skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This article is largely incomprehensible and seems strongly biased. Having said that, I don’t quite see how consumers are being hurt. The issue only seems to be with very targeted search queries such as “Hilton Houston” where Expedia, etc. ageeed voluntarily not to show ads and smaller ones are allegedly somehow blocked by Google. But: if one searches for such a specific term, a customer will almost always be harmed by booking through an OTA. Most hotel chains guarantee the lowest rates on their websites plus offer benefits such as points that you wouldn’t receive when booking through an OTA. Someone has to pay for the 20% cut - and it’s not the OTA
This to me still seems like a net loss.

old: OTA makes a $20 commission on a $100 rate through them

new 1: Google makes an ~$20 commission on a $140 room rate (15%) through Hotel

new 2: Google makes a $17 commission on the $117 room the OTA now has to sell it.
Or the OTA tries to still sell at ~$100 and only makes a $3-$5 commission.

And this lovely quote:

> Google also requires OTAs to give its webcrawlers access to proprietary information including room availability, descriptions, pricing and custom bundles and other data—information that OTAs typically keep closely held from competitors.

Great, the amazon model of "to run on our platform we get all the data of what's profitable for you, how profitable it is, and what buyer interest is, and we then use that to power our competing product which also runs on our platform to take all the profit out of the marketplace and force you out."

Nope this isn't illegal, but again seems like an abuse of position. It's like running a competing restaurant, but also being the city's auditer and gathering all financials as well as the food inspector who is required to inspect (watch) every recipe and dish get made to be able add it to their own menu if it's a hit.

And finally regardless of all of the above, does noone else see it as a problem the general idea of looking for a percentage of revenue of every link a user follows from google? For example next them move into newspapers, and want a percentage of subscription ad-revenue for users forwarded. "Yeah we own adwords, but it's not anti-competitive. You can always run ads on your site and just not be indexed by us. [And not get referral traffic]. If you want us to accurately spider your site and refer to pages, we take a percentage".

So hotels, car rentals, flights, shopping, movie tickets, (and any other search that google productizes)... The end game of this is have any transaction that happens on the web that came from a google referral, they get a cut. It's obviously not there yet, but that's the direction they keep moving: Turn search into an app store / amazon style platform and get 20% of everything on the internet.
Wework is definitely eating a bunch of risk. I imagine we'll get to see how good they are at modeling it soon enough...
> Right, but in economies driven by unchecked consumption, that's a bad thing.

FTFY
Hold up, so their elevators are shit EVERYWHERE?! Good grief! I think WW has its uses but I definitely don’t miss the obnoxiously loud millennials from Invision’s office (Boston).
The article says "As more Americans have moved away from organized religion ... they have also moved toward new forms of community building, as well as new ways to seek mental clarity and spiritual experiences."

My argument is that this is not "a new form of community building" but rather one which has been around for a long time. The article instead circles a relatively recent trend, and claims it's special. But nothing in the argument couldn't have been applied, say, 130 years ago to the then-new trend of cycling enthusiasts.

In addition, I see no reason to believe it's connected to a recent "[move] away from organized religion".
> make sure a random employee isn't uploading credit card data to Box

Except you aren't making sure, and there are many ways sensitive data can be exported. Let's be honest with ourselves here, these measures are often implemented under the guise of security but really are just liability and risk reduction approaches. The practical security benefit is very low IME, especially considering the burdens these measures put on employees' ability to work their best (and, as this article points out, burdens on others as well).
This. I book quite a few hotel stays throughout the year and you will definitely get perks and resort credits when booking directly. Just ask for it. They don't want you hanging up the phone and going back to Kayak which may lead you to another property while deciding.
If you can get an office, do so. And get a poster or rolling whiteboard to act as a divider (all walls are glass). Oh, and invest in noise-cancelling headphones.
Yeah, this is the kind of info I'm trying to figure out. The ME update mechanism seems to not be so cut and dry. The three regions RGN/EXTR/UPD can be updated seperately. It seems like ME updates could be delievered either as a full OEM bios update, or a by an Intel supplied UPD-only update. Also, The update seems to be a simple direct flash via the SPI controller. Not sure if any running ME processes can interfere with that. Happy to go through any links you have..

