skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The saving grace for Uber will be self-driving cars. Uber is a race against time to keep up the VC-subsidies until self driving is feasible. They don't need to make all routes self-driving, only some routes in some cities, to make the unit economics favorable and profitable. This logic holds true even if self-driving requires a large upfront fixed cost investment, as that cost can be amortized over time.
I'm having trouble believing a high-flying company could really come crashing down over accusations that they are sexist assholes.

"They're a really high-pressure place, there's a lot of vicious corporate politics, and they sometimes treat women badly," could describe a whole lot of companies and institutions.
I would be, but I wasn't. Last I checked 1km = 1000m.
Same here. I was bringing this up in a thread here a few days ago and was downvoted but it is a disgrace to work with clients in such a disconnected way.
Single quote is feet and double is inches, so 18 meters.
You treat your consumption as an investment? That's kind of silly.
I thought that this subthread was about US politics. That's so knife-edge that it could flip in four years. But yes, if the US goes full-moron, and takes a military approach to climate mitigation, all bets are off :(
It somehow reminds me of those advert bars that people used to put on their desktops and be paid to view adverts in the late 90s - early 2000s. There was so much money in online advertising back then that businesses created referral pyramids based on it.

It also reminds me of those daily deal websites like Groupon, which were controversial yet hyped. That was back when there was a lot of money in 'hyper' local services.

Now there's a load of hype in self driving cars, the problem is the technology is probably decades away. It's just the latest hype in a new cycle. Local taxi services will take up the slack once the investment dries up.
I'm curious what do you think will happen with Lyft? It sounds like GM wanted to buy them, but they weren't interested in a $5+ billion valuation. Maybe when they run out of money GM will purchase them for a much lower price.
Ah! I was being confused by the diagram and another comment :(. It seems really strange to assume that the previous block's hash field is accurate, but I guess that is being verified as the chain is built; if you just remove that field you could calculate that hash and verify it that way. I now agree: it at least has the ability to verify the list's history. (Sorry for the confusion.)
Exactly. Other than the moral-environmental issue of the subsidy encouraging me to take more short trips, thus increasing my footprint...
Many people live in their web browsers, which includes reading e-mail. The
debatable gain of not going through web browser disappears here.

Then, your prospective users need to learn about your service and how to sign
up from somewhere, likely from a web page. You'll just make them go from web
browser to e-mail client earlier, that's all.

And last, not many services have e-mail-only signups, so the process may be
somewhat surprising and misleading.
But surely there has to be room for _new_ satire?

One of my favourite humour sites is Waterford Whispers News. (Among their classics is "North Korea Lands Man on the Sun".) I share their links on occasion, and often get one or two people exasperatedly saying how ridiculous so and so is for whatever position. Usually, they've based this purely on the headline.
Funk means wireless ??
I, as a man, have literally never had my boss give me feedback on the clothes that I am wearing.

That has never happened.
> Uber will raise prices and no new competitors will be able to find any funding at this point

Until Uber has self-driving cars, there's nothing to prevent local competitors from running a few subway ads and getting enough iOS installs to keep prices down. And unlike national competitors, which require hundreds of millions of dollars, local competitors can be run on the cheap. So even if Lyft goes bankrupt, I doubt that will have much impact on prices.
Oh pretty nice, a vscode equivalent would be awesome
I don't understand why the media and Silicon Valley seem to be gleefully awaiting the downfall of Uber. If Uber's business model is not financially viable then the free market will take care of that. But promoting the view that their "culture" is "rotten" based on a report from a disgruntled employee, or saying that their employees are being "exploited" based on one video from one driver is sanctimonious and vicious. Why is this necessary? The only answer I can come up with is that there is a political motivation, driven by neo-Marxism and the narrative that capitalism and big business are inherently evil.

