skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> i sometimes have the feeling that those models don't do much more that extrapolate exponentials and lines, without any kind of comprehension of the underlying phenomenons

At the end of the day, all we have is our feelings. In terms of our decision-making and understanding of the world, though, I think it's important to recognize the general distributed consensus from observations around us. If you're feeling those pangs of doubt, I'd encourage you to try to find the dry citations behind the articles that you've mentioned.
> Currently, with youtube / gmail etc, the revenue per user is so low it will NEVER make economic sense to have humans dealing with an account.

Google made over $6 billion in profit in one quarter this year. YouTube had revenue over $5 billion in one quarter. They announced a $25 billion stock buyback.

Google doesn't offer support because they choose not to.
Universal healthcare is not the only way to fix that....

You could use the existing healthcare exchange, and just give people a certain percent of their salary that can only be used to buy healthcare. Then let them buy as they choose.
Discussion ended up being at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24114206
"It has been two and a half years since the previous major release of React, which is a long time even by our standards!"

As a mostly Python and only occasional JavaScript developer, it always felt like the biggest challenge in the JavaScript community was how fast everything moved - new libraries, frameworks and ideas would tumble past at the rate of one every few weeks, and it felt impossible to keep up.

I've been feeling that a lot less recently, and maybe the fact that React has been steady for 2.5 years is part of the reason.
For the vast history of humanity, "Normal" was little more than serfdom or outright slavery. I'm not sure what "normal" you're actually implying, but if you're referring to the post-War era as normal, that's really just a microcosm.
> No. But if you are a shoe-maker who employs 10 people to make shoes, and you pay them less than their skills are worth or take money for yourself beyond what is required to run the business, you are taking their money.

How do we determine what someone's skills are 'worth'? You seem to be espousing something called the Labor Theory of Value. The labor theory of value has a ton of problems, that you can read about here:

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

Almost no economists believe it in anymore, although it was popular a long time ago. It just isn't consistent with a lot of real world problems.

> If you get a machine to make the shoes and fire the workers, and continue to charge me the same price for the shoes which now cost you less to make, now you are taking my money.

How, exactly? Are you entitled to my shoes at their marginal cost of production? Where in that interaction does the 'taking' happen?
The parent's point brings up the fact that the medallion system wasn't particularly beneficial to all drivers (or riders); medallions are good for medallion-holders, which are usually taxi companies.
Yes? Who else would set them? Pedantically, the market sets the rates, but the contractor is the one with the power to say yes or no. Gig platforms take that power away (either through a reduction in rating or deplatfoming if you decline work requests).

This is simply closing a loophole gig platforms were built on (misclassifying workers in violation of labor law).
But pianos are tuned with 2:1 ratios. That is preserved in equal temperment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_key_frequencies
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

> It will be seen that we have no cause to be ashamed of our cookery, so far as originality goes or so far as the ingredients go. And yet it must be admitted that there is a serious snag from the foreign visitor’s point of view. This is, that you practically don’t find good English cooking outside a private house. If you want, say, a good, rich slice of Yorkshire pudding you are more likely to get it in the poorest English home than in a restaurant, which is where the visitor necessarily eats most of his meals.

> It is a fact that restaurants which are distinctively English and which also sell good food are very hard to find. Pubs, as a rule, sell no food at all, other than potato crisps and tasteless sandwiches. The expensive restaurants and hotels almost all imitate French cookery and write their menus in French, while if you want a good cheap meal you gravitate naturally towards a Greek, Italian or Chinese restaurant.
Journey to China During Covid
> 'built' spelled as 'built'

Did autocorrect “fix” your intentional misspelling for you?
Thanks for the correction!

I actually confused my facts here - it's tipping I was thinking of that comes directly from slavery. Employer-paid health care just _continues_ because of racism, as opposed to being created by it.
>They certainly can offer flexible hours to full time employees - no where does it say "Americans shalt work from nine until five so sayeth we the founders".

I don't think you understand how a business like this works. For a customer serving business, they need to make sure they are staffed appropriately.

Would it make sense for a restaurant to offer all of their staffs "flexible hours"? Is it ok for the waiter to show up at 3am when he has trouble sleeping and just get paid doing nothing?

It's not about 9-5, but it's about when the customers show up.
This is pedantic in the worst possible way. If you make it impossible to find that link, then it's as if it wasn't there.
The IDs that are required to vote in Republican states are either free of charge, or they allow alternative ID documents.

Texas being a fine example: https://www.votetexas.gov/mobile/id-faqs.htm
The first YouTube comment below the video is a good start!
> Gig platforms take that power away.

