skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Pushing a founder out is often a bad idea. This might very well be the beginning of Uber's demise. This won't be good for the company.

All CEOs make mistakes even great ones like Gates with antitrust or Zuck calling users dumb-fucks. They weren't kicked out, they instead were allowed to come into their own.

There's a distinct fire that a founder has for the company they founded. You can't hire that. Without this fire at the early stages of a company, the company will likely lose out to competitors like Lyft.

A hiatus is one thing but kicking a founder out is simply bad.

Mark my word and take that to the bank. This was a bad move.
These have been around since 2009. Still neat though!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Moon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Mars
That's a good argument, but it's an argument against significant white space. Without knowing white space is significant you could have made the same error with spaces.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Resigns
Yes that is a (deliberate) deficiency in Chrome. I guess I manage it by running multiple profiles: sensitive sites (banking etc), regular trusted sites (whitelist cookies, js), random surfing (clear cookies on exit). Which is definitely more involved than it needs to be. The firefox open-in-container mode seems a better solution (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Contextual_Identity_Projec...).
Travis Kalanick Resigns as Uber CEO
"Geeky fathers have children older".
Equity is for closers!!

Hire a lawyer. Do serious due diligence on the guy.

Protect yourself before you agree to anything permanent.
That's how the original example was formatted. I'm illustrating one small change.
Crowdsourced shaming works.
And how many programmers here have gotten used to the bugs in the software they use every day?
This may kill Uber. Kalanick is a jerk, but he created that insane valuation. Uber has less than a year of runway left at their current burn rate. Unless they can find a bigger sucker than the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia,[1] they're going broke in 2018. (That "undisclosed amount" in 2017 isn't a significant investment on Uber's scale.)

IPO? No way. They'd have to publish audited numbers. What's leaked out is bad enough. The real numbers have to be worse. Notice that leveraged loan in 2016.[2] All the details of that have to be disclosed in the prospectus for an IPO.

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds
[2] https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/07/new-reports-confirm-1-15b-...
Haven't heard this adage before bit it seems appropriate for the situation. Good one.
Don't kid yourself for a second that investors are kicking Travis out because of a moral imperative.
This idea assumes that the product consumer is the side which needs desalination. Unfortunately, in practice usually the opposite is true.
Did he do a lot, sure.

Does he deserve to be complimented in any way shape or form?

No... Not in the slightest.

I think the question is can uber continue winning without being toxic to staff (drivers, women, I'm sure there are others), maybe stealing (waymo lawsuit), and building tools to avoid the law....

The answer is I don't know, but it is going to be hard to recover from.
I don't know if it's possible for a company to change a culture that's this sick.

But it's almost certainly not possible to do it with the same CEO. A leave of absence is not sufficient.
I believe that (much) more relevant than that is what regulators do with these services around the world. For the people it doesn't really matter if it's Uber or Lyft. We are already seeing a protectionist wave of regulations getting rid of affordable transportation throughout the developing and the developed world, I can only imagine that when self-driving cars actually hit the market for good it will be on the whole forbidden in some countries...
This is somewhat subjective, but I'd argue you've got it exactly backwards. I already know "more than enough" GCed languages and use them frequently. That niche is well covered for me - add a GC, and remove the language tools designed to help deal with the lack thereof, and Rust would be just another language for me to ignore. Even within GCed programs, I sometimes need to reach for manual control over memory or other resources, control lifetimes, control ownership, manage shared access, etc.

And sometimes those needs are so pervasive that I want or need to effectively avoid using a GC myself - and so reach for a non-GCed, non-JITed, "manual control over everything" language. This I do not have well covered - traditionally my choice has been the undefined behavior infested, data race prone, "didn't even have threads in the standard library until ~2011", source of bugs and misery - C++.

Rust's lifetime and ownership semantics are complex, yes. But on the other hand, they can be used as a much more uniform, clean, and flexible version of e.g. https://clang.llvm.org/docs/ThreadSafetyAnalysis.html , which is but the tip of the iceberg of static and dynamic analysis, unit and fuzz testing, etc. I've already been applying to my C++ programs, to try and keep the bugs in check. So Rust is simpler than what I've been doing in practice.
This (nbviewer.js)[1] is really amazingly quick and useful as a notebook viewer.

