Didn't Homejoy Shut Down? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@johnsalzarulo/didn-t-homejoy-shut-down-e8d7a2dfb485 <comment><USER2> I'm one of the founders of Homejoy. I'm still very passionate about the home service space. After leaving Homejoy, I started FlyMaids, where we're exploring a few different angles on the space.

We recently acquired the customer and service provider data from Homejoy.

We're a small team that has been focused on moving quickly while bootstraping. We tried to quickly test different approaches, but we realize now that we did so in an unclear manner. We recognize the need to use the data we acquired responsibily. As a result, we're taking the site down, and we're going to do a better job with our testing moving forward.

<comment><USER2> I wanted to follow up and address some concerns mentioned in this thread, and acknowledge that I definitely made mistakes.

How did you get my information? We acquired Homejoy's domain and customer information through an ABC process. Our intention is to improve and then relaunch Homejoy's cleaning service. We were testing a new model using Fly Maids, one of our testing brands. As evidenced today, we made some mistakes.

Why is your email and website so misleading? When we contacted customers, we didn't tell them we were Homejoy relaunching because we wanted to gauge reception to our new model without the influence of Homejoy's brand.

As a result, we scared many customers, who expected the worst had happened to their data. We should have told customers upfront who we were, what we were testing, and used original content.

Do you have my credit card info? No, as of Oct 28 2015, we deleted all credit card info, including the last 4 digits. Also, the Homejoy Stripe account has been permanently shut down so no one can get access to it in any manner.

At no point did we ever charge a Homejoy customer's credit card.

How do I delete my account information to ensure that it is not used in any way? Please go here [http://goo.gl/forms/YPdJlYJ9Pn](http://goo.gl/forms/YPdJlYJ9Pn)

<comment><USER3> ABC process - [http://bankruptcy.cooley.com/2008/03/articles/business- bankr...](http://bankruptcy.cooley.com/2008/03/articles/business-bankruptcy- issues/assignments-for-the-benefit-of-creditors-simple-as-abc/)

<comment><USER4> Oh! That's what that is... Thanks for the link Rob.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Digging into trademarks, incorporations and S-1's is a weird little obsession of mine..

That said, my initial findings are that Flymaids is directly related to Homejoy. Under Privacy link of Flymaids it states "In the European Union, we are Fly Maids Europe Limited, a company incorporated in England and Wales (registration number 8883585) with its registered office address at 14 Whittonditch Road, Ramsbury, Marlborough, Wiltshire, United Kingdom, SN8 2PY."

If you lookup the registration number at Wales Companies House, it shows owner as "HOMEJOY EUROPE LIMITED"

[https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08883585](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08883585)

FWIW, they changed their registered address on 8/7/15, ten days short of their announcing to cease operations: [http://bit.ly/1kbHtyJ](http://bit.ly/1kbHtyJ)

<comment><USER6> As I mentioned in another post, they don't seem to be actually registered in Deleware and there are typos related to find/replace (email@example.com) so I'm not sure we can discount the chance someone just cut/pasted that from the original Homejoy privacy page. Homejoy's privacy page doesn't load and the wayback machine was blocked via robots.txt so we have no good way of checking that I can think of.

Also, nice to meet someone else obsessed with investigating incorporation documents. :)

<comment><USER5> This may be known already, but HOMEJOY, INC. is a Delaware corporation with the filing number: 4815336

\----

As mentioned in Flymaids privacy policy, their "head office" in Delaware is actually offices to incorporate.com; a registered agent for out of state companies.

Also, a DBA search in Delaware returns nothing: [http://www.courts.delaware.gov/tradenames/JICKioskSearch.asp...](http://www.courts.delaware.gov/tradenames/JICKioskSearch.aspx)

<comment><USER4> Is there any way if getting the company status without having yo pay $10? Seems bizarre you have to pay to see if the company is still in business or not!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everyone is assuming that the founders sold the company data to Fly Maids, a brand-new company nobody has ever heard of before.

It's also possible one of the founders just spun up the new service themselves and copied over all of the customer records. If so, they may want to prepare to be sued by their previous investors.

It's one thing to fail after giving it the good ol' college try, but it's another entirely to strip the copper out of the walls on your way out.

Speculation aside, they should put out a statement to clarify the relationship between the companies and what's going on with their customers' data.

<comment><USER6> Well, according to their Privacy Policy you can just shoot them an e-mail:

> You may contact us as follows: firstname.lastname@example.com

Oh wait....

[Bonus points for saying they are incorporated in Delaware who has no record of a business by that name.]

 __*Edit- See below, I searched the company name on the Delaware website two different ways and they certainly do not have an active registration or even a name reservation.

<comment><USER8> Every startup is incorporated in Delaware, not always as the name they call themselves.

<comment><USER6> Except they gave me the name to look up[1]:

"In the USA/rest of the world (excluding the European Union), we are Fly Maids, Inc. (doing business as Fly Maids), a Delaware corporation with our head office at 2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400, Wilmington, New Castle County, Delaware 19808."

Trust me, it isn't there. I tried both the regular lookup and just a simple name reservation in case the paperwork hadn't gone through yet. No results for either.

