too well in the deep snow. So people end up buying SUVs that they drive year-round just for the 1% of the time when they're really needed.
Not people. Google Engineers.
As others point out this isn't necessarily bad, but it does mean that Uber is extremely vulnerable. If we learned anything in the last bubble it was that attempting to bootstrap through the power curve is exceptionally susceptible to capital constraints. Back in the dot com days a number of 'baby telephone companies' that were building out their networks and spending huge amounts of money on laying out the infrastructure that was going to carry the traffic they would get after their build out, meant that any cash crunch had this amazing multiplicative effect, which resulted in a massive implosion in practically no time (one customer I talked to in 1999 was putting the finishing touches on a $1.2M PO on Monday, and when we showed up for the meeting on Wednesday the doors were locked and the name of an attorney's office was there for questions. Later I found out they were negotiating additional funding and even though their business plan was "solid" once some other companies had gone under, everyone got too skittish to commit. They were already burning through cash to people who were putting in new fiber cables etc. They went upside down (more obligations than cash or revenue) on Tuesday and the bank sent the attorneys (and Sheriff) over to secure the assets before anyone could walk them out of the building that afternoon. Pilots have a term for crashes like this, its called "controlled flight into terrain" where basically right up until the last moment the pilot was flying the plane. So it can be with startups that right up until the day it isn't flying they are in control.

Its nice that if Uber does implode (not that they will) that only VC's will lose their money, of course Uber drivers will be out of their jobs as well but they hopefully won't be greatly finanically hurt. And of course a lot of employees that thought they were millionaires will realize that they aren't (been there, done that, got the t-shirt :-()

I hope at some point in the not too distant future we can get some more transparency on their financials. I really do consider them the poster child for the 'dynamic' economy (one where service suppliers and service demanders are paired in real time for a fee). If they can't make it work it will really call into question if it is even possible to make it work.
> It's more than filling out a few structs, though.

How do you know how many lines are required to configure hypothetical middleware?

> No go gets

How is static compilation worse than `apt-get install` or `docker run`?

> No middleware

It's another process... why would running another process be better than middleware?

> it's well tested, mature and backed by software that powers a majority of the web.

Granted. It seems like this is the only clear win for NGINX, and it may well change if Go libraries mature. Time will tell.
You are being datamined just being on this website. True but trivial.
Yes, but how profitable? Enough to support their valuation of $75B?
> It's actually really hard to find a group of trustable product reviewers who stay engaged.

There's a ton of bloggers and paid reviewers: http://www.productreviewmom.com/2013/11/how-to-become-produc.... All you need is a way to aggregate the one or two complaints / solid facts per review while filtering out all the fluff promotion verbiage. Mining truth, in other words.
Inquiry Report into Australia's Intellectual Property Arrangements
CHP officers are not, either in salary or retirement, typical public employees.
Bridging the gap between Perl 5 and 6
Tech CEO who allegedly hit girlfriend 117 times gets venture capital job
My comment was directed specifically at this:

Is ride-sharing that big of a cost for your day to day?

For a lot of people, it is. The only people I have ever heard say this kind of thing, at least from my experience, are middle-class and well-off, or better. This cohort is the exception, because the norm (especially among millenials) is check-to-check living. $25 is several days' worth of food, two weeks' coffee budget, the price of a full tank of gas for a small car, or numerous other things to many, and $25 can be the difference between your card going through or being declined.
I wouldn't say any other species. Kangaroos, for instance give birth to veritable fetuses: https://youtu.be/2lCKc8tURtc?t=38s

Sure, I might be stretching your premise a little bit, but my point stands that evolution has a very, very wide array of tricks, and humans absolutely don't have the most underdeveloped young of any species.
The very fact that you treat this state as a separate entity from the people is a problem. In a republic, the state is the citizenry. Hackers are part of the state and can influence the state and should work with the state. No one here is agitating for delegating all responsibilities to the state. The point is that private businesses should work with the state and seek to change and reform regulation when necessary, not permanently act in defiance of the laws of the state. Hackers understand the use of a good tool, and if the state is one, then hackers should use that tool. To throw it away is blind libertarian dogma with empty rhetoric about "nanny states" and other bogeymen.

