skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The government didn't just wake up this morning and declare Uber illegal. Their ridesharing service was illegal and they set up shop anyways. There are massive downsides to the current monopolistic state of taxis in areas like Philly, and I believe the laws need to be changed to accommodate the new state of transportation. But Uber ought to be working to change the law, not breaking it in the hopes that the government eventually just gives up.

What they're doing puts drivers in the position mentioned in the article: Uber has told them they're operating legally when they are not. Whether or not the law is valid doesn't change the fact that Uber knowingly put the drivers in this position.
Also this:

> At first, I decided to just solicit them our deck and pitch but then I realized something: Tim Ferriss and Jason Calacanis almost definitely knew each other. So I spoof called Calacanis from Tim Ferris’ number.

I know PG looks upon a certain amount of "naughtiness"[1] as a potentially positive indicator, but it should be clear to anyone with an inkling of common sense that this is way over the line.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html
Yes. Thank you.

Things that don't necessarily fit into single UTF-32 code unit: combining character sequence and grapheme cluster.
The original set of emoji used in Japanese phones had ten characters reserved for country flags, but as you can imagine ISO were very much not keen to include one particular set of countries to the exclusion of all the others, or to specify a particular flag design for a particular country. The solution they went with was to add 26 "regional indicator symbol" characters, and if you use those flag-code characters to spell an ISO country-code, rendering software is supposed to look up the current flag of the named country and display it.

If they went to such lengths to avoid adding flags to the spec, imagine how much pushback you'd get for trying to add company logos.
I completely agree,

I had a film Leica and then bought an M9P, they're so vastly different in usage, it's almost hilarious.

Almost everything, except how the camera looks from the front, was lost. The shutter sound is atrociously loud and annoying sounding. Tons of firmware issues, I have missed many shots simply because the camera just hanged up, and needed a battery re-insert. The M9 is noticably bulkier than any of the film Leica's, also it's just as heavy as any fullframe DSLR.

You see Leica coming out with weird cameras such as the T, and you just have to facepalm. What they really need to do to combat the Fuji / Sony cameras coming out is to release a small fixed lens camera with a 35 summicron or summilux equivalent (like a digital Contax T3). I doubt that this will happen since whoever is in charge now has no brand vision.

Going to get a XT1 as soon as possible.

My Flickr if you're curious: http://flickr.com/photos/moarbokeh

With all that being said, this is a nice implementation of a timeline, it might be more epic if the site had a black or dark background, white text, and red accents.
Windows expand to full screen – how to turn off
I think this is true of almost any industry, but it does seem especially prevalent it tech (which also seems to attract a greater number than average of the "I'm smarter than most" crowd). You can always claim that lawmakers don't understand [insert your industry here], but I suspect many understand it better than we think, but still disagree.
No...

When I was in 5th grade, we did not have chairs or anything for our violin class. It wasn't fun, we had to stand for the entire class (which to 5th grade me was very annoying.) We got to sit down for 30 seconds in the middle of class as a "rest period"

That didn't make me want to go to the class. If this gets implemented you might end up making kids dislike the classroom even more.
I can see why London operators would be upset. They're the most consistently professional and knowledgeable service force I've ever encountered. And London traffic I think is greatly improved by the road being taken up almost exclusively with taxis and buses, as they're all driving in optimal and intelligent ways.
This is off topic: Is it the typical length of a biological paper? I mean in computer science field, a full paper would be 10~14 pages. Composed of 5~7 pages of experiment results. On the other hand, this paper only contains one table of result and a figure with quite large fonts. I would like to know if this is normal in this field?

Edit: typo
Brian from Backblaze here.

The NAS problem isn't a technical one, it is a pricing problem. We charge a fixed amount of money "per computer" ($5) and we don't throttle or limit customers in any way. We survive on "averages" - most laptop users only have less than 1 TByte and we make money, some have 50 TBytes and we lose money, but on average we are profitable.