1. https://github.com/kokes/nbviewer.js
Posted less than 20 minutes ago, 30+ comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14600873
I hadn't been aware that Thunderbolt wouldn't be available on AMD systems... indeed my understanding was that Intel's release of Thunderbolt royalty-free open specs opened the path for inclusion by anybody. Was I wrong?
Haha I thought the same thing, then kicked myself for manifesting that thought into the universe, only because that seems the most probable Silicon Valley knee jerk reaction in this case...
It's not really a significant problem. Blending it with heated cooling water from power plants or treated effluent from waste water plants are common means of brine disposal. Provided you spread out the disposal in areas with good flow, even releasing the brine directly would have minimal impact.
Bernie shutting down
I guarantee you that my comments here will not influence the market rate for top-tier ML experts.
Well, there goes the only thing I thought Uber did better than Lyft.
Just a few years ago, Uber was the place to be, the startup to imitate. How many Uber for X pitches did we see? The entire story makes me sad (not the resignation, that was kind of expected) - Uber was an icon of "disruption" and of challenging the status quo. Now, it's just a sad story and people prefer to not be associated with it.
Why doesn't Reddit just buy Imgur?
Alcohol is a powerful drug. It's a little weird to put that expectation out there, that your future employees will drink beer with you. I drink alcohol occasionally in the absence of better drugs, but still, I'd probably choose not to apply to a company on the basis of that comment (and also because I don't want to be expected to socialize with coworkers).
>Hope everyone's paying attention to the identity of these investors

Exactly. I would be wary of these specific folks. I bet you they would do the same to any founder in a heartbeat.
Do people believe that this PC circus can actually make a long term business profit?
Excellent point. My American bias is showing ...
It isn't a bad business move. Removing Kalanick allows them to start fixing their brand. He sounds like a bad manager anyway.

But who cares about that? He created and maintained a culture that systematically abused people and covered it up.

Fuck the investor value. People were harmed. This was the only ethical move they could make regarding Kalanick.
> does it actually change corporate behaviour?

That remains to be seen, obviously. But a constant in the reports about Uber was that unscrupulous behaviour (e.g. obtaining the medical records of a rape victim) was enabled by the CEO. One might presume that a change in leadership will mean better behaviour. It will also probably mean that Uber can start hiring for all the C-level positions that are currently vacant, bringing in fresh blood and a different way of doing things.

> is it a good thing that press can effectively hire and fire by continued pressure

That is an argument that is as old as the oldest printed pamphlet. I'm not going to argue it here, but I'm glad that the press reported on wrongdoing by high-ups at Uber, and I'm glad that users and investors responded to that information.
"Over the course of the migration we’ve discovered [Google] services that we thought were long dead..."

Maybe some Google employees were still using Google Reader?
Oh you're right. That's what I get for badly skimming the article. Thanks, I take back my comment.
I called for it in the Susan Fowler thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13747414#13749264

I do wish it hadn't happened, though, I would have preferred if the company could have healed with him still managing to stay in control.
> Believe

That's sounds like giving accusers too much power, especially if it leads to firing. It's not as if people don't lie.
Or as they say, "what got you here won't get you there"
Trump to meet CEOs Apple, Amazon and 20 other tech firms
I doubt this anecdote. There was no such test in 2011, and I haven't heard any tales from older timers about it either. It sounds like it's conflating some totally optional style-guide-conformance procedures you can do, with permission to check in code at all. And no-one gets to check in code without review regardless of how much expertise you've demonstrated.
I think more appropriate would be to limit the scope of belief to the complainant. Treat them as a person; acknowledge they have experienced something traumatic.

Do not believe every word anyone says as the absolute truth of an event. Evidence, corroboration, attempts to be objective -- these are all the rights of the accused.

Believe the complainant but do not assume they are correct. Our memories are the movies based on real events.
Any founder? Or just founders who drag their company's name and culture into a swamp of immoral behavior?
Lyft? That is just another corporate-controlled centralized system. I'd much prefer something along the lines of http://libretaxi.org/
I would call it an indirect imperative. Consumers think Lyft is more ethical and the board thinks removing Kalanick will fix that.
Firing founders was tried in the nineties and it always resulted in failure. Guess the Uber VC's need to painfully relearn that lesson?

If Travis had been smart enough to create two classes of stock like Mark Zuckerberg and the Google founders he'd be calling the shots, instead he's out of a job.
JavaScript Optimization Patterns (Part 1)
Its also possible that labor/maintenance costs outweighed the cost savings. Or they couldnt buy the equipment any more :)
He should've stayed. I don't recall bill gates being a good guy.

Being a good guy as requirement for being CEO is a 21st century thing.
I've seen inexplicable dates show up on dead SourceForge projects before. My guess is that some of the "update" dates may represent internal changes within SourceForge, rather than intentional changes by project owners.
I'm sure there is a lot of cost gutting that could be done and the money they pull in is no laughing matter.

Some deep cuts wil likely occur to make the company "more efficient" and "focused on core competency" etc...
I don't think he was or could be fired, I think he lost support of the major investors, and decided to resign as requested.
That's only if you confuse the business model/company with the image of its CEO.
Did he sexual harass anybody, or what is the point of his resignation? Another case of scapegoating?
Investigating starts with belief.