I'm an Uber user, and I still love the service and the fiercely competitive way that Uber has transformed what was previously a protected and stagnant industry delivering poor service.
Why would you take a taxi that far? Heathrow has plenty of public transport services.
My mother used to pretend to control changing traffic lights... it took me a little while to figure out that she was watching the opposing the lights. It was pretty magical at the time... and she got to troll me.
My main concern, as a potential founder, is that once Uber goes "pop" or Snap goes "fsssss", there will be the inevitable catastrophic lurch in the financial hivemind.

The purses will snap shut all at once, for good and ill. Contractions are no respecter of potential.

I'd really like to get in before last call.
GM will purchase them for around $1-$3 billion and drastically raise prices and fire most of the employees as their public investors will be skeptical and the stock price will take a hit, Uber will be able to raise prices enough to get better economics and atleast IPO at a haircut of their current private valuation
Agreed.
Also, this is nothing new. Consumers got the same bennies in 1999. I remember getting a bunch of $1 DVDs from some Amazon wannabe (can't remember the name now). They were trying to buy customers by subsidizing DVD sales. It didn't work. The strategy was great for my college dorm DVD collection. Not so great for their VC's ROI though.
United States of Secrets (part 2)
Exact same in DC, where many cars have both Uber and Lyft signs in the window.
Thanks for the website tip!

Yes, we're definitely going after the automatic clustering once we get the main features in place.
Presumably they want to at least hold a portfolio of strategic patents.
Rust has basic support today. We're working on making it even easier.

https://users.rust-lang.org/t/compiling-to-the-web-with-rust...

(This post is a bit old, it works on stable nowadays, but it gives you the basic idea)
Our descendants will pity us, as we pity our ancestors....lol
There is an area where I definitely differ.

I don't have the knowledge, skills, or training in pallet to accept self-prepared frozen meals. Those just sound inherently disgusting to me. I don't expect to find crispy anywhere within that and thinking of trying to save things in the freezer makes me think of freezerburn.
The point about having a nice API is huge-otherwise we'd still be writing java applets.
Python Fire: a library for automatically generating command line interfaces
They aren't going to happen short term for consumers. The economics should work out fine for fleet vehicles that are confined to a single well mapped metropolitan area.
I'd like to see if we can use for some sort of data network.
In two houses on two routers I've had horrendous experience with 5GHz.
One of the very few times in history that there's been such a massive, rapid, worldwide and voluntary transfer of wealth from the very wealthy to the merely well-off.
Cool, now try it from South Korea. No keyboard options.

http://www.apple.com/kr/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro?product=MLH...

See, it's not hard to find examples. Now we can conclude by robertdpi's assessment that Apple is an unreliable company, because they assume all people living in South Korea want the same keyboard.
"You may see that certain news stories are marked as disputed on Facebook. News stories that are reported as fake by people on Facebook may be reviewed by independent third-party fact-checkers. These fact-checkers will be signatories of the non-partisan Poynter Code of Principles. A story may be marked as disputed if these fact-checkers find the story to be fake.

To see why a news story was marked as disputed on Facebook:

Hover and click underneath the disputed story.

Click About Disputed Stories, or go directly to the independent fact-checking website."
Two different things can look similar when phrased in similar terms. But they're still very different.
Uber needs to be hacked and destroyed to finally teach its founders humility, morality and ethics. He isn't going to change until he meets rock bottom!!!
We call them "Minute Mysteries" where I grew up in the US... I'd guess it was brought over from Russian immigrants. I remember the ones you mentioned, along with one about someone hanging themselves on an ice brick, another about someone drawing a short straw on a hot air balloon, and I think one about a runner in baseball coming in to home.
Likewise, many Onion stories get mangled and pop up in serious (often non-American) papers.

I also wonder what's going to happen on April Fool's day.
But then what is my confidence that God exists? I would say zero because of the spaghetti monster argument
While I'm in the camp that thinks self-driving cars will be viable for many routes soon, I'm not in the camp that thinks they will be viable enough soon enough for Uber.
If the race of the victim isn't Caucasian, it's obviously police brutality because of the power and authority disparity between police as an institution and people of the victim's race. I'm not even joking. That's an accepted (approximate) SJW definition.

