skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As tptacek said, I'm sure many of the people who created and work for these businesses are well intended and hard working, and we have to applaud them for that.

However, the writing is on the wall for any "sharing economy" service that is simply a technology wrapper for non-SSN'd workers in the US. A couple of challenges that aren't solved by technology:

1. Many unskilled labor positions, especially those that incorporate illegal immigrants, are paid in cash.

2. The price points are absurdly low to create any sort of margin to sustain a business (I can only assume most of these companies are doing < 10% gross margin)

3. Response of workers turns sour when they realize the system inevitably becomes indentured servitude.

4. "Rigorous background checks" - I have yet to see how technology has made background checks any more "rigorous" or how this has allowed companies to scale the quality of workers.

5. Scaling quality - many of these services (moreso for services like Thumbtack) start by hiring skilled people (usually MBA students, aspiring actors, etc) who are looking to earn a few extra bucks for fairly unskilled activities. People enjoy the service since they not only get a higher quality service but also because "it comes with a smile". There is only a limited pool of these type of workers, which inevitably means the supply side of the business gets eliminated at a certain scale.

I think there might be a place for these type of businesses, but perhaps not in the venture world.
Ask HN: Best virtual phone for new startup?
Hi! I am starting up a company and am looking for the best virtual phone service. I know a lot of companies use Grasshopper, but it is a bit pricey (since it is just me for now) and I don't really want to be charged by the minute. I do want to make sure though that I can scale it up as needed.

Does anyone have suggestions? Thanks!
If Uber "pops" it will be because the ride sharing industry died. There is no scenario where Uber becomes MySpace to a competitor.
This is already happening:

- Sony Pictures Imageworks open sourced Open Shading Language, Field3D, Alembic and OpenColorIO.

- Pixar opensourced OpenSubDiv

- Disney opensourced Ptex, BRDF Explorer, SeExpr and Partio

- Dreamworks open sourced OpenVDB

I wouldn't be too suprised if we would see an open source renderer within the next 10 years, especially if SPI is going to replace their in-house version of the Arnold renderer, as open source software has been extremely successful for SPI.
Yeah, it's possible to imagine a game whose objective is essentially pedagogical -- to teach the player that generals in war aren't really in control of much at all, that they're just trying the best they can to hang on to a bucking bronco.

Would anybody play that game, though? Is there a way to make a game fun (or at least tolerable), when its core mechanics are all designed to frustrate your intentions? I'm not sure.
> It also lends credibility to the 'not a bubble' discussions if stage C investors are showing restraint but that is a different discussion.

Yes, It's Not a Bubble(TM) if companies with significant and obvious legal risk are only raising $30+ million Series Bs but not $100+ million Series Cs.

Oh wait[1][2].

Employment class action attorneys couldn't have designed companies more vulnerable to lawsuits if they tried. Some of these VCs should have just written checks directly to the class action attorneys.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/instacart-raised-220-million-...

[2] http://time.com/3748438/instacart-lawsuit/
(link target is dead)
I've never really looked closely, but in the Athabaskan area you see two red blobs when you turn on languages. These are "Dene" languages. Dene I believe refers to themselves. In the American southwest the Navajo call themselves "Dine" which means "the people". My understanding is The Navajo and the Athabascans languages are closely related, but I'd love to know more on that relationship and why there is such a geographical gap. The map here is pretty evocative:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabaskan_languages
I was intrigued.
But a couple of things:

- the movie poster breaks as soon as it should start predicting your score
- an option to skip movies you haven't soon would be helpful
- it showed me a movie I had already rated in its initial data gathering phase

I'm interested in playing around with this even after a rough demo
counter strike

walk my dogs

watch some conference videos on youtube ( https://www.youtube.com/user/Confreaks ) or random stuff on http://reddit.tv

IMO it is about clearing my head so I can evaluate what happened, mistakes made, improvements, and get ready to rock the new day.
It seems like you're a 1099 as soon as you give a client your phone number to cut out HomeJoy. The law might not agree, but it certainly seems well within the spirit. Seems very common too (at least based on the HN comments).
Disregarding the competitive aspect, it's absurd to me that people praise banning Uber and Tesla for the "consumer safety" of taxis and car dealerships.
I almost died 8 years ago from sitting at my desk too much. Without knowing it I developed a quiet form of deep vein thrombosis and then dropped with two pulmonary embolisms. I am fine now, but it was a close call.

My recommendation is to have a timer on your laptop to remind you to get up and walk around for at least a minute, every twenty minutes.