[1] [http://www.flymaids.com/privacy](http://www.flymaids.com/privacy)

<comment><USER9> Not incorporated in Delaware (as represented) nor are they qualified to do business in CA (where they are, presumably, physically located)...Probably not the company you want coordinating strangers into your home, though something tells me this is par for the SV course. You know move fast and break things, or beg forgiveness rather than ask permission. However, my advice owners/operators, they might wish to consult a lawyer to explain the basics of personal liability and benefits of corporate protections...

<comment><USER6> Oh yeah, totally forgot about the part that they were trying to do business in Los Angeles...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's the big deal? Homejoy is just hacking startup downfunding... (/s)

I'd like to see some kind of stronger YC influence on ethics in the companies they fund. I realize that YC doesn't have any direct control over the companies, but it could be as simple as including good ethics in the traits they look for in startup founders.

A while back I started compiling a list of YC companies that spammed or otherwise behaved badly. It quickly got back-burnered by other projects, but there was AirBnB from W09, InstallMonetizer and SocialCam from W12, Zenefits from W13, Abacus and GetAirHelp from W14, Gradberry and OmniRef from W15 ... while so far it looks like the majority of YC startups are well-behaved, the trend was looking like there's a few in every batch that are willing to do shady things to meet their growth metrics.

Or, in Homejoy's case, maybe make a little more money while winding down.

<comment><USER11> YC makes it very clear they will disavow any company or founder that acts unethically. YC is strict about very few things, but this was made clear in no uncertain terms (especially by Jessica). When things go bad, YC always gets involved – even if you don't read about it online.

Don't blame YC just yet. We don't know what happened here. Maybe Homejoy went into debt, had their assets seized, and lost control (like with GigaOM). Maybe the investors approved or forced a reincorporation under another name. Maybe Handy bought the assets and is quickly trying to stem off churn. Or, yeah, maybe something unethical happened. Until we know what happened, though, it's all speculation.

<comment><USER10> Is this a new policy? Because the company that prompted me to start the list, Zenefits, is still a Paul Graham darling: [https://twitter.com/paulg/status/654377298234224640](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/654377298234224640)

Or, might be that our definitions of unethical don't match up 100%. I consider spam to be unethical, maybe you just mean more serious offenses.

<comment><USER12> I guess we all have different views on ethics, maybe I'm just used to seeing spam and tossing it out. I find it harmless now because I'm so used to getting it...but its interesting to see how offended people get when they see unsolicited virtual mail which can be deleted with a click of a button.

I'm actually more concerned about the actual spam in my real world mailbox that USPS dumps 3 times a week, no opt-out button there.

<comment><USER10> Among my responsibilities is systems administration for hosted services for customers, including email. What is for you a minor nuisance is for me a major time-consuming headache. For instance, even with a top-of-the-line modern mail stack, including SpamAssassin and greylisting and so and so forth, enough spam was still getting through to customer inboxes that I've had to develop additional non-trivial software specifically for dealing with it.

I beat this drum occasionally because I don't want to have to pit my meager resources against the resources of someone like YCombinator who are willing to provide funding (and introductions to enormous amounts of even more funding) to companies that are OK with spamming.

And I'm not including B2B cold emails as "spam", even if they're written as a template, so long as there's an actual human behind them and they aren't being sent out en masse (for example, Locbox: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4672162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4672162)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> as someone mentioned in the blog comment, Fly Maids site is a complete copy (with redesigned homepage) of another cleaning service [http://www.homeaglow.com/](http://www.homeaglow.com/)

@johnsalzarulo out of curiosity, try if your login works on homeaglow.com

f.e.: both logos are served from the same S3 bucket: [https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/fly_maids.png](https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/fly_maids.png) [https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/homeaglow.png](https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/homeaglow.png)

<comment><USER14> When I entered my email into homeaglow it didn't work. It said I had the wrong password. BUT when I entered in the password reset box I got a password reset email from firstname.lastname@example.com. They are unmistakably connected somehow.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps homeaglow is just a prelaunch version of flymaids? Line maybe they were creating the brand around homeaglow, then switched at some point to flymaids and just never wound down the first site?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Oh that's not shady at all. Assuming all this is legal (I doubt it, but hypothetically) how is this a good marketing tactic? Having all this info already stored comes off as way more creepy than convenient as evidenced by the author of the article. And yeah, I can't see this being legal in a thousand years.

<comment><USER17> > _Having all this info already stored comes off as way more creepy than > convenient as evidenced by the author of the article._

If you're used to thinking about this from our side of things, sure. For Random Person, they might think, "gee, this is neat! And they've already got my card number and everything!"

<comment><USER4> No, random person thinks what we all think: "how the hell did they get my credit card details?!?!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> From what I gather from the other comments, it looks like most likely Homejoy's liquidator (Nortonsgroup) has sold Homejoy's user data to Homeaglow.

Homeaglow copied and rebranded their own tech as Fly Maids to service this user list.

<comment><USER19> > has sold Homejoy's user data to Homeaglow

Sold it with credit card numbers attached though?

That sounds awfully.. illegal even for a liquidation.

<comment><USER20> See [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2901028/radioshack-puts- custo...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2901028/radioshack-puts-customers- personal-data-up-for-sale-in-bankruptcy-auction.html)

Interestingly it has been legal in one case.