https://recon.cx/2014/slides/Recon%202014%20Skochinsky.pdf

https://www.win-raid.com/t596f39-Intel-Management-Engine-Dri...
That's actually the idea behind the "death tax." It's meant to prevent dynastic family wealth from accumulating.
Google "Tursaansydän" and "Hopi Swastika".
I knew this was coming and it's more surreal that I thought it would be. We crossed the uncanny valley. I'm not sure we are prepared for trusted sources to be faked this well and this easily. It will be interesting to see how we as a society start to cope with an acid trip level of real life unreliable narrator.
I first learned at a young age of the efficient market hypothesis from Malkiel's Random Walk Down Wall Street. Rather than dissuading me from investing, it gave me confidence that if the theory's right then my choices should perform about average anyway. And if it's wrong, then I would have a chance to do well if I did my homework. I've done alright, but realized pretty quickly that it's much easier, more predictable, and less stressful to invest in my education and job skills. Investing in these can easily gain you seven figures additional cumulative income over your lifetime, something quite difficult to achieve in investing without either large starting capital or a very large edge.
Everything is a bubble:

http://www.mauldineconomics.com/editorial/infographic-the-ev...

This whole thing will come down to how the Quantitive Easing winds up:

http://www.livemint.com/Money/hyDe0jAEnml43F1kd2FzhJ/Feds-Gr...
The article mentions my favorite Alexa skill: Jeopardy. It's a testament to how well the hardware + voice recognition works that you can reasonably play through 12 trivia questions daily with only minor hiccups.

It's not multiple choice, you just answer with whatever phrase makes sense and it mostly just _works_ (which still strikes me as fairly amazing).
I totally agree with you!!
I don’t associate hard/soft with difficult like that (I personally find soft skills difficult), but this is a good example of how the terms are ripe for misunderstanding.

I try to use communication or personal or interpersonal skills, etc.
Quite a cynical world view.

Its awesome that more people are even dreaming of changing the world, starting businesses and have a support infrastructure and culture to do it.

Would you rather we aspired to cube farms instead?
>doing the Atlantic in 737s!

I think that would be the 737 MAX which is a notably different aircraft (launched in 2016) than your normal 737.
The move away from organized religion isn't recent, it's been ongoing in America for well over a century (probably since before the founding); the trend toward new forms of community building and new avenues toward spirituality and mental clarity that accompanies it is likewise not recent, but equally old.
> Walk through one at 7:30, 8:00p, the same hours that you'd
> expect a hungry founder to be grinding it out

Can we stop with this another fetishisation of unhealthy work habits? How about wise founder realising that having a good rest and a healthy work-life balance makes them more productive?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16018165

Posted 2 hours earlier, 30+ comments, 60+ points
The people who are dissatisfied invariably ask opinion based questions. That is not what Stack Overflow is for. Sure, there is always more than one way to do it, and any good SO question often has three solid viable answers — but if there are dozens? hundreds? .. it’s no longer a question, but a bikeshed type discussion.
I wouldn't call that evidence "pretty good." What you'd want to see is a comparison of X years of Esperanto then Y years of English versus X years of <another language> then Y years of English (or perhaps X+Y years of English), with both comparison groups controlled for lingual capabilities of the main conversation cohort (friends and family) as well as incentive to learn languages (English can notoriously be the lazy option).

If you want to claim that Esperanto is easier to learn than, say, English, I would not dispute that. Although I would point out that some of that ease comes from its artificiality--learning about culture is a major component of foreign language courses (particularly in scholastic environments), and Esperanto basically lacks culture.
I'm sorry, but all "talent" I've worked with in India has all been very lousy and in retrospect makes total sense. You get what you pay for.