If we allowed a single user for $5 to mount network drives with Petabytes of data on them and back those up, this would tip the averages and put us out of business. So we need to solve the pricing problem.

With all that said, stay tuned, we are actively trying to figure out a pricing system that will make everybody happy (NAS owners with Petabytes of data included).
He pretty clearly said "... never been more true when it comes to ride sharing companies."
I love my X-T1 and X100s. I think you'll be incredibly happy with the X-T1, especially with a 56mm ƒ/1.2. I dumped my 5D Mark II for it, and haven't had any regrets. My Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronbrethorst
If you are unfamiliar with Microsoft's role as a major proponent of DRM and generally consumer-hostile device policies, you just haven't been paying attention.
I don't really think they usurped Leica's market. Leica's market changed a while back.

Sometime, a decade or more past, Leica became the equivalent of Louis Vuitton or Rolex. It's a luxury item. Like a LV bag, is still a really well-made tool, but functionality is only secondary. The actual capabilities are less important than the ideas of craftsmanship and exclusivity.
Whether it's necessary or not doesn't change the fact that Uber knew the current state of the laws and told their drivers they were operating legally.

It looks like Uber set up the situation so that these drivers could be martyrs in Uber's PR cause. Uber can now say "look, how terrible the PPA is, we shall defend our drivers from this injustice!". They score some PR points at the cost of massively affecting the drivers' lives.

The non-shitty way to accomplish their goal would have been for them to organize the people who wanted the laws to change and to actually participate in the political process, rather than trying to end-run the system by just moving in to town and setting up shop.
Oh, certainly. In an ideal world we would have had the ISO10646 scope from the start, combined with maybe UTF-8. I do occaionally come across people "explaining" UTF-16 by saying the Unicode consortium couldn't count, which I feel is unfair even if it's a lie-to-children.
Yeah, except for flavor and texture. Seitan might be the single worst food substitute for anything I've ever seen. The only thing worse than the texture is the flavor. It's like eating raw flour flavored packing glue.
No, run by people - as your facetious comment sarcastically points out.

However, it is entirely possible for these people to get another job.
I understand where you are coming from, but you should also acknowledge the other side of ego too. Ego can fuel people to become their vision of themselves and people with egos tend to have a hard working self image.

I'm not saying ego is good, because it can take you down if not managed. But to say that there are no positives is a little bit extreme.
There is huge demand for cheap ad-hoc transit.

The problem then is changing the regulatory framework - reduce barriers to entry and the need for Uber per se vanishes. That said, industrial-scale corporate civil disobedience is extremely unlikely to be the most socially-optimal way to achieve this.
Brian from Backblaze here.

> they are using really wide raid6 stripes,... no hot swap ability.

SATA drives are inherently hot-swappable, you can hot swap drives in a Backblaze Storage Pod if you want to. In our datacenter for our particular application we just choose not to. We shut down the storage pod, calmly swap any drives that failed, then boot it back up. The pod is "offline" for about 12 minutes or there about. The RAID sync then happens as the pod is live and the pod can be actively servicing requests (like restoring customer files) while the RAID sync occurs.
If she was wearing a different hat, she wouldn't have been wearing the funny little one, which remains a funny little hat whoever wears it. As I pointed out.

This has nothing to do with any other hat.
From a licensing point of view, Philadelphia is interesting. The PPA manages the licensing of Taxi and Limo services in Philadelphia, but, outside of the county, it's all the PA Department of Transportation. Pennsylvania constables can work in any area of Pennsylvania once certified, but not in Philadelphia.

Am I surprised by this? Not in the least. It's possible that Uber got an ok by PennDOT and thought that it would be good throughout the state...or, this might be the PPA throwing their weight behind their revenue protection. Regardless by which one it is, I would hope that Uber will protect the drivers who took their advice (then again, independent contractors and the like) and drove.