Pretty sure drivers have to "accept" a ride, isn't that agreeing to a rate?
Where I live (in the UK) the power is reliable enough (one outage every 3-5 years) that I only tend to spec UPSs for devices with dual PSUs - one raw mains, one UPS-protected. I've had more UPS failures than mains failures in the past decade... and mains power will normally come back up, starting the equipment automatically, while failed UPSs generally require manual intervention to fix, and consequently much greater downtime...
I'm confused how they are violating Assembly Bill 5 (workers can generally only be considered contractors if they perform duties outside the usual course of a company’s business)?

Do any employees working at Uber or Lyft currently do any driving?

Their business is providing riders with drivers. The driving is not their business.
I'm confused how they are violating Assembly Bill 5 (workers can generally only be considered contractors if they perform duties outside the usual course of a company’s business)?
Do any employees working at Uber or Lyft currently do any driving?

Their business is providing riders with drivers. The driving is not their business.
> I wish that a big company like Google, Apple or Microsoft attempted something bold in that space.

Me too. I tried stirring things up a bit when we were nearing the end of Eve, but nobody bit. This is work that _can_ be done, someone just has to fund it and let it grow without too much interference. The big players certainly have the ability to take care of the first part, not so sure about the second though.

> I remember the Lighttable editor making a bit of a buzz a few years ago

It's hard to believe.. but that was 8(!) years ago now. Time sure does fly.
Medallions were first implemented based on the idea that medallion regulations would improve things for both taxi drivers and taxi riders. Limited medallions meant drivers would make more, and riders would be safer as the driver would be known by the city and invested in the medallion.

Instead, they had the opposite effect as taxi conglomerates quickly emerged and cornered the medallion market due to economies of scale. Individual drivers could not compete with medallions priced based on 24-hour usage.

Most drivers became low-paid employees of these conglomerates. Users suffer because drivers no longer had much incentive to keep the shared company cars clean. The conglomerates lobbied to reduce the supply of medallions to protect their now sizable investment and eliminate potential competition.

In this Uber/Lyft case we are also adding regulations which make barrier to entry higher for any incumbent companies. The complication of having thousands of salaried employees is more than most startups can handle, so we are basically cementing the established players Uber/Lyft as the only options.
Have fun shitposting against their shills, our shills. It's your idea. You cultivated a public that only responds to marketing. You designed things to be this way.
Anecdotally, although I still rate TikTok's algorithm as better than youtube, the real difference is the long-term engagement. TikTok is always able to deliver content that is interesting to me......Youtube recommendations have a habit of delivering "stale" recommendations for long-term users.
Worked on a project in late 80s for an Italian bank. We implemented a SWIFT (financial) interface (on Stratus for reliability reasons). A few fun and games:

- The Stratus supposedly had fault tolerant duplexing of boards - pull one out and the other keeps working. A famous demo where local consultant pulls out the only board which wasn't duplicated!

- The machine room was also fire proofed with Halon gas (if I recall correctly), but due to security concerns the door was locked from inside by operators when present (luckily as programmers we weren't expected to work inside with doors locked!). Luckily also, it was my first exposure to "paired programming"/"paired operating" as in there were invariably 2 of them.

- A couple of the operators became too interested in how to work things, and wrote a quite comprehensive manual. They were "moved on" within the bank, because for security, management only wanted "people who could follow instructions", not "who can think for themselves".

- the whole headquarters building was in a guarded compound, where ultimate protection against "red brigade terrorists" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Brigades) were the armed guards. We used to meet them in the ground floor cafe every mid-morning, with a revolver on their hip, while they drank an espresso with brandy chaser. Really inspired confidence that they would be there to protect us should the need arise!
Interesting. Don't they use a unique identifier for each individual though?

If someone was to try and vote twice from 2 addresses they simply shouldn't be able to because of the unique identifier.

I mean, if they were registered to vote in 2 separate places, they could just drive to 2 different polling stations and vote twice anyway, right?
> I would if I were inventing dynamite

> I wouldn't do anything:

That's hypocritical. Nobel didn't invent dynamite because he wanted people to blow themselves up. He invented dynamite because nitro-glycerin was a horrid mess used in mining.

He definitely didn't have an easy technical solution to problem of people misusing dynamite.

You can either say in both case do nothing, or in both case do something.
>They certainly can offer flexible hours to full time employees

They can't guarantee flexibility and full-time employment. That's the point.

>"Americans shalt work from nine until five so sayeth we the founders".

If there is no demand or there is over-supply at some particular time in some particular area, you can't will a job into existence.

>They're just griping that they need to start paying benefits.