I also find it beneficial to do a few minutes of random Qi Gong exercises about once an hour.
I wholeheartedly recommend [scikit-learn](https://github.com/scikit-learn/scikit-learn) - the best organized and cleanest code I've seen so far. It is really organized and well thought-through.
And not all casinos never paid out.
" The narrative that America overthrew a democratically elected government in a coup is just false."

Glad to know that your knowledge is more than CIA even (sarcasm), as they already admitted that:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/19/cia-admits-role...
> Not sure how Sunlight and EFF spending staff time on something validates or dis-validates a market.

They were previously customers of that market. They found it suited their needs better to replace the thing they were purchasing from.

> You can call this elitist or patriarchal. But my suggestion is that the EFF and Sunlight do exactly what you are doing at 18F (which I suggested to you 2 years before you took the job, scoffed at, and as I recall were quite argumentative about it. So...): go on the inside and work on problems from there...

I didn't scoff at working on the inside. I scoffed at the notion that working on the inside is required in order to have a valid opinion about what government should do. And that's something I continue to scoff at.

> because if you're connecting firehoses to drinking straws, you're doing more harm than good.

It's not zero sum. I'm glad for the companies that tackle the inside game here too. It's not the only game worth playing, and if democracy.io increases the pressure further for more people to work on the inside sector, then everyone wins.

> Finally if you want to make it so Congress is well represented by its constituents, make it as easy and delightful to hear from your constituents as it is from a lobbyist. Until then, the lobbyists will always win.

That's a pretty fluffy notion. Lobbyists can show up in person, and can get special access to events and meetings that ordinary constituents can't.

Sometimes that's earned by virtue of subject matter expertise, and a lot of the time it's just people who know each other. You can't make it more delightful to hear from a constituent than it is to get a call from a friend.

You can certainly argue democracy.io doesn't help with that particular problem, and that's fine. Arguing that it actually hurts democracy to help people send emails to Congress without having to go through a for-profit vendor is what gets into the territory of elitism.
Artificial Killing Machine
Taking a Post Down
I get some free catalog of service providers in my area (think lawn service, cleaning services, etc) in the mail a couple of times a year. Don't think I've ever opened it on the way to the recycle bin. I mean, I continue to get it, so someone must use it, but I can only imagine it's the same sort of people who still use the Yellow Pages. YMMV, but in an age of search engines why would I go to some pay-to-play "directory" to find out about a startup?
There is a great deal of schlep involved in generating supply and demand, and more importantly developing good technical controls to promote quality and reduce fraud, and the human support to handle the disputes and quality issues that slip through the cracks. There is nothing thin about the layer. Interchangeable maybe, but Uber et al are not going to be replaced by pure software anytime soon.
No more potato? Now I'm waiting for someone to invent the "Latvian Deprivation Paradox".
Tesla’s Model S Gets “Ludicrous” Mode, Will Do 0-60 in 2.8 Seconds
>she got angry and refused to work until I went into another room.

I would have kicked her out. Yikes.
Why is it racist to showcase African media? The founders readily admit in this thread that they are trying to get more exposure for all African cultures, not some African monoculture.
Shouldn't sending a gratuitous ARP work to update clients?
A Little Fish-Shaped Lump of Iron Won the Product Design Grand Prix at Cannes
Just goes to show you that all the money in the world can't save a bad business model.
Is there any evidence that Homejoy did anything to substantially increase the number of people working in housecleaning, or the pay in the field?
Bitcoin Is Not Smooth Jazz, Bitcoin Is Punk Rock
Probably one of the most interesting articles I've read recently. Well written and to the point. Bookmarked that site.
I read it as: We had 3 years to exploit a loophole with $40MM in the bank and couldn't build a real business, so we're using California's law as a scapegoat.
LinkedIn is a great way for recruiters to reach you and offer you job opportunities from companies you've never heard of but might be super interesting to you. Easily 80%+ of the interview offers I've received in the last 5 years have been through LinkedIn (from small startups to tech giants such as Amazon, Netflix or other big companies such as Morgan Stanley).

It's also a pretty good platform to look for jobs out of your local network, say, if you're a foreigner looking to tap in that sweet sweet US tech job market.
You might have missed it among all the bad advice about multitasking and working stupid hours, but he did give one piece of good advice in all that. His job was to do with systems administration/operations, and what he did was to write down everything he knew or had to learn about how to do his job, in the form of public blog posts, which he refined based on public feedback until they actually worked and were understandable. Then on the way out the door, all he had to do was give his successor the keys and the URL to the blog posts.
DIY Apple Watch Door Unlocker
Marketing Shouldn’t Be a Dirty Word in Silicon Valley
>Hand-made confectionary [sic] is still popular.

Huh.

>Tupperware has not replaced basket weaving

Right. Handmade baskets are a staple in any modern american home.