*edit: grammar/spelling.
This should have the appearance of a _more_ solid structure, because it wouldn't have windows, and would therefore be a tube of solid metal.
I have troubles understanding how someone can think hacking people's voice mail will get them to invest in his company - that isn't related to security.
If you pay someone to commit a crime, doesn't that make you criminally liable as well? How are they going to reimburse someone for being caught breaking the law? That seems less than sane.
Indeed.

Here is one resource that has helped me though it does not cover everything you have mentioned (which I miss too): http://learnxinyminutes.com/

I find python's documentation to be the worst in this regard (I would love to hear that I am wrong) -- I can never get anything to work using just the documentation; I always end up needing stack-overflow or Google searches.

More than a book, I would like reduction in fragmentation around programming language tools, libraries and platforms.
I totally understand, and respect that. I'm sure there are ways (price plans) to get NAS owners to signup. I might have a NAS, but defiantly don't have petabytes of data, but on average 1TB to 1.5TB on my NAS. I'd be happy to pay $2-4 more dollars more if I could include my NAS... this is my thinking out loud, I haven't run any numbers.
MS created Visual J++, and Visual J# afterwards. Ultimately C# was born out of these efforts and it's a much better language than Java nowadays (with some exceptions such as better enums in Java). The tooling is superb as well - Visual Studio is a kickass IDE.

Although adding ReSharper to the party doesn't hurt.
For sure, you're optimising for HTTP, wide and slow. In VFX we need big gobbets of data yesterday to feed the many hungry CPUs.

Do you see the need yet to dump in a 10 gig card? or does the economic seem a way off?
What’s Wrong with Twitter’s Latest Experiment with Broadcasting Favorites
Regarding point 1 there:
"Instead, as RCS reported last week, FODMAPS are a far more likely cause of the gastrointestinal problems attributed to gluten intolerance."

FODMAPS which...includes wheat. So the people who thought they had a gluten intolerance actually had a wider food issue which included wheat as one of the triggers.
Note that this was done via a Caller-ID-spoofing website where all you have to do is type in:

* The victim's phone number

* Your real phone number

* The fake one you want to appear to be coming from

Then you click Submit and it puts you through. That's it. Any idiot could do it.

The tech and telecommunications industries are WAY overdue to do at least one of the following:

1. Stop considering Caller ID a secure authentication method

2. Make Caller ID a secure authentication method
Absolutely, I am not sure why the other comments are blaming the interviewer as being stubborn or thick. He was being pedantic and rightfully so. It sets a pretty good tone for the questioning, the right tone. He got multiple responses to the same question, which I think is a good thing. There is more opportunity for the questioner to get his desired response.

At the 32 minute mark it comes to a head where Gates is reading a 3 line mail for a while, rocking back and forth. The email written by Gates read: "Do we have a clear plan on what we want Apple to do, to undermine Sun".

Prior to that document being produced in the video, Gates spent a good 10 minutes or so on the arguing the use of the words, "competitive threat" and "undermine" and so forth.

Gates also admitted to speaking directly with Steve Jobs on the phone. This was clearly anti-competitive behaviour.

The next line of questioning then goes into pedantic details about Microsoft's discussions with Apple and the same game continues.
Out of interest, could you give examples?

Because abandoning Uber operators at a time of transition, or industry revolution as it could be called, would in many ways undermine its expansion if potential operators have abandonment to fear.
Wow - we've gone from a disruption startup to needing a market aggregator in how long? Two years?

For those who have tried the various services, how do they compare in other ways (product quality, service standards, market penetration)? Or would you buy solely on which was the best price?
Do you think we are done with the natural experiment of people moving into places with different systems or different cultures and finding out their own prospects, or the prospects of their children, change?
Brian from Backblaze here.

> I'm quite curious about the economics of storage here.