Are they griping? The costs are going to be passed down to the consumer. They will still be more competitive than taxis (which are still abysmal with customer service). And by raising regulatory costs and requirements, you're making it harder for any new entrants to come in and compete. Sounds like Uber and Left break-even, and everyone else loses. Alternatively, if this new regulation kills Uber and Lyft, then everyone loses.
Indie game developers reveal they quit over 'one year of psycho terror'
Gig platforms neither decrease your rating / deplatform you if you decline work.
I don't see where you're getting that "bias" accusation. The subtitle of the article is literally written from the company's perspective ("A stunning court ruling puts Uber and Lyft in a tight spot"), and not the drivers'. In fact the benefits to drivers as employees don't even get treated until the end of the second paragraph, after the author has explained things like the already-filed appeal.

Honestly, I think objectively I'd look at this as very much sympathetic to the employers, if I had to assign bias (though honestly it's fairly neutral).

As far as the law goes: this result was coming for sure, the only surprise here is the fact that it happened via injuction. The California "AB5" law under which the suit was filed is a new law from last year, and it was very much written with the intent to make gig economy positions into "employee" relationships. There's a link in the article to this explainer, which is pretty good:

https://www.californiaemploymentlawreport.com/2019/03/unders...
Imagine if we'd started preparing when it was clear that things were serious.
Going remote? consider the Equity Loophole
Active Driving Assistance Do Less to Assist Drivers and More to Interfere
It not just the power that be, but even the advocates in the green movement are pushing for the idea that natural gas is a suitable transitional solution until unset date in the future. Stopping climate change is not the highest priority for any group that has political power, which leaves scientists and onlookers.

Fossil fuels should really be banned from the energy grid and the date should be set well before any newly fossil fueled plant can regain enough of it investment to be profitable.
Based on court cases these articles are reporting on and modifications platforms have been making to driver interfaces due to AB5, no.
One of the key problems is in verifying citizenship. None of the existing identities work well for this. I remember when India introduced Aadhar card, it was explicitly mentioned that it is not a proof of citizenship and there was a "challenge" to come up with a good identity proof for citizenship.
Back in high school, Lincoln-Douglas competitive debate taught that "should" was for practical justifications and "ought" was for ethical justifications. Again, to your point, most people don't bother to be so careful with their choices of words.
That's what I do -- I used to keep an hour blocked off of my calendar for "commute time", now I use that time to workout.

At the beginning of the quarantine, I bought a spinning bike (I've been thinking about getting one for over a year, but going to the gym spinning classes a couple times a week was relatively convenient since the gym was near work). I also invested in a set of dumbbells.

Now I work out 5 days a week -- alternating between spinning and strength training. If I miss the morning exercise for any reason, it's easy to fit in a 15 minute session sometime during the day, something that was much harder to do when I was going to the gym for exercise.

I don't think I'll ever return to the gym now that I've experienced the convenience of working out at home in a virtual online class.
This doesn't sound reactionary or uninformed at all. There's a decision that the benefits of stable employment are more important than flexibility. You can be free to argue whether it's better or worse bit it's not about ignorance.
Bloomberg did a writeup of this a few weeks ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china...
Satellites perhaps?
They don't have access to my DNS/web server. That didn't stop Google from sending me 11 spam emails about G Suite.

I think the first step Google should take before DNS/web server verification is to verify the email address used for the setup.
I'm not saying one format is better than the other, or it having to do anything with the format.

The word "Unfortunately" is there on purpose. I often have to sift trough PDFs were it doesn't make sense to have the information only there.

What I'm disagreeing with is that PDFs unlike web pages lack substance. In my opinion the substance is often in the PDFs not because of the format, but how the information is produced.

E.g. within a government or enterprise the content could come from anywhere within the org structure, often multiple intermediaries away from the people putting stuff on the website. Everyone knows basic MS Word. On-boarding potentially hundreds or thousands of employees to a CMS and send them to a "how to craft effective digital content" which is what the Nielson article is ultimately selling is not always feasible. Only select pieces get a web treatment the rest gets summarized if not just linked. News papers have pipelines from Word to digital publishing tools to print / online because of this. But also this setup is not easy.

I just recently needed some specific information about traveling to and quarantine in Switzerland. The news sites where useless, the linked government web page was useless. Only the original PDF at the end of the link chain contained the information.

I'd prefer having this information more easily accessible/searchable. But as it stands, the substance is often in the PDFs, not the web pages.
why doesn't this happen for truck drivers or traditional taxi drivers, who are also usually contractors?
The Dollop has a great comedic re-telling and examination of this event. The show format is that one comedian reads a prepared and lightly researched account of the event, and another comedian reacts and improvises over it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFLjcX163WI
The existence of employment tied health insurance isn’t that surprising historically. Some of the first companies to offer healthcare were risky jobs where the job could cause harm and then it became more standard as a non-wage perk under wage controls enacted during the second world war. This timing also coincides with the rise of modern medicine as we know it today (Labor, eduction, and R&D intensive).