>Although music can be programmed by computer, opera and classical music are booming.

Really? Have you turned on the radio in the past 30 years? I live in a major metropolitan area, and there are only two classical music channels. And they are constantly going on fundraising drives, begging listeners to donate so that they can stay on the air.
To expand on what you said below, imagine someone hires you to code up a simple API. You get started, but then decide you just don't like your job so you write 50% tests and hand it back to the client. Let's say the 50% of other tests weren't needed because your code actually ran perfect. "Here" you coldly tell him and walk off. Was it fair that you did a poor job for the client because you didn't like the work? Did you not technically complete the job, but in a shoddy, unprofessional fashion?

This is the equivalent of a cleaner -> programmer acting "immorally" (true morality is nevertheless found outside the realm of work).
Truth is most academic philosophy is irredeemable garbage of the first order. Philosophy was transmitted from the Greek to the Latin, from the Germanic to the French, and presumably it was also extended to the English. There is in fact a clear line of descent in terms of the reasoning and discoveries made which can be traced from the Pre-Socratics to the critical romantic enlightenment strains of Kantian and Post-Hegelian philosophy, ending ultimately in a series of complex distortions wrought by the Marxist school.

After the second World War, however, a rupture occurred in the English language tradition that broke ties with this movement. This is why we have a "Continental" / "Analytic" divide. The former attempted to stay consistent with the philosophy passed down to the Germans and French, whereas the latter severed most of its relations to these systems of thought. It did this by largely cherry-picking the parts it liked from the Renaissance scientific thinkers along with certain Irish and British figures like Hobbes, Locke, and Mill but without ever confronting the Germanic philosophy at the peak of its development (the only notable exception being British idealism, which was shortly replaced by the logical positivists). Although it later made some amends with Kantianism, what the analytic tradition has ended up with is a one-sided formal empirical philosophy grounded more in ideological posturing than the rational discourses that characterized all preceding philosophy.

What people call British-American philosophy today then is dangerously out of step with itself. It's retracing the same errors that were worked out centuries earlier by their predecessors. There are countless examples of this, which I simply don't have the patience to enumerate. That's not to say the Continentals are without blame. They've created their own share of mistakes. But that, in effect, is a very large part of the answer about why philosophy is mostly irrelevant today in North-America. It was lead down a blind alley by ideologues and has yet to recover.
Steam is cool, yes, I love the history behind antiques and the insight into their periods of history, but electric is SOOOO much better. Steam does not give instantaneous torque, nor the ability to precisely control individual wheels / motors. I just can't see steam making a comeback.

Electric = exponential

Steam and ICE = incremental
Sorry, you can learn from other's failures just like you can their successes... and maybe their big success comes in a few years.
The Magic Behind Google Docs (2011)
It's not possible to know what would have happened if Mossadegh was left alone by the US. It seems to me that the article hinted at conservative elements taking over regardless, and there could have been many other events troubling Iran's relationship with the west.
> * Bidirectional path tracing and VCM, surely is nice, but you're absolutely fine with just path tracing. Artists have learned how do to avoid SDS paths and how to optimize their scenes for path tracing. It would require a lot of time to train artists to optimize their scenes for VCM and with the amount of diffuse noise (which is unavoidable) I'm not even sure if it's worth it.

This is %100 not true. Forward path tracing is not adequate for anything except for direct illumination. Any enclosed space that has most of it's illumination from some sort of bounce is not feasible without some sort of illumination caching. Bidirectional path tracing and VCM do not carry any addition complexity from an artist's point of view. Also avoiding SDS paths is not always something that artists can simply avoid, and any illumination that is missing is room for improvement.

Do you have links to Solid Angle's patents? Renderman actually samples emissive geometry exceptionally well.
A lot of what the author is trying to convey is not factual, but perspective. "I learned and experienced some things, and it changed how I see the world."
Comparing HomeJoy to ridesharing companies, I see that both had telephone analogues: You can call a taxi company, and there are lots of agencies you can call for cleaners.

Besides tapping instead of calling a human (which is annoying), what is the big win for rides? For me, it's the map. When I'm told my taxi will be there in five minutes, I can see the progress on the map. I never believe a taxi company when they say, "10 minutes." Sometimes it's five, sometimes I call them back after twenty minutes to ask where my taxi is.

For the next sharing economy startup founders, ask yourself what you can do in real time for users. This is ridiculous, but for another cleaning company, you might provide the cleaners with GoPros and allow the user to stream what they see, so you can watch them clean.