Furthermore, even supposed would-be laissez-faire capitalists know this- I doubt that startups pass up the chance to use government policies to their own advantage, or pursue rent-seeking behaviors that help their startups. The perfect libertarian society you envision exists next to the perfect communist society, as utopias that contravene human nature.
Please stop perpetuating this myth- started by Eric Raymond and happily encouraged by SV "thought leaders"- that hackers must, by definition, be laissez-faire capitalists who love Ayn Rand and treat breaking laws as a noble goal in and of itself.

Nice strawman. Luckily I didn't say anything about esr, laissez-faire, capitalism, or Ayn Rand in the post you replied to. Hell, I didn't even say that breaking the law is a "noble goal in and of itself".

All I'm saying is that it's disturbing to me how so many HN'ers have just completely sold out to the idea that the State is their proper master, and should regulate / control pretty much everything and anything. It seems to me that in the past, there was a more individualist / freedom oriented mindset around sites like this - whether it was from "American style libertarians" or socialist anarchists or whatever. Personally I find the change to be a bit depressing.
The No-BS Approach to Building Your SaaS Startup’s Launch List
some have had similar experiences and discussed on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/comments/1uu5m...
What about something like speeding?

Let's say we get rid of speeding laws since they're not 100% enforced. Should we have unregulated driving? Move towards a law that simply says "no driving unsafely"?

IMO those are both poor ideas—they're either unsafe or vague and subjective. I don't see a way around having well-defined speeding laws, yet there are plenty of situations where it's silly to ticket an individual who's going 5+ MPH over the posted limit.

I just don't see a win-win scenario.
Looks very interesting, have you looked at H2O.ai which spits out a classifiers as Java code which can be wrapped in an ultra low latency API without caching.
For anyone reading: this is basically how all hacking works and why security is hard -- you have to think out every way several components might interact.
Ask owners of beautifully designed Frank Lloyd Wright houses how happy they are with the leaky roofs that plague them. Wright didn't understand construction which lead to many practical flaws when people tried to actually build his designs.
Yes the network effects of everyone being used to using Uber to get anywhere, the verb "Uber it" and the established brand that comes along with it. Any company in future won't have the drivers, car fleet or coverage to compete, which will become increasingly difficult after Uber becomes established and gets embedded in people's minds.
One our teams works with this community. They have inspired and awed us.
Would BEV actually create an impact on this?: http://www.metaculus.com/questions/223/will-we-keep-the-glob...
>The end game is a company with self driving cars,

As it seems that is their only chance at profitability, then they should be plowing a lot more of their capital into driverless R&D.
Sure, in theory. But I see two problems with that--although they're probably the same idea.

Judicial, executive, and legislative are decent abstractions. They're fairly slow to change. Executive is probably the easiest to react to public opinion--which isn't necessarily something you'd want in the other two branches. It can repurpose old laws for new problems and can focus on immediate, concerning issues--thankfully, with oversight.

Breaking a law is binary, but public opinion can move gradually (I know I just said it can move quickly, but it can also move very slowly). Anti-sodomy laws were enacted (I imagine) when there was a lot of support. There was a very long time between that and the public accepting homosexuality. Yes, in the interim we can have judicial leniency--but that clogs up the courts and we do have mandatory minimums in many laws.

There's also weird in between laws, like a Ft Lauderdale law saying horses need lights and a horn after sundown. Makes total sense because it's dangerous. At some point it likely was a huge problem and it was happening often. But it's nice to give officers leniency if I got lost on a trail or my horse got out without having to go to court.
Tab completion, the "history" command, and using the up-arrow weren't in the first shells either. Eventually someone will find a way to create custom macros with voice commands.
From what I can tell, cities have largely been able to kick Uber out, if they want to, but many residents are not interested in eating shit from taxi companies for another 10-15 years, so it's been hard to kick them out by appealing to their sympathy for the medalion holders.
In a republic, the state is the citizenry.

In theory. I think we're pretty far removed from that in reality.
I prefer Lyft because every driver I've spoken to who drives for both (which is almost all of them) says that Lyft treats them better.

Also the app is much nicer. The Uber app drives me crazy.
Lyft allows for in-app tipping, and has a more humane contract with its drivers, as outlined in this Wired article: https://www.wired.com/2016/01/lyft-drivers-settle-suit-but-s...

Specifically, Lyft can only deactivate drivers for cause, and it has a clear appeals process through binding arbitration, for which Lyft foots the bill.

I'm not fond of clauses that require arbitration or which prohibit class action suits, but at least Lyft allows for and pays the costs of that arbitration.