<comment><USER19> Not really, FTC didn't like it:

[http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/19/news/companies/radioshack- cu...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/19/news/companies/radioshack-customer- data/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You might want to obfuscate the last 4 digits of your credit card in that screenshot given how useful it is for hacking other systems.

<comment><USER14> Card's already canceled. Thanks though.

<comment><USER22> Doesn't matter, it's still confidential information that can be used to verify you or used to social engineer more information about you. "Hi sir, I'm calling in because I lost access to my account, I don't have my current card, but I do have the last 4 of my previous that I used on this service, will that be good enough?"

Like don't reveal unnecessary information if you don't have to. It's low effort, high risk.

<comment><USER23> You should read: [http://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan- hacking/](http://www.wired.com/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/)

>> It turns out, a billing address and the last four digits of a credit card number are the only two pieces of information anyone needs to get into your iCloud account. Once supplied, Apple will issue a temporary password, and that password grants access to iCloud. <<

[Apple may have changed their policy meanwhile, but likely others did not]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Biggest thing is that CC info still being on there. That is grossly irresponsible.

Not that I approve ripping people off, but hard to sympathize with Handy when Handy treats (treated?) its employees and workers poorly.

As for the whole transferring over of assets without any secure certs, that's pretty shady and/or lazy not doing that.

Cue someone from said company posting, "oh sorry we're not ready for public and that accidentally got sent" without mentioning why they even have the author's data or why the author's credit card data was apparently sold off.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm pretty sure I know what's going on. In order to pay off their debts, Homejoy must have sold user account information, including credit cards, to a bunch of local home cleaning businesses. A shit ton of them have been popping around over the past couple of years, modeled after the advice given in this subreddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/entrepreneurridealong](https://www.reddit.com/r/entrepreneurridealong)

The difference with these local cleaning businesses is that they are developed and ran by amateurs, who often times copy each other (or the successful giants) down to the wording on the websites, with minor branding changes. They tend to be super low-budget, so Fly Maids probably paid some "web developer" $500 to develop their website and paid zero attention to security, PCI compliance, and so on. They then purchased a bunch of LA-based user accounts from the now-defunct Homejoy, who of course did not perform any due diligence.

Shitty situation to be sure. I definitely lost respect for the Homejoy founders, and will probably stay away from their next venture.

<comment><USER26> How is it possibly legal to sell credit card details to a third party?

<comment><USER27> It makes sense in many cases: when, say, Verizon Wireless acquired Alltel, an Alltel customer who has automatic monthly billing set up shouldn't be required to re-set up billing with Verizon, simply because it's a new company.

It's not clear to me that the same intuition applies if the Alltel equivalent is shutting down because it was mismanaged, and the Verizon equivalent was created by one of the mismanagers and has no other assets, but it's hard for me to imagine there's a meaningful legal distinction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Looking like they sold their customer data over to fly maids or whoever was behind them. Surprised they were able to actually transfer the CC info. When I was at a company that was selling off assets, the most we could do was give them customer email addresses. I have serious doubts about the legality of this.

<comment><USER29> This appears to be very plausible.

Googling "Fly Maids, Inc" shows their terms and privacy pages w/last modified dates of 2013 and 2014 respectively.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Fly+Maids,+Inc%22](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Fly+Maids,+Inc%22)

<comment><USER6> Except it looks like the domain was dropped on 1/17/2014 and then re- registered earlier this month.

The domain's WHOIS info lists:

Creation Date: 2015-10-08T04:34:58Z

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is completely appalling and a blatant ripoff of Handy. I hope they don't get away with this.

<comment><USER31> Handy is a horrid, racist company. Don't feel sorry for them.

[http://thebillfold.com/2014/10/my-day-interviewing-for- the-s...](http://thebillfold.com/2014/10/my-day-interviewing-for-the-service- economy-startup-from-hell/)

<comment><USER32> I was searching for that article so I could post it here. Handy is a horrendous company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Wow. Just wow. This is egregious. I would be incensed. I'm a 39 year old consultant that makes money from technology but I am starting to feel like I'm out of touch and old. This is not ok. If you fail, fail with class and dignity.

</comment><comment><USER34> This site appears to be hosted on Heroku according to the DNS information.

        www.flymaids.com.	3600	IN	CNAME	cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com.
        cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com. 300 IN	CNAME	us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com.
        us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com. 60 IN	A	184.108.40.206

Would the author have a case for emailing Heroku's abuse address and asking them to look into it or would this fall outside their purview? My hypothesis is that they'd want to know if their services were being used in a fashion that was creepy (for lack of a better descriptor).

<comment><USER35>
      Updated Date: 27-oct-2015
      Creation Date: 08-oct-2015

They be baffled by the page views they be getting! Would this be considered as "any publicity is good publicity"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> They may still be compliant and storing your credit card responsibly, I would assume they used Stripe or similar and they're only sending the last 4 digits back over standard http. If they're allowing you to add a new card, then there's an issue.

<comment><USER37> Yep, exactly right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> What is the full URL of the link in the email you received? You must save your login information in your browser, otherwise I assume you would have questioned how you logged into the site at all.