When we started almost 8 years ago, we were CLUELESS about the economics of it all, and scared witless over it. :-) But I'm happy to report the grand experiment has been a modest success, we are profitable (by a small amount). We even have a little money left over every month to spend on marketing efforts now, and we're growing by every metric - more customers each year, more revenue each year, more employees to swap failed drives (38,790 spinning drives as of yesterday - some fail like clockwork each and every single day).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victim_blaming
Indeed, internationally London taxi drivers far outrank their competitors.

The only issue, I suppose, is that their base of knowledge - the studying they do, the tests they pass to be licensed, etc. - is already irrelevant in a time of modern GPS and Sat Nav, and will become increasingly so as we begin to move to an era of self-driving vehicles.
I'm from Madison, WI where there's a well known company in town called Epic. If someone says they are moving to Madison to work for a tech company, everyone assumes it's Epic. I've never worked there and none of my immediate friends have either, but I could see them being greatly impacted by a move like this from Salesforce.

Anytime I visit the doctor, they always have Epic up on the computer. Granted, I know I'm living in the city where it's made, but it's used across the country. I even had a friend who moved out West and planned on just finding a random job, and it ended up being Epic to help install the software at health clinics in Washington.

I don't know their full stack of offerings, but I used some of their treatment billing software when I worked at a health care insurance company during my college summer vacation. It worked just fine, but certainly had an old software feel to it. I don't know if they offer any cloud offerings right now (their website sure doesn't make me think they do), but if they do I find it hard to imagine it's anywhere near as powerful as something that Salesforce could offer right out of the gate. I work with Salesforce every day where I work now and I have to admit it's very well done, although they certainly fall short in some areas.

I don't particularly care about Salesforce or Epic so long as my data is safe, but I'm interested to see how it plays out since it impacts my community.
One of the marketing points of a place like YC is it's supposed to be not just a "throw the money up to the second floor window" kind of place.
From https://generalassemb.ly/instructors/avi-zolty/1658:

> A millionaire by age 21, Avi sold his most recent site to execs at Paypal, and continues to devote his time to his love of innovative business. He is a member of YCombinator, the prestigious Silicon Valley incubator, and is the first to be inducted on talent alone, without requiring the established company/business model usually required for acceptance. Avi recently moved to LA to focus on his current project, a music startup called Beatdeck. Software startups, Social Media/Marketing, Music, and swing trading bit coins are his current fascinations.

So a 20-something millionaire who is apparently a successful serial entrepreneur is now groveling for investment by hacking a prominent investor's voicemail? Something doesn't add up.

Also, I didn't realize that entrepreneurs were "inducted" into Y Combinator, or that Y Combinator required applicants to have an "established company/business model."
Storage Pod 4.0: Direct Wire Drives – 180TB  $0.051 per GB
1- The most important lessons learned from building are watching the product and yourself fail and remembering those lessons for next time.

2- You still haven't failed yet. You haven't launched yet. You haven't run out of money yet. Why would you quit? Don't you want to see how people respond to your product?

3- If you stop now your greatest competitor is you. Not the other guy. You'll just destroy your chance at money, growth, and learning some awesome lessons in launching a Saas.

4- If you quit you will have spent 2 months working on this for nothing.
Waaaaaah! It
* segfaults
* prints error messages I don't want to read
* ate my dog
All of those are features, not bugs. To turn them off, use ./openage --dont-segfault --no-errors --dont-eat-dog.

I chuckled when I read that. If that were so easy...
Why You Should Find Product-Market Fit Before Sniffing Around for Venture Money
A driver shouldn't be checking with Uber for their legality to operate, they need to check their local laws. As an independent contractor, you run your own business. If I set up an unregulated food cart they're going to shut me down, without regard to who my suppliers or partners are.

Could make the case Uber should be blacking out the app in illegal areas, they can modify the app down to very specific areas - try Ohare airport for instance.. Not shocked whats happening in Philly. They are in an uphill battle with governments for sure, not shocked their aggressiveness. But judge them on if they pay the driver fines - that would be an important gesture on their part.
Interesting, do you find that the power up causes more disks to pop? (with the change in temperature?)