It makes perfect sense if you accept that SJW definition, where violence and brutality and racism depend more on relative social power of the primary social groups of the involved persons, rather than facts relating to the incident in question.

When you start drinking that kool-aid, it's a small step to believe that the mere existence of police vis-à-vis historically disadvantaged minority groups is violence, abuse, and brutality. An incident isn't even required. When there is an incident, it's merely a manifestation of the underlying police discrimination, violence and brutality inherent in the system.
The most recent dumb stuff Trump is doing
> self driving cars make their business model profitable

In what way? Will they manufacture their own cars? That seems expensive, and from the past experience of GM and Chrysler Fiat not exactly a money-printing machine. Will they partner with manufacturers and buy their cars to add to Uber fleet? That will be a new expense that was externalised to the driver before, but now affects the company's bottom line. Will they just become a dispatch software licensee like Flywheel? Enterprise buyers tend to squeeze margins and negotiate tough.

What's the scenario where either their top line increases in a massive way or expenses are trimmed way, way down from where they are today?
A while ago, I had the "krazy" idea of writing my own single binary Go router software on top of linux kernel. Turns out it's fairly easy to get up and running with literally having nothing but a kernel image and a single executable that gets called on boot. My kernel booted in less than 2 second on a VM.
Juno is burning 10's of millions trying to compete on low prices and they are still in NY area only, unlikely local competitors will be able to compete at low prices unless they have a huge war chest which will come from rich founders (Juno) or investors (Uber/Lyft/etc.)
At work I can leave my phone in my office and go get a drink from the kitchen without the audio dropping out. It's probably a good 15 meters away with 2 walls in between.
News stories that are reported as fake by people on Facebook may be reviewed by independent third-party fact-checkers. These fact-checkers will be signatories of the non-partisan Poynter Code of Principles. A story may be marked as disputed if these fact-checkers find the story to be fake.
> I'm having trouble believing a high-flying company could really come crashing down over accusations that they are sexist assholes.

There's a nostrum in politics that mud often doesn't stick; until it all sticks at once.

Bad publicity sets a narrative that other journalists follow. Whether because it fits their own thinking, or simply to follow the herd to a higher readership, a run of bad news has a way of reinforcing itself.

Especially if there's a rich vein of old bad news to dig up and recycle.
They really can't. Centralized taxi service is a winner-take-all market for at least individual countries.

If uber lays off and decides to get profitable, they risk lyft taking hold because they're the only option in X markets.

On the other hand, up until a few weeks ago it seemed like Uber had enough cash to outlast every competitor, achieve functional monopoly and from there they can charge whatever they want.
I think this sentence really captures the customer's mindset with regards to Uber: "We’ll stick with Uber as long as it continues to get us where we want to go at a price we like."

As long as this argument above is true, I don't see Uber dying.
Automatic desktop integrated webapps via Electron
Visio Online in Office 365 Suites
It's impossible to assign a "true"/"fake" value to all news stories... especially with our increasingly biased and divided media.

Here's an example of what happens when we try: Politifact, a consistently liberal-biased source, didn't like that Trump took credit for a hard and proven fact. So they called it "mostly false" even though nothing he said was false.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/...

This thing Facebook is doing is bound to just end up becoming crowd-sourced echo-chamber censorship. And they probably know that.
So you don't think the context switching from html form to checking email (either web or native) to clicking activation link results in drop off and bounce?
The legality of x86's ISA being copyrighted/patented aside, the x86 ISA isn't that attractive for any new endeavours. It's a very complex ISA which is incredibly difficult to decode. Internally, it is anyway converted to RISC style microops. So as a competitor, you don't really gain a whole lot by implementing the x86 ISA apart from the ability to run software without writing a new compiler. What's more important is the microarchitecture.
What about "grey" things for which different groups can be correct in some way. Adding clarity to the information can improve things more than "disputing" it.