It could be a phishing scheme that attacked your saved login information then placed that on a dummy site in hopes that you may provide even more data.

EDIT: They could have sold / transferred user data... but I don't know how they would automatically authenticate you without using some previously stored data that you, maybe unknowingly, gave them access to.

</comment><comment><USER39> One of the comments on the article itself mentioned css being served seemingly from www.homeaglow.com, which was weird to me. So I did some investigating. Looking at the DNS of both flymaids.com and homeaglow.com, they both point to separate IPs (188.8.131.52 and 22.214.171.124 respectively), but have an additional CNAME to [http://cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com](http://cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com).

Looking at the error on the heroku page directly, and comparing everything from the license info, help console, website copy, it seems that they are all the same company, operating under different brandings.

The privacy agreements are what really get me though. Looks like they are identical, except the brand names:

[http://www.homeaglow.com/privacy](http://www.homeaglow.com/privacy)

[http://www.flymaids.com/privacy](http://www.flymaids.com/privacy)

And if you go to [http://cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com](http://cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com) and inspect the broken icon, you get "[https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/"](https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/"). Looking at the two sites' logos gets you the same URL, with an actual filename:

[https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/fly_maids.png](https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/fly_maids.png)

[https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/homeaglow.png](https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/homeaglow.png)

And the two domains/common backend makes sense, if it is really just a CNAME you could detect what URL the user hits and plug in a few variables. The different IP addresses on the A record are what confuse me, but I don't know much about DNS configuration.

But yes, it seems that flymaids and homeaglow are the same company. And I don't think it's a stretch that homejoy was among those as well.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm surprised that BusinessInsider still doesn't have an article about this. Shame on you Business Insider! It's already been an hour! I expect a headline "How Homejoy came back from grave to haunt us"

<comment><USER41> [http://www.businessinsider.com/aaron-cheung-brings- homejoy-c...](http://www.businessinsider.com/aaron-cheung-brings-homejoy- customers-to-fly-maids-2015-10)

<comment><USER40> "Homejoy, the dead cleaning startup that shuttered its doors in August, has apparently awoken from the grave to email its customers about a new partner" ==> I was so close!

<comment><USER42> IHNception?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Whomever is responsible for this should be blacklisted from receiving funding in the future.

This is a really scummy move, and the person behind it should be publicly humiliated so that they understand the error of their ways.

</comment><comment><USER12> The fact that I can still log in is scaring me, I never signed up for this and nor did I even get an email. My credit card details which are valid are still present.

I find it hard to believe this information was sold and if it was, were they storing credit card info in plain string format. Wouldn't each of those businesses need an encryption key to decrypt secure card numbers. Wonder if they sold that too. Either way props to John for posting this on Medium and of course Aloke on HN.

<comment><USER44> Third party processors will store the card info securely and then provide only parts of it back to you via an API call. Stripe's API includes the last 4 and expiration date, as you can see here[1], so Fly Maids may not have all of that data.

[1] [https://stripe.com/docs/api#cards](https://stripe.com/docs/api#cards)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The business number referenced on the privacy page is registered to "HOMEJOY EUROPE LIMITED"

[https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08883585](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08883585)

</comment><comment><USER29> I tried to book an appointment with a bogus email and got a 500.

The logo image was broken and I noticed an interesting path when viewing it's `src` attribute:

        https://s3q1w2e3.s3.amazonaws.com/brands/logos/

I wonder if this is a template theme or perhaps some sort of parent company that has many brands.

</comment><comment><USER45> My old Homejoy login doesn't work on that site, and doing "forgot your password" gives an error of "user does not exist" for the email I used with Homejoy.

<comment><USER46> They're probably not porting over accounts by default, but rather waiting for users to express interest by clicking the link in the marketing email.

From the original post:

> Worst still, as I navigated around the site I realized the email link I > clicked logged me into "My Account". This screen had lots of my personal > information, home address, email, even my credit card number.

<comment><USER4> So hold on... If we can work out how they encoded those activation URLs, or someone intercepts the email then they can get full access to anyone's account?

I have zero sympathy for HomeJoy. They failed, which is something I can gave sympathy for. But they sold all their customer's private data without notifying them of this fact, and caused major security concerns in the process!

<comment><USER17> We don't actually know what happened here. It could have been just one founder doing something shady; it could have been a hack; it could be something we can't imagine yet.

Let's not break out the pitchforks until we know who to point them at.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I'm breaking out the pitchforks. One of the requirements for PCI compliance is that you do NOT hold credit card data for any longer than absolutely required. Given HomeJoy was not doing any more billing of credit cards, these should have been removed from their system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, it looks like there is 3 distinct yet related sites that we have been able to dig up.

[http://www.flymaids.com/](http://www.flymaids.com/) [http://cleanr.ca/](http://cleanr.ca/) [http://www.homeaglow.com/](http://www.homeaglow.com/)

My hunch is that there is more. They all seem to share a lot in common.