The truly crazy part is that core issues with the system weren’t addressed over the last 70 or so years. Not working should not mean that I’m only able to participate in health-seeking behaviour if I’m wealthy enough to maintain my own health care coverage.

Not to mention conflicts of interest, had a former classmate who’s an ER doctor tweet that he saw a patient who’s chronic condition was causing emergency healthcare needs because insurance was paying for treatment every 4 weeks when the doctor prescribed every 3.
That doesn't mean there's no E2E encryption. WhatsApp can take the text of your conversations and also send plaintext to Facebook for ad targeting, while the actual conversation to the other person is still E2E encrypted. Or do "local" analytics on the phone to find keywords for ad targeting. Etc.
Based on reality, how is that different from IT contracting where I am responding to a contract with predetermined MD rate?
I was a 1099 contractor for several years and couldn't agree more. It drove me nuts when I'd read articles like this, since I had made a conscious choice not to be an employee, for all of the pros and cons that implies.
Agreeing to a rate != setting your rate, and having the counter-party agree or disagree to your rate.
"Build the Firewall" and get China to pay for it?
JavaScript actually has a pretty ergonomic way of doing currying natively:

const add = (a) => (b) => a + b;

[1, 2, 3, 4].map(add(2)); // [3, 4, 5, 6]
Pedantically, sure. Ethically, maybe? Legally -- we'll see how this case goes.

I think it's reasonable to argue that because the contractor had no input into the rate, and if they decline too many rides they might be removed from the service, that they do not have the power to set rates.
This is an example of regulation getting in the way of innovation...

If by innovation you mean the abuse of people forced to work in the "gig" economy, then sure.
Totally hear your concern! To be clear though, it's not like we're forcing anyone to follow this approach. It was just broken before, in the same way that putting React inside a Vue/Svelte/jQuery app was subtly broken. So we've fixed the root cause but I totally agree it's only a solution to be used as a last resort. (E.g. like in our case, where many "long tail feature" components were written in 2013 and no teams own them.) In either case, even if you follow this approach, we strongly recommend to only load the second version lazily on screens that need it — like the demo shows.

It's very suboptimal but I think it's still better to have that option than not to have it — or to try it and run into insurmountable problems. Especially in big long-running projects like internal company dashboards where long-term maintenance is more important than time to first render.

(I don't know why you're being downvoted though! I think your concern makes a lot of sense, and we're also sensitive about how to balance the messaging so that people don't use this unnecessarily.)
Although there are separate China & non-Chinese apps, you hit the nail on the head for why a potential acquisition both has serious risk and is going to be a fire sale of TikTok given the 45-day deadline. These are issues which normally would take months to resolve at minimum and would also need a period post-close where operations were slowly separated and Bytedance was still involved for knowledge transfer.

If the acquirer, can make it work, it will be the greatest tech M&A deal since Facebook acquired Instagram in terms of long-term return.
>Rides would be more expensive, which would significantly reduce the number of rides people could take and, in turn, the number of drivers needed to provide those trips.

At what point exactly can we state the problem as "Uber is not able to build a sustainable model".

I am all for disrupting taxis and have little love for medallions but if the alternative needs a salary level you can not live on, maybe it is just not a good model.
Neural networks/teach by example is that program representation paradigm change.
From the intro page:

> One answer could be that programmers are not that interested in thinking about languages. Or that our languages today are sufficient and everyone is happy. But spend a few minutes on any programming forum, and it’ll become clear that a lack of enthusiasm and opinions on languages could not be the reason why we don’t see more programming languages.

Are construction workers constantly complaining about their hammers and not seeing change? If not, then the analogy doesn't really work.
Yes, yes, the language has synonyms. However, the beauty of synonyms is being able to create slight distinctions between them. A native speaker often learns connotations that don't appear in short definitions of some words. Punto e basta.
Leave it to California to stick it to a company losing $7 billion per year trying to find its footing.

Drivers are voluntarily entering into the current work arrangement. Why does the government need to have an opinion on the matter?
Nothing per se against repl.it, but I'm surprised to see this on #1 of the front page as it's basically a call to free labour.
Will there ever be a future when companies innovate themselves again?
IMHO all these "hackathons" or "jams" are really just about finding use cases for their product and getting it tested for a very affordable reward ...
Have you tried working on the other side of the fence? I did work in both areas and differences are huge.
Yeah I think Google calls it BeyondProd their version of a zero trust network.