You don't have to assume truth, just believe they mean their account, you assume good faith. Believe them and allow that belief to start the process of uncovering what the truth is.

There's a reason Listen & Believe is a thing and it's not because anyone is saying "you should have unquestioned faith in what someone says".
> It's literally true for what we are doing right now in this moment: emitting information through a keyboard.

The claim is that we _can't_ emit more than a few bits per second, and the rebuttal is that we can. Providing an example that's under the threshold is completely irrelevant.
I'd say the media, who was already after Uber.
Announcing the Shitcoin Platform, Developer API, and Contest
Do we have any data to suggest that Uber is materially weakened? Do the negative headlines and social media posts necessarily translate into significant changes in consumer behavior?
LastAdapter = RecyclerView and ViewHolder
> Uber has less than a year of runway left at their current burn rate.

Do you have a source for this?
What it means is that those investors believe that Uber's board is padded by Travis's cronies, and they want adult supervision brought in.
I wonder if there is enough panoramic photography to create street view for the various landing sites and traverses.
GCP support here. We're aware of some users hitting this, it's an artifact of how the new regions are published to existing projects. This should be resolved for all users by the end of the day (Sydney time).

In the meantime, try these workarounds:

* Create a new project, it should work off the bat

* Create a manual network and explicitly add the subnetworks you want
No, they're kicking him out because the public is coming to see it as a moral imperative that Uber needs to be held accountable in some way for their behavior. I don't really care if the investors have or follow their morals, as long as they are in some way strongly incentivized to behave in that manner. We can't make the people have morals, but we can strongly encourage them to act like they do.
> No credit cards. Drivers get paid directly with cash.

I can understand why some people might see this as a feature, but that's severely misunderstanding why people use services like Uber.
No that's ridiculous.

Take measures based as though the complaints are made in good faith.

If you assume them true then you would act as if the investigation has already taken place, and determined that they are true. If you're going to act like that why would you need an investigation?

If complaints or concerns are raised in good faith then you have no need to mistrust the representation and instead can look to the facts and context of the situation.

Believing someone is not important, understanding the sequence of events that led to them speaking up is.
AI isn't a magic black box which one just plugs into stuff. There's some core mechanisms, but those are already well tried in many other applications. The hard part is developing a specific AI for driving.

Also, self-driving cars are not new, they're being developed for over thirty years, and they've logged millions of miles, many in public streets. The problems remaining will be in edge cases, and you definitively can't use your "folding AI" to test for that.
Why can't you just pour it back into the ocean?

That's what's happening to the fresh water after it's used, it goes back to the ocean. It's a closed cycle.

The scale of human water consumption to the volume of the sea is miniscule.

Global fresh water consumption is a fraction of a percent of the volume of the ocean ( https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((total+water+consumpt... )

There's no reason why we couldn't ship it into the middle of a desert if for some reason it couldn't go back into the sea, it wouldn't go very far once it was dumped. Conveniently, the places that rely/will rely on desalination the most happen to be desert countries.
"investors could lose billions of dollars if the company were to be marked down in valuation."

The writer has it backwards. Investors would mark down an asset because it's worth less. The asset doesn't lose value by virtue of being marked down.
funny and too confusing
> Uber has less than a year of runway left at their current burn rate.

If true, this seems far more likely to be a cause of Uber's death than Kalanick resigning. That, and the valuation being as insane as it is, which is also Kalanick's fault, which as you point out, makes it hard to find greater and greater suckers.

Perhaps they'll be better off all around without Kalanick, assuming they can get the business side on track and get the burn rate under control, and perhaps make their business sustainable rather than a gigantic handout of VC money.
She was the bullet in the gun that Uber held to its own head; they could've avoided it by not being a shitty place for women to work
Innocent until proven guilty is a great standard for criminal trials but probably not for the workplace, where people who report harassment are usually taking an incredible career risk by doing so.
Dlang's DMD better C mode – no Phobos or runtime needed
Starting to look like Uber might not be worth $69B. (Tesla is valued at just under $61B today). I wonder who the new CEO will be...
Ofos get stolen. There are almost none left in Singapore. All you need to do is remember the PIN, and scratch out the serial.

The "overengineered" Mobikes and oBikes (a competitor with very similar bikes - solar panels for the electronics, GPS lock, etc.) are all that is left in our streets.
Should we believe men too when they're victimised by women, or is this a one way deal? What if it's a man and a woman accusing each other, or two men or two women. What if the dude is a historically oppressed minority?
How did they throw him under the bus? I interpret both of their statements to be neutral and honest.
"we’ve decided to make a change" could easily be interpreted as "we've fired him".