Credit for digging these up: [https://medium.com/@bradbatt/their-css- references-brands-hom...](https://medium.com/@bradbatt/their-css-references- brands-homeaglow-css-styles-css-a411975a2423#.cpqo73c3e) [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=phonon](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=phonon)

</comment><comment><USER47> Their robots.txt [1] prevented archive.org's Wayback machine from crawling their Privacy Policy at [https://www.homejoy.com/privacy](https://www.homejoy.com/privacy)

I would have assumed that I'd be notified if sensitive information on Homejoy was sold to a third-party or "partner", but I should have probably read their privacy policy more closely when the shutdown notice came out.

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20151023153644/https://homejoy.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20151023153644/https://homejoy.com/robots.txt)

</comment><comment><USER48> I read this whole page of comments (when it was at 105) and gk1's comment is the only one that comes even close to what I'd like to see here:

> You're underestimating how far people are willing to go to appear legit. > Showing logos of companies who aren't your clients -- or of publications > that never mentioned you -- is common. They know most people won't check to > verify.

...Along those lines: has anybody considered the possibility that the whole thing is an elaborate phishing site?

Here's an avenue for investigation which seems to be unexplored here: has Flymaids hired any maids, or contracted with them, or however that works?

</comment><comment><USER49> Very low, very low. Do not understand how investors chose these founders.

<comment><USER50> I am actually finding this intriguing and genuinely curious to know what is going on. One of the cofounders was a panelist at an event just one month before they announced their closure speaking about their growth and it didn't seem like anything was wrong (its on YouTube) so im curious to know what's up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Just playing the VC shell game? Let's just write off the debt of this failed company and flip it into a rebrand of the same service?

</comment><comment><USER52> Honest question, how is this #11 right now with 901 points? It's below a story with 199 points that was posted an hour before.

<comment><USER53> It must have been heavily flagged. It's been lower than it should have been from the start. Admittedly the title of the submission isn't great so - if I'm being charitable - it's because users flagged based on title only.

<comment><USER4> It's been on the front page for hours now.

<comment><USER53> Yes. Right now this submission is 15 hours old, in position 25 with 1065 points and 313 comments. In position 24 is a submission from 15 hours ago with 131 points and 22 comments ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466678)). In position 19 is a submission from 14 hours ago with 153 points and 70 comments ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467190](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10467190)). So it's not just because of exponential submission decay nor because of flamewar filtering.

Last evening GMT this submission was in fourth place when by points/comments/age it should have been first.

User flagging is the most charitable interpretation.

edit: now at position 54, 1078 points, 315 comments, 16 hours ago. At position 53 is a story from 17 hours ago, 69 points, 13 comments ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466419](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10466419))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Always had lot's of bad feelings and vibes with these founders

</comment><comment><USER55> Judging by the Olark (site chat) account being used, Flymaids.com is run by Homeaglow.com.

Edit: Which is also the same account used on cleanerconnect.com.

</comment><comment><USER56> Apart from everything else in the OP; from the email he received:

> I wanted to reach out personally [...]

So personally is going the way of literally, which literally does or does not mean _literally_ [1].

[1] [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literally](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literally)

</comment><comment><USER57> Looks like the domain was registered on Oct 8th and I can't find "Fly Maids" or similar names on the Delaware Division of Corporations. (Maybe it takes longer for it to show up?)

Either way super weird and creepy.

<comment><USER58> Any C-corp created in Delaware shows up their Entity Search (link below) almost instantly, e.g. within a few minutes of the company's creation.

That said, I looked on the Fly Maids webpage and they don't give the name of their corporation at all, they just show "© 2015 Fly Maids. All rights reserved." That means that "Fly Maids" could be a trademark, a fictitious name, owned by a corporation with a different name, or just owned by any random individual who hasn't registered his/her business. Another possibility is that Fly Maids is in fact registered as a corporation or LLC, but in a state other than Delaware. Yet another possibility is that "Fly Maids" is a fictitious name, and those are generally registered at the county in which they operate, and searching through each county's database would be an enormous task.

My point is: in any of the above cases it could be nearly impossible to figure out who is actually running this website. And failing to find a result in the Delaware Division of Corporations website really doesn't tell you much of anything.

And, as a relevant tangent: If you are _really_ interested in finding out who owns/runs that website you could always sue Fly Maids. GoDaddy explicitly states in their Ts and Cs that they will give up owner information if there is a lawsuit brought against the owner...

\----- Delaware Division of Corporations Entity Search link... [https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/Ecorp/EntitySearch/NameSearch...](https://icis.corp.delaware.gov/Ecorp/EntitySearch/NameSearch.aspx)

<comment><USER6> As mentioned above, they don't exist or are lying. Likely the former. Their privacy page claims to give you exactly what to search for:

> In the USA/rest of the world (excluding the European Union), we are Fly > Maids, Inc. (doing business as Fly Maids), a Delaware corporation with our > head office at 2711 Centerville Road, Suite 400, Wilmington, New Castle > County, Delaware 19808.

[http://www.flymaids.com/privacy](http://www.flymaids.com/privacy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Looks like some big mistakes might have been made by the people over at FlyMaids. Despite all this I hope there are people close who are looking out for their wellbeing, and helping them fix the situation.

</comment><comment><USER60> Strange, I had an account with Homejoy, yet I just tried to log into Fly Maids and it failed with no account. Furthermore, I tried using forgot password, and it leaked that no account exists with my e-mail.