I recently left a software company due to their codebase. Low and behold it was constructed by a bunch of cheap worker ants. Sorry, not for me.
They have moved way past the 'we cater to startups' mantra and have gone to catering to large corporations who want to get that 'startup feel'. I was visiting HSBC IT folks in Hong Kong last month, the largest and most established bank in town, maybe the most conservative one.
Their digital teams were working out of a rented floor at Wework in Causeway Bay, HK Island. With a small cafe inside. Seemed very un-banking like and that's exactly why they went there a year ago - http://www.scmp.com/property/hong-kong-china/article/2021679...
Pretty much spot on critique. I agree that Esperanto has a fairly thriving community but it doesn't cut as a proper auxiliary language.

I think the concept of Esperanto should be redone under current linguistics knowledge and technology. We will probably end with another half-backed attempt but maybe it would advance Humanity a little more towards having a shared neutral language.
Regarding (1), os.Executable function introduced relatively recently could make things better for you.
https://golang.org/pkg/os/#Executable
South Korea imposing the new regulations on cryptocurrency trading
Ripple coin can [potentially] provide single currency for banks operating across the globe, if it is able to get wider acceptance and ensure low volatility. I too have my doubts but this[1] post explains it well.

[1] https://medium.com/@AlexCarrithers/xrp-vs-ious-on-ripple-wha...
I agree!

But that doesn't make it factually untrue that WeWork disingenuously leverages those dreams to feed its growth. There's a reason why Simon Cowell was as compelling as he was: he was the only one who was actually honest with people when he told them that they were wasting their time pursuing their dreams of stardom. Everyone I've ever met associated with WeWork, comparably speaking, is Paula Abdul.

It's unsustainable - because a lot of the companies that are there, frankly, are losers and will churn out quickly - and they need to constantly refill the supply at the bottom of that pyramid. That supply is not infinite, and most certainly not at the rate they're expanding.

And again, the ultimate salient point here is that they've got orders of magnitude less property under management and yet they're trading at higher multiples than just about every other realty holding company.

It's bubblicious, bro. All the feel-good bullshit about wanting to disrupt the world doesn't change that.
> This seems to be a sour grapes article representing the grudges of online travel agencies (OTAs) against Google.

Superficially, but more deeply it's part of the propaganda war the WSJs corporate parent has been carrying out against Google on all fronts for quite a long time, which is in part partisan/ideological, and in part business over similar issues in publishing.
Eelo: Gaël Duval’s Open Source, Privacy Respecting Android Phone Clone
This is wrong in so many ways. Indian engineering is many things just like in the US or Europe and you can get world class IT specialists in India. If anything, the existense of the IT outsourcing industry in India has helped establishing a growing educated middle class which is the prerequisite for one day being able to churn out even more world class engineers.
Do you have data supporting your claim. I know a lot of people who are really good and continue to work in India. Infact I have also seen a lot of good people coming back to India (since last 2 - 3 years). So things are gradually improving for good.
I would rather folks be realistic with themselves about what kind of work they will need to put in to accomplish those dreams instead of wasting resources that could be allocated elsewhere.

What strikes me as cynical is creating a culture that attracts daydreamers with little chance of success and then turning around and selling investors on something else.
For me, the "favorites" are "engage" and "socialize". As a fresh example, Microsoft "engaged" with open-source community to the point they almost drove .NET into the ground. They "socialized" with crowds via GitHub while doing really stupid things like platform segmentation, misrepresenting alpha-quality releases as production-ready ones etc.
I find this point interesting. Anyone have any theories?

Here's a model that we've had trouble with. Maybe you'll be able to figure it out better. Many markets get down to two or three big competitors—or five or six. And in some of those markets, nobody makes any money to speak of. But in others, everybody does very well.

Over the years, we've tried to figure out why the competition in some markets gets sort of rational from the investor's point of view so that the shareholders do well, and in other markets, there's destructive competition that destroys shareholder wealth.
Get people to work for you. Start a programming "class" and have your pupils complete freelance, upwork like contracts.
'... but I loathe all of the dark patterns they employ to make that commission.'