How often do you see multi-drive failures(in the same lun)?

We've just past a peak of drive failures (had a power outage) where we've had multi-drive fails in the same lun. The awesome part about that is that each rebuild caused more drive to fail. I think one array swallowed 5 disks in two weeks. It didn't help that the array was being hammered as well as rebuilding (70 hour rebuilds at one point)
Good for Blendle! Not the first Dutch start-up to be funded by US investors, but one of the most well known (in the Netherlands anyway).

As far as I am aware, there is no US-based Blendle yet? (An article aggregator where you pay per article). If so, they have a large market ahead of them!
Seems to me a saving of 0.75% in fuel is hardly worth striking fear into the hearts of nervous travellers like me. I am nervous enough as it is. At least currently I can choose not to look out the window, but being in a plane that uses HD panels that look like you can see through the plane will cause me to have a panic attack.

Somewhat cool idea, but I can not see this ever being a thing on this scale. Panels will introduce new challenges like providing adequate power and what about the cost of replacing them? How often do airplane windows need to be replaced in comparison to an OLED screen?

And then there are the security implications. Have you ever wondered why you are asked to raise the window shade for takeoff and landing? It is part procedure and part security. It allows on the ground personnel to assess a dangerous situation or see into the plane for other reasons.

My hands are sweating just thinking about it.
> But Uber ought to be working to change the law, not breaking it in the hopes that the government eventually just gives up.

Very good point and well made.

Although, could one say this model has worked with regards to the legalisation of marijuana in Colorado and elsewhere? I.e. it's illegal, but we're going to do it anyway, so we may as well legalise it and regulate it?
This is definitely true!

I did my best work when we were on the pairing machines. However, we stopped using them as much because some of our work is so siloed. It was a shame. I am always looking to pair with people, but its very difficult I have found. I tried the online things, like the "#PairWithMe" initiative. No dice so far.
4. Happy to take risks

I always wonder what people mean by "risk" in this context. If risk is a probability of failure, then if someone has minimized that probability through other means (seeing an opportunity where others haven't, working real hard, etc.) then it isn't risk. If others aren't trying to do the same thing and failing at it, then it might not be risky.

The "risk" thing may just be part of the badass image, but I've read in other places that entrepreneurs actually tend to be risk averse. Rather than simply taking risks, what they (we?) do is to use their skills and knowledge to arrange matters so that their own risk is reduced, even if the same activity might be more risky for someone else who doesn't have the same insight.
ah just like how trickle down economics works?

if they had it on beaglebone black the whole world would ask "who the hell owns one of those".
Without some currently-nonexisting 3D technology, a 2D display trivially can't give you a view remotely similar to what a window offers, so you'd just see a flat wall with pixels in it.
Thanks - That makes sense.
Nah, they weren't going for verisimilitude* and it's funnier imagining that the deposing lawyer, rather than trying to set up some later verbal trap, is just honestly bewildered by the ignorance of deponent.

* From the NYTimes article introducing the video:

In this short film, I sought to creatively reinterpret
the original events. (I’ve not been able to locate any
original video recordings, so I’m unsure how closely my
actors’ appearance and delivery resembles the original
participants.) My primary rule was the performance had to
be verbatim -- no words could be modified or changed from
the original legal transcripts. Nor did I internally edit
the document to compress time. What you see is, word for
word, an excerpt from what the record shows to have
actually unfolded. However, I did give the actors
creative range to craft their performances. As such, this
is a hybrid of documentary and fiction. We’ve taken
creative liberties in the staging and performance to
imbue the material with our own perspectives.
I would love to see books on programming language tools around a specific language including IDEs, debuggers and editors, build systems, profilers, commonly available libraries, etc. This would ideally cover all of this from a practical standpoint, showing how to build a real-life application using the tools, etc.

Having started programming at an early age, I get stuck more often at the tools and best practices when learning a new language than the language itself. This is especially true given the unspoken idiosyncrasies that seem to come along with all of it.