</comment><comment><USER61> Am I the only one that doesn't see any archive on [https://archive.org/web/](https://archive.org/web/)?

</comment><comment><USER62> Yeah, it looks the same with little tweaks. My question is did those magazines feature flymaids as they are stating?

EDIT: The site looks the same and that is a clear fraud hence my question.

<comment><USER63> According to the article, no.

<comment><USER62> That's a bit brazen to make those claims on the site. They can get into trouble for that and also ruin their own reputation. So I am thinking the site is a little joke? When you click on help and go to FAQs, it labels questions as "HOT".

I think it is a joke.

<comment><USER64> Did you notice they literally copied their competitors site?

Testimonials are the least of their worries.

<comment><USER65> User of private data is really concerning. How easy someone can take liberty of using the private data for a ride :( When I read the post about someone go crazy to protect their data and communication, I feel they need to have little faith in fellow people. But this kind of instance move my confidence and make me think that we are racing against time and we will see more and more kind of this situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Really surprised to see this story, get so many votes. Yes, this guy did not act very properly, and seems like its a desperate act to salvage an old business. Admittedly the copying of UI CSS from a competitor was a clear wrong, but all the others passing on data, kind of like a grey area, Ok its wrong if I have to choose one option. But what the heck, cut him some slack, he has posted immediately with his real name. What do you want, shame him into killing himself? The insensitivity is simply shocking to me. You have acted as a lynch mob today (hiding behind the technicalities), I am sorry to say that.

</comment><comment><USER67> Current contents of "flymaids.com" is a 404 page:

Heroku | No such app

There is no app configured at that hostname. Perhaps the app owner has renamed it, or you mistyped the URL.

Hosting appears to be by GoDaddy.

</comment><comment><USER68> This article here says. It was customer retention problem. [http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/07/23/what- really...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2015/07/23/what-really- killed-homejoy-it-couldnt-hold-onto-its-customers/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Did anyone else in the LA area use Homejoy, or did anyone else get this email?

</comment><comment><USER69> I wish people wouldn't jump to conclusions with out all the facts. We don't know who bought what. Google has some of the team. Handy was in talks to by homejoy. who knows who else is involved. if handy bought the data they would have a right to their own copy.

</comment><comment><USER70> Silicon valley encourages this behaviour though. It seems we've forgotten that hacking is a just a euphemism for cheating.

</comment><comment><USER71> I think it goes without saying that there is nothing remotely legitimate happening here. The fact that Aaron posted this comment and expected anybody to believe it is remarkable.

That being said, I spent 5 minutes researching Aaron Cheung and I was astonished by what I found. He has a Twitter account, but has posted exactly 0 times [1]. He has an HN account, but has posted exactly 0 times [2], and only commented twice (including today). He graduated from MIT in 2009 and this has seemingly been the only real job he's had for the past 5 years [3].

I think, from this perspective, I understand why Aaron is doing what he's doing. It doesn't make it right, not even close, but this person has lived and breathed the home cleaning space for his entire professional career. He may not have the slightest idea what else he could possibly do instead.

        [1]: https://twitter.com/aarontcheung
        [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=aarontcheung
        [3]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarontcheung

Edit: I'm certainly not claiming that people who are inactive on social media are bad people. But given the complete picture of what has been reported in the media, what was revealed today and the tone-deafness of his comment, I _personally_ think this lack of engagement is part of the explanation.

<comment><USER72> I don't think it's fair to judge people based on a lack of social media presence. Plenty of successful, competent, qualified people don't tweet.

<comment><USER73> Just, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Heard it here first: This is the start of YC's fall.

<comment><USER75> Let's not go overboard. Hopefully, they learn from this an stop letting in "useless" Facebook for X startups. Or at least have a more rigorous interview process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> While this is sleezy, and probably violating all sorts of copyright and fraud statutes, I have to commend the down-and-dirty hustle here.

<comment><USER14> Hustle is one thing to call it I guess. ha ha.</comment></comment>


Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://journals.cambridge.org/images/fileUpload/documents/Duarte-Haidt_BBS-D-14-00108_preprint.pdf

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8840261](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8840261)</comment>


MIT team invents efficient shockwave-based process for desalination of water - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2015/shockwave-process-desalination-water-1112 <comment><USER2> He patented this five years ago.[1] Here's the 2015 paper.[2]

Flow rates are very, very low. Note the reference to the fluid source being a "Harvard Apparatus Syringe Pump".[3] That's just a motorized device for very slowly pressing the plunger on a syringe, for very low flow rates. If they're using that after five years of work, the process is still limited to very low flow rates.

This is not necessarily a killer limitation. Reverse osmosis started that way, but has been scaled up to industrial scale. But the technology is not here yet.