I tried to leave a negative review for a hotel on booking.com and the overall result was 3.5 out 5!

At least with google reviews I can get a fair picture of what the place is actually like.

And, all that 'just one room left at this price' is basically fraud.

It does annoy me though when I try to book direct and get charged the exact same price. I know with chains you get loyalty discounts and such but a there are still a lot of independents where you don't.
I don't know about hotels since airbnb is almost always cheaper, but with flying you will almost always find cheaper flights going directly to the airline or using something like The Matrix [1] than using kayak, expedia etc. These companies used to be cheaper than going directly with an airline, but since they were so easy to use everyone uses them now and they charge high margins for that convenience, so the position has switched in the last 20 years.

I also use secretflying.com which is like skyscanner but better imho. Using these flight websites I normally get flights from Chicago to east asia in the lower $400 range roundtrip, the cheapest I've seen was $300 roundtrip from ORD>SIN!

[1] https://matrix.itasoftware.com/
Funded startups can afford wework. We run our start-up from free Co working spaces and public libraries. Every dollar saved goes to customer acquisition and $500 is a luxury
Works fine on my iPhone 5s + iOS 11.2.1
Key Challenges of Being a Mobile App Startup
its a placebo for multinationals to get people to innovate

There are a bunch of coworking space accelerators in silicon valley which are occupied by some small unprofitable divisions of megacorps, their “alpha bets”
This feels like your personal sentiment. You do know that there are good outsourcing firm out there right? I've been working at outsourcing firm for most of my career and I have to disagree. There are a full spectrum of good and bad developers out there even in the outsourcing world, not just bad ones. Do you think outsourcing as a practice can still survive if it doesn't bring value?
Wouldn't that make it harder to directly translate back to F# which is his goal?

I understood the only purpose of writing the Haskell was didactic, and to improve his F# code. It seems that moving further from constructs in F# would work against this.
I have a cousin who has a small SaaS business out of Belarus, and he says the top end of what he pays his devs there is $500, which is quite a bit lower than the numbers you're quoting here.
Are there any good resources/tutorials for someone who wants to learn how to build these "Amazon skills"/Google Home apps?
I've had opposite experience. In my case, they were sharp but they were also toxic to be working in a team. So, we had to move our R&D centre to Poland.
Uppy - The next open source file uploader for web browsers
This is a fair point and I'm glad you brought it up. I'm using it as a proxy to refer to the general work ethic needed to get a company off the ground - which I've rarely seen in any WeWork office - but your point stands.
> There are enough agile success stories though that I don't think the ideology is completely silly.

Any lonk to read one account of such written by devs themselves, as opposed to the vast majority that are written by consultants selling agile packages?
Worked fine for me: Firefox Quantum 57.0.1 (Mac OS X)
> The organic glass, made of a substance called polyether thioureas, is closer to acrylic than mineral glass

Plastic is organic glass?
Please link to any cases. So far when anyone has linked a case it's turned out (with one exception) to be someone making very many direct, credible, threats of harm, or engaging in a campaign of harassment.

But those cases got widespread, mostly american, coverage of the attack on free speech. Those sites are wrong.
I am aware of it. I was not complaining but just amused. If you think about it there is no way the Universe could have existed if it was not for the randomness or inequality :)
It is actually a €120K position - the only company in Berlin paying that amount, with very alarming reviews on Glassdoor - Thinkcell. So the recruiter was trying to low bail you.
#6 Steps for Boosting Sales Funnel Efficiency
Employee GPS Tracking in the Corporate World: Features and Advantages
The four holy grails of cryptocurrencies
I recently transitioned from a Software engineering to Product Management role. So, learning these new skills(design/communication/planning) and improving at the job will be my top priority.