Some scientific articles are click-bait like: "Reality does not exist until we measure it".
http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-m...
But it says: an atom can be in superposition state until it is measured. Which tells something about a single atom, not about reality.

Or things that are claimed by officials or experts, but for which there is not enough evidence, no evidence at all, or even contrary evidence? Like: Is Russian hacking disputed for which there was no real evidence? Or is wikileaks disputed who exposed quite some corruption? Is Snowden disputed? Is dirty wars (drone assassinations) disputed?

Or can we ask deeper questions, like: How much are we being spied on by Facebook? Is Facebook trying to change what we think? What organisations are behind Facebook?

I think that both sides should have a fair say in things. With the emphasis on fair. If we declare it disputed and only show one side, we push people apart and stop any deeper discussions. Stupidity is caused by knowing only one side of the story.

Adding a joke from the U.S. army: How can you tell if an official from the pentagon is lying?

Answer: მиιʌow ƨι ʜ⊥now ƨιʜ.
Webvan seems like a more apt comparison. Some of Uber's antics remind me of the way Webvan used to act.

I remember seeing one of their delivery people pull up and park in a red zone right in front of a cop. The cop told him he couldn't park there. His response, "Are you going to tow me?" was answered with "no, but..." and before the cop could finish, the driver had walked away. The cop dutifully wrote out the ticket.

Uber's scale is a lot larger, but the two feel much more similar than either does to Groupon. Groupon was much more a gimmick product that used high-pressure sales tactics to get small businesses into situations they weren't prepared for with dubious benefit. Once word got around and people realized that its benefit to businesses was much more limited than they promised, they got a lot smaller. But Groupon wasn't really burning VC cash to subsidize a legitimately-useful service the way that Uber and Webvan are/did.
This is true, but deceptively and disproportionately so. It basically doesn't, with a single deceptively skewed 'demographically' constrained exception. I'll give you an example without labeling the entire group, and rather point out one of the 'louder' factions: SJW's putting vaginas on their heads while running around like freshly neutered pepper-sprayed autistic goats.

When the news you watch, tells you how terrible it is that Kellyanne Conway put her feet on the couch, or that Donald Trump puts ketchup on his steak, and Trump voters are ripping the Hijab's from the faces of Muslim women everywhere, and that people need to take action to stop it before the "Nazis" do something worse, people like you tend to adopt beliefs like the one I'm responding to.

Edit:The handful of muslim women who told their stories, all came forward admitting they made it up. Same as all the women who were 'raped' by Trump. There is a reason something close to 80% of people know CNN and the NYT are not trustworthy in the slightest. Better yet, at the same time, those same publications are claiming they are the ones taking action to stop the 'fake news,' meanwhile, NYT and Wash. Post recently and still currently are receiving 50% of their viewership from Chinese IPs, a jump from 1-2% since 2009, which is when China banned access to the NYT, where oddly, it's still nationally inaccessible today. (hint: they keep spewing bs, including that their viewership isn't totally tanked, while fudging their numbers....)
My assumption is that it was merely to juice their valuation.
What you just remarked I've previously found incredibly fascinating;

In fact (shameless plug) I've written a blog post about that progression [0].

[0] https://malynin.ca/numbers-a-brief-history-from-arithmetic-t...
"Moving through time" seems to be actually a smart way to avoid branching in undo/redo histories.
Once fleets of self-driving taxis are available, what advantage does Uber hold over some new company that just buys their taxis without having to sink any R&D costs?
You contain a whole lot of water, and that alone does the job (of messing up the connection).
Hmm the best I've seen is $200 which seems a bit much for a now previous console model with limited title support and low end hardware. I'll wait until I see it for $99 I think.
State I.R.A. Plans Are Ready, If Congress Doesn’t Interfere
Thanks for sharing your experience. Were you in Rome specifically to enroll in this summer course? How much latin experience did you already have before you started?
Blaming this all on ideology is too easy an explanation.