[1] [http://www.google.com/patents/US8801910](http://www.google.com/patents/US8801910) [2] [http://web.mit.edu/bazant/www/papers/pdf/Schlumberger_2015_s...](http://web.mit.edu/bazant/www/papers/pdf/Schlumberger_2015_shock_ED_justaccepted.pdf) [3] [https://www.harvardapparatus.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/h...](https://www.harvardapparatus.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/haisku3_10001_11051_68275_-1_HAI_ProductDetail_N_37295_37313_44353)

<comment><USER2> MIT Technology Review announced this last year, too.[1]

[1] [http://www.technologyreview.com/view/524606/new- desalination...](http://www.technologyreview.com/view/524606/new-desalination- technique-also-cleans-and-disinfects-water/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Probably the first time "efficient" and "shockwave-based" have appeared together in a Hacker News headline ;)

<comment><USER4> Indeed: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=efficient%20shockwave- based&so...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=efficient%20shockwave- based&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

And your comment is the first one with this two words: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=efficient%20shockwave- based&so...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=efficient%20shockwave- based&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

<comment><USER5> What is joke?

<comment><USER6> Perhaps [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Shockwave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Shockwave) ? If so, expect a joke about using tables for layout next.

<comment><USER7> Just make sure to use a salt on the data to keep your tables secure

<comment><USER8> You should keep both salt and pepper on your table, lest you confuse dinner guests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Unfortunately

 _Initially at least, this process would not be competitive with methods such as reverse osmosis for large-scale seawater desalination. But it could find other uses in the cleanup of contaminated water, Schlumpberger says._

But it could help to make portable desalination modules:

 _Unlike some other approaches to desalination, he adds, this one requires little infrastructure, so it might be useful for portable systems for use in remote locations, or for emergencies where water supplies are disrupted by storms or earthquakes._

<comment><USER10> Other than that statement, TFA didn't really go into why it wouldn't be competitive with reverse osmosis.

Any thoughts or ideas?

Edit: New comment basically explained it. Very very low flow rates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> MIT's PR is more amazing than their research. How many science and technology programs are there in U.S. universities, all of them producing new discoveries? How about universities outside the U.S.?

The rate and impact of discoveries vary by school, yet it seems like half the discoveries I read about come from MIT, and often via links directly to MIT press releases (i.e., not to coverage in the news). MIT is a great school, but they can't be that great.

<comment><USER12> Whenever I see one of these MIT press releases, I know to take it with a giant grain of salt. I wonder if HN will eventually start penalizing links from them as low quality.

<comment><USER13> If you run out of grains of salt, I know how you can get some more with shockwaves...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone know why forward osmosis (e.g. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R63zYZZuRvQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R63zYZZuRvQ)) hasn't taken off yet? It seems like it has the biggest potential to do desalination at an extremely low cost energy-wise.

<comment><USER15> Sure, if you don't account for the energy needed to form the high-energy carbon and nitrogen compounds ("special salts") in the first place. In practice the "special salts" are either a very low efficiency fossil fuel (if you dig them out of the ground) or a really roundabout and inefficient way to spend other forms of energy.

The Haber process reduces N2 and plants reduce CO2, giving you the "special salts" (energy inputs: H2 and pump pressure for Haber, sunlight for plants). Then you burn the high-energy nitrogen+carbon compounds back into N2, H2O, and CO2 to remove them from the "forward-osmosis" solution. The sunlight, H2, and mechanical work used to create the special salts could almost certainly be used more effectively to generate electricity for reverse osmosis or distillation.

<comment><USER14> But in the video I shared, it's claimed that the fancy salts can be entirely reused, and that extracting them takes relatively little energy. Thus their ongoing energy impact, and the longer-term impact of their initial cost should be relatively low, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _In this 170 first SED prototype, the impressive salt removal and water recovery come with significant energy costs, in the range of 10−1 to 103 kWh /m3 171 (hydraulic pumping makes up about 0.5 kWh/m3 172 )_

That is quite the energy range...

</comment><comment><USER17> Humanity can really benefit from this. I am waiting to see what becomes of this breakthrough.</comment>


Unmanned grocery delivery is underway in Arizona - <AUTHOR> https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/mobility/2018/12/18/unmanned-grocery-delivery-underway-arizona/38762315/ <comment><USER3> I think this is one of those examples of how unless regulated there will be 10x more cars on the road if/when self driving cars are ubiquitous.

Lots of people envisioned less cars because the with self driven cars the current use of cars can be covered by less cars but self driven cars enable more uses. Send your kids to their friends. Grandma goes shopping. Need to borrow a drill pop it in car. Want to run a local cake store. Deliver the cakes in the cars. Right now in my city there are billboard trucks that drive around. I can imagine 10x more of them. And of course with no driver and lots of competition prices will come down. Why take public transport when I can be delivered door to door for less.

I enjoy public transport here in Tokyo and I'm happy for the excersize I get walking to and from the station but, for example my office is a 20 minute walk from my apartment. I usually walk it but if it's raining or too hot I've used the Taxi app to have a taxi pick me up and drive me that short distance. The cheaper, easier, and faster (time to pickup) things get the more likely I'll take advantage of that more often.

<comment><USER4> It will be only a matter of time until we have autonomous vehicle spam: cars with billboards driving around (unless stuck in traffic) simply to be seen.

It could be a huge problem because of competing goals. The spammers won't care about traffic flow as their only goal will be to have cars on the road and visible, whilst people in cars will want to get places in a reasonable time.