In any case, judging by the reactions to his tweet it looks like he can pick and choose his next job.
Trust, but verify
When I use Uber, I want to get from A to B and the driver is paid for doing exactly that. I have no problem tipping people who do something outside of their duty, but I don't see why should I decide how much extra to pay for what Uber should already be paying.
So Travis created an insane valuation but the business isn't viable? That sounds like bad management to me. They may do much better without him.
as a patient, Qliance was a phenomenal experience, and easily worth the cost. (I no longer live in the area, but am with a DPC practice where I am now, which is of similar quality.)

I wonder if the problem with losing their big employers was that it changed their patient demographics too sharply and suddenly.
Do you have an example for such a startup in recent history where the founder left within the first few years and the startup succeeded with a new founder? I don't think we can really value Uber at $70B; that's the headline number for investors getting preferred shares. My main point is that Uber's position is not nearly as strong as the $70B implies; this number exists because Travis was super aggressive at growing revenue, so investors must have had expectations of the company continuing its insane growth trajectory. I don't believe Uber has that strong a moat today, and the leaked numbers imply losses left and right.
Finally John Scully will steer the ship in the right direction.

Wait, what?
I don't think Uber can go much lower, negativity around it was simply overwhelming. Desperate times require desperate measurements - kicking CEO is like saying: "ok, we did some wrong things - sorry, but we will try to change for a better".
There are articles showing them losing share to Lyft.
Without support of his major investors, Uber would struggle to raise additional capital and would probably go bankrupt in 2018-2019 with their burn rate. They asked him to leave, but not nicely.
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN? You've been doing this a lot, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14573073 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14571905.

If you have a substantive point to make, please make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.
I don't disagree with that – the effect is hopefully the same.
It's about time. Although I feel sorry that this transition had to come at difficult period of time for him, but this shake up for Uber was long due.
Most people that report harassment are taking a big career risk (and if they go public like Mrs. Fowler did, inviting abuse from Internet mobs) by doing so, so yes, I'm going to default to believing people that report harassment unless I can find credible evidence it didn't happen.
The buck stops with the CEO, and it's clear that in the very least, he condoned the asshole culture.
"Son of a bad plumber?" :)
I think Amazon has a shot at taking over Uber or even entering this space. They already have a great logistics pipeline built out.
Absolutely, you can count on her to destroy Uber gracefully with a topping of PR. And she will end up with a few hundred million at the end of it all. Failing upwards personified.
You literally just said "believe" because that's exactly what assuming the complaints are made in good faith is
I fix shitty code all day then go home and write my own shitty code so doesn't make sense to programmers??
Garbage collection at kernel level is just yet another kernel daemon with the same constraints as all the others.
The real issue is that there's no recycling strategy and these companies don't know what to do with worn/broken bikes, seemingly choosing instead to throw them all on a big pile.

http://oi63.tinypic.com/e19s7t.jpg
they are aiming for zero benefits
What if they had a default auto-tip you could set? And then if you had an exceptionally good or bad ride you could adjust for that case.
>Mr. Kalanick last week said he would take an indefinite leave of absence from Uber, partly to work on himself and to grieve for his mother, who died last month in a boating accident. He said Uber’s day-to-day management would fall to a committee of more than 10 executives.

>In the letter, titled “Moving Uber Forward” and obtained by The New York Times, the investors wrote to Mr. Kalanick that he must immediately leave and that the company needed a change in leadership.

>In the letter, in addition to Mr. Kalanick’s immediate resignation, the five shareholders asked for improved oversight of the company’s board by filling two of three empty board seats with “truly independent directors.” They also demanded that Mr. Kalanick support a board-led search committee for a new chief executive, and that Uber immediately hire an experienced chief financial officer.

>"“I love Uber more than anything in the world and at this difficult moment in my personal life I have accepted the investors request to step aside so that Uber can go back to building rather than be distracted with another fight,” Mr. Kalanick said in a statement.

Apparently a 10-executive committee of indeterminate duration wasn't going to suit the board's needs. Taken along with the immediate CFO search, it sounds like Uber simply does not have the time to let Travis sort out both Uber's culture issue and his own personal issues before things start to go sour. Unfortunate timing as I think that, had the accident not happened, Travis would have been able to turn things around. When it rains, it pours.
For an embattled company like this in a fiercely competitive industry, you need committed leadership and not a rotating cast of hired guns looking to make a quick buck.

Kalanick has serious issues but he's demonstrated unquestionably forceful (and polarizing) leadership that mere "managers" will never be able to replace.

I've been bullish on Uber despite all their mistakes and internal issues because at the end of the day, the guy at the top was irrationally emotionally committed to _winning_. Now I am a bear on Uber.