My current plan is to read a lot of books and focus on my writing skills. Other goal is to keep my tech chops up to date (so I can easily move back if I don't like this role).
Duolingo also assumes it can condition you without teaching you the exceptions AT ALL

And thats annoying AF

Five seconds of a teacher or native speaker telling you the reason is way more valuable
wow, thank you so much. Great site. If anyone has any other tips/hacks etc, would love to hear about it.
Citation on FlipKart and Ola being billions of debt? Not overtly doubting, but curious.
The 787 is pretty nice too. Having electrical air pumps rather than bleed air is a plus - there's some evidence it can cause problems (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/6839234/Boeing-...)
Honestly this may contribute a lot more than it is given credit for

Monero has touched a lot of people since 2014

Would this random tourist have noticed the Esperanto statue in Vienna? Their museum?

A passing impression of Monero may be fueling this resurgance and international exposure
Prediction: Tech market will grow by 4% in 2018 to ~$3 trillion
Uppy is currently the #1 trending JS repo on GitHub. I’m one of the creators and would like some HN feedback. Feel free to ask me anything
Wow. I’m assigning you some reading material.

Start here:

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

Further material:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy
It's not any better in IE on desktop. (at work, not my choice of navigator).
Wait, Visual Studio Code is an electron app?! I always thought it was written in C++ which was why it was so smooth and fast unlike Atom.
Yes, absolutely - plenty of decision makers face incentives structures that reward short term cost savings and don’t punish increased long term maintenance costs.
> Only thing IITians are good at is self worship.

It's almost as though you've got an axe to grind with people having any respectable pedigree.
More important than reducing productivity is the problem that prompt-overload conditions people to just blindly click accept.
The shipping forecast is the best resource for surfers in Britain. Especially those on the north east, or north coast. /me <3s the shipping forecast, and I ain't lived in Britain for nearly 2 decades.
Yes think of something more in the lines of Plexiglas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly(methyl_methacrylate)

The video is down here, looks almost like a gooey liquid how it melts back together... http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201712150041.html
This is a better link IMO:
https://phys.org/news/2017-12-semi-transparent-polymer-room-...

And here's the actual paper all the articles are about:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2017/12/13/scien...
Some airports have automated, unmanned trains or trams that take passengers from terminal to terminal within the airport.

The example is illustrative because those are usually either elevated or underground, with virtually no possibility of people being on the tracks, and no crossings with other traffic.
http://archive.is/ECDvi
Imagine some day a hacker will be able to mimics speech with the next version of Tacotron 2[1] then use it over the next version of Face2Face... Scary future ahead.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16014047
Every now and then there is this dude who posts regularly about algorithm trading.
I guess I'll try that in 2018.
I don't expect to make profit right away, not even till 2020.
They've disproved the strong Sapir-Whorf. At least according to Wikipedia there's some evidence for the the so-called weak version.

In any event, languages at the extreme ends of the spectrum, like Toki Pona and Ithkuil, seem to show rather clearly how language can shape thought. Here's a fascinating point from an The Atlantic article, linked from the Toki Pona website:

One student of the language [Ithkuil] claimed that it
allowed her to “see things that exist but don’t have names,
in the same way that Mendeleyev’s periodic table showed
gaps where we knew elements should be that had yet to be
discovered.” Tweak a single phoneme and arrive at a strange
new variation of a thought. Tweak by tweak, a speaker could
wander forever through an endless landscape of unique
thoughts in a kind of linguistic dérive.

-- https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/toki-pona-smallest-language/398363/

Perhaps a better, more obvious example is simply the languages of mathematics. There are many concepts that simply cannot be expressed with any substantial accuracy in vernacular language. No amount of metaphor suffices to convey quantum mechanical concepts in a useful, utilitarian way. Heck, didn't Richard Feynman literally invent a new language, Feynman Diagrams, to teach quantum mechanics? (I understand that mathematical languages are perhaps better described as notation, but notation doesn't convey the fact that the concepts often can't be translated into the vernacular.)

I'd argue that a corollary of Sapir-Whorf is that no language can express every possible concept. That, I think, is a far more agreeable claim.