There have been multiple reports by various uber employees (as well as 2 investors according to the OP) of a rotten culture. Add to that the leaks of taking huge losses, and people are seeing a company that isn't profitable and has some disastrous PR.

It doesn't help that the way they approach regulation, and the way they allegedly treat workers match up pretty well. They take an aggressive stance with both.

The narrative here is that a company that was once thought to be great is now showing some significant cracks.
Here's why Uber will succeed:

- Nobody who lives in a market that Uber serves will ever be willing to go back to the old way of calling a taxi dispatch line by phone, waiting on hold, and being told the cab will arrive in "five to thirty minutes". Seriously. Think about this.

- Nobody used to Uber will want to waste time taking out a credit card and swiping it through a dirty slot or handing it to a driver only to wait several minutes for it to finally go through.

- Compared to the average Uber vehicle, most taxis are filthy and full of all sorts of odors.

- The taxi/livery industry is simply too used to enjoying a monopoly business to be able to fix itself.

Uber has already won, and all these stories about Uber's culture, Uber's approach to dealing with regulators, etc., are one last attempt by those who dislike Uber to gang up on it and do it harm.

Taxi and livery services, medallions, and all the corruption that goes with them are on the way out. The stories we should be reading would be about immigrants scammed by Taxi companies working in violation of medallion laws, or about the cost of an NYC medallion that keeps non-rich people from making money driving.

I don't think Uber's prices are subsidized enough that if the subsidy went away demand would be significantly altered.

Simply having an intelligent app tell drivers where to expect fares and allowing easy booking and payment ads significant value to every ride that far outweighs the small dollar subsidy Uber invests to try to win market share.

I personally use Uber far more often than I would ever take a Taxi, largely because of the incredible convenience that the app offers and the high quality of the service.

While Uber's culture could probably use some improvement, it's irritating to see everyone piling on and trying to harm one of the firms that has done the most to democratize labor and empower individuals.
Pretty sure they dropped the fistbump years ago.
I'm pretty sure they will continue to invest, hopefully more wisely though. They want to grow their money, so they need to invest to do that. The "lurch" should control the ballooning valuations of these startups.
Those of us who have been around a while remember the black sheep of past technology eras. I always like to sum (+/-)happiness/person * num people affected by the technology]. It usually outweighs the dramatized negative points covered in the press.
Why? If you can buy driverless cars from, say, GM, what do the strategic patents get you? If GM, Toyota, Ford, et al all sell them, there's pressure to reduce prices anyway. Lyft's core competence is in hooking people up with drivers, not in building advanced new automation tech. The smart thing to do is double down on it since there's a market and presumably a path to profitability.
With four answers, you get .25 + (.75)(-.5) = -.125 for guessing.

Edit: yeah, I badly misread this.
Yeah, but they beat taxis on service. Ubers are computer dispatched, on-time, and give me pre-ride fare calculation. When pooling they give me guaranteed arrival times. I'm not going to use some half-assed taxi service for the same price, because I don't need the agita.

Whatever their company culture problems, I have found the service superb.
For someone who is interested in learning Latin on their own, what is a good resource?

The article specifically mentions that Fr. Foster's book is ill-suited to self learners and is more appropriate for a classroom setting.
To me, I think the veracity of individual stories aren't as important as the process of reporting and managing the life cycle of the story.

Are sources being double checked, did they attempt to contact the subject of the story for comments, do they have a process for reviewing bad stories and issuing retractions? That's really the difference between The NY Times and some random Macedonian blogger.

It's possible with all of that that the times can be wrong and somebody blogging from their moms basement can have the story right, but in the long run, you're better off getting your news from an organization that follows journalistic best practices.