<comment><USER5> Just Dutch auction off the limited quantity: road space. Modern technology allows ubiquitous tracking and recognition of vehicles. No reason to subsidize at that point. We can just charge everyone

<comment><USER6> We already have a system to turn road usage into government revenue. Collection is easy efficient, and wastes zero time for the people paying. It does a good job correlating not only to road use but also pollution produced. In fact it's so easy to pay that many consumers rarely even think about it when they're paying it, yet even anonymous cash payers can't find a way to skirt around it.

It's called the gas tax, and it does a good enough job charging people for their negative externalities that everyone seems to hate it.

<comment><USER7> This would be true if fuel usage was linearly related to wear and tear on the roads, or road usage.

Fuel taxes almost never tax heavy usage vehicles enough, compared to the amount of damage they do to the road.

A fuel tax also doesn't solve the problem grandparent post is trying to solve, excess usage of 'high value' roads.

If road usage, and road wear and tear, was evenly distributed then a fuel tax would work, but the reality is that is simply a convenient and fairly effective proxy solution. As technology improves a solution similar to grandparent, some form of usage tolling, will become feasible and provide a more effective outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not quite.

 _The unmanned delivery vehicles will be followed by a "shadow car," which will be driven by a human with the ability to stop or control it._

There was a Silicon Valley startup called Starship Technologies which had a little robot vehicle running around downtown Redwood City sidewalks making deliveries. It was always followed by a guy watching it.

<comment><USER9> Yeah I don't think we have had _any_ truly autonomous land vehicles released into the wild yet. Any company that claims to do it had better provide proof.

<comment><USER10> What definition of autonomous? Various military groups have deployed aircraft that do indeed operate totally independently, at least in some circumstances. A Global Hawk drone doesn't fall out of the sky if disconnected from controllers. It can continue flying totally on its own, as do cruise missiles. Lots of autonomous boats (small ones) have crossed oceans. A modern torpedo is essentially an autonomous submarine. But no, nothing on the streets of SF.

<comment><USER11> I think the grandparent forgot to quality autonomous with safe. John Deere (My employer) has been doing autonomous tractors for more than 20 years, there have been videos of dogs driving tractors around while the farmer sips lemonade in a lawn chair. John Deere lawyers will use any legal trick they can to get them taken down though because it isn't safe to not have a human sitting in the tractor watching for trouble (many videos remain because there isn't much to go on). The tractor could kill someone and keep right on going with no care so it isn't safe. Likewise drone aircraft can go one for a while because presumably any other airplane in the area will avoid it. Boats can cross the ocean because odds are it will not encounter another boat (relative to the size of the ocean).

What is hard about self driving cars is we want our kids to be able to ride their bikes on the same streets those cars drive on. Limit self driving cars to just hiways with only other self driving cars and we could have had them 15 years ago and there would be near zero accidents. Dealing with human drivers (who might not be sober), kids, wild animals, and the like is hard. (I'm sure those in self driving cars have a much longer list of things things that are hard)

<comment><USER10> Some of the autonomous boats know to keep away from the bigger ships, the ones with transponders. Some airborne drones will react to TCAS alerts (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) and change course/altitude in the same manner as a human pilot would. I would assume that the largest military drones are capable of flying home, or at least back to friendly territory, if they are disconnected from controllers.

<comment><USER11> There are two hard parts of hazard avoidance: identifying the hazard in the first place, and dealing with large numbers of different hazards moving around. Transponders, TCAS, and maps solve the first problem well enough for boards and airplanes.(there are time where they fail but they are rare enough to ignore). Except at ports/airports traffic is generally light as well meaning drones and boats only need to worry about a small number of hazards which makes this easier.

Autonomous cars are hard because children, and wildlife do not have transponders, and worse have a habit of jumping out from cover right into your path. Killing children is obviously bad. Even though who morally would argue that wildlife don't matter still do not like the damage hitting the wildlife causes to the car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I read the Bob Shaws book "Vertigo" in 1979 about personal flight-vest, I designed navigation rules of all aerial vehicles big and small. It is as follows:

If the vehicle is X meters from the ground, the only allowed direction is (X mod 360) degrees, and the only possible speed is X/10 meter per second. Hence the vehicle moves along helical path until it reaches the only height where the desired speed and direction is allowed. There cannot be any major collisions only some slight grazes.

Ingenious, nicht wahr?

The problem of what is the "ground level" and how passenger jets behave is beyond this brief introduction.

<comment><USER13> Other problems: \- It may not be possible to arrange landing areas in the desired direction \- Vehicles may not be able to make sufficiently tight turns \- Fixed-wing vehicles cover quite a large vertical distance, especially when rolling as they turn due to wingspans. There's plenty of room for converging paths, and your rules may not allow enough leniency to avoid such paths. A "slight graze" that takes off half a wing is not acceptable. \- Parallel lines converge on the surface of the world. Two planes flying due north (X is a multiple of 360) may collide at or near the poles.

<comment><USER14> > Parallel lines converge on the surface of the world

The scheme can be trivially modified to deal with this, once you've figured out a way to create a smooth tangent vector field on a 2-sphere.

<comment><USER15> Choose the points of non-smoothness to be in the Bermuda triangle. Everyone knows it's not safe to fly there.

<comment><USER16> The Bermuda triangle is an extremely heavily traveled area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have to imagine that one of the perhaps unintended side effects