Technically, you could set that up yourself with nanny-cams, but imagine contacting a service (via app or web page), having them clean your home, and watching it happen (or knowing that they know you can watch it happen). That bypasses the whole "call me personally" problem. If I call the cleaner personally, I don't get the cleaner-cam.

To me, if you're going to give me an app or a web page, give me something in real time that I care about.
UCLA Health System reports patient data breach; 4.5M may be affected
Posting with a throwaway to address a few realities:

1) I used Handy to book a cleaner for the first time -- I loved her, she did a great job, and I immediately cut out the platform and hired her directly. I felt a little bad about it, but not enough to not do it. Handy got a single transaction out of me, for what is now approaching a year of work. Transaction-fee marketplaces work best where there isn't a natural inclination towards an ongoing relationship (Uber, AirBnB, eBay).

For example, on AirBnB, I'm actively looking for a different adventure each time, so it's hard to cut out the platform. When I'm traveling on business, it's the exact opposite, I'm looking for a reliable, consistent experience with no surprises. That's why hotel chains try very hard to ensure a completely consistent experience between stays, and even between hotels -- so that I can book a Westin anywhere in the world and know that I will be getting the exact same bed: https://www.westinstore.com/westin-heavenly-bed.aspx

2) Homejoy is at a disadvantage because they cannot hire illegal immigrants, and cannot pay them under the table. Under-the-table payment, and illegal immigrants, are common in all cash service business, this is no exception (My cleaner is not an illegal immigrant, since she was able to work through Handy, but she always shows up with a different partner, and very few of her partners speak any English -- I suspect that at least some of them are not licensed to work legally). I also suspect that she does not report everything, or anything, on her taxes.

3) Home cleaning is a high-trust business and one where I'm likely to want the same cleaner each time. The marketplace is interested in sending me a different cleaner each time. The company's needs are in conflict with its customers needs.
I love this site. Would love one guide on the details of electric cars as well.
Success comes primarily from doing the right things, not working hard. If you work hard, but are doing the wrong things, your chances of success are slim to none.
Daniel (HN staff) asked me to repost it. Said they were trying something out.

There were a couple of big changes in the game since I posted that, though.
One of the primary responsibilities of a CEO is building (and maintaining) relationships with external parties, such as prospective clients, partners, or even potential employees. Speaking engagements are a great way to do that because it gets you in front of such audiences and helps you demonstrate authority, which builds trust.

So I'd say that she was simply doing her job.
Nope, sadly not. This username was one of the few computer graphics related usernames left on reddit and solid angle sampling is so much cooler than area sampling. You're not only person who thought this, so it's probably about time that I switch to a different username. I'm also a big fan of their work, though, I would love to work for that company once I'm done with university.

Btw, I also really enjoy reading your blog, keep up the good work. Looking forward to the day that you release the source of your renderer.
In App Advocacy
There is a significant consumer safety element to the way Taxis are regulated. The fact that this is used to protect a monopoly is a separate issue and I agree that it is a real problem.

The Tesla analogy is perfect, though. I've never felt like car dealerships being independently owned was a useful benefit. I don't see any reason why both models can't coexist.
I've had the opposite experience: the many different Homejoy cleaners I got were all very good or excellent. Perhaps that is because I live in the south of Chicago, where there are many people desperate for a decent job.
Is There a Shortage of Big Data Talent?
What was the added value over other smaller cleaning services?
This sounds like it will be an absolute disaster:

"This act would also create a new, faster approval process for “breakthrough technologies” that are believed — but not necessarily proved — to offer significant advantages over existing alternatives. This would allow a device to be approved based on even lower standards of evidence than are currently used, on the theory that the need outweighs the risk. The legislation defines “breakthrough” loosely, creating a perverse incentive for manufacturers to use this term both to take advantage of the faster approval process and as a marketing gimmick."
or you can use single sign on

lots of corporate users use SSO
This was very common with AirBnb as well at the beginning: you could exchange private information with the host and then pay them directly. However, over time it just made more sense to use AirBnb's interface.

What these companies need to do is provide an ease-of-use, reliability, and security so that the customer is incentivized to use the official way over doing it under the table. Sure you could pay the cleaning lady directly, but having it automatically debited from your credit card is much easier.
Teleconferenced Paired-programming (!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI8r8D46JOY&list=PLCGFadV4Fq...
Courtesy and passion are different things. Let's not devalue the word.
Three theories:

1. Flat-commenting is easier to design, program, and moderate.

2. Assuming popularity is a power-distribution, the vast majority of all "comment sections" contain so few comments that there's no benefit to threading. Crowded places that need branching threads are less-common.

3. Sometimes it serves a design goal, like in ticketing systems: You want to force all participants to be in a single conversation with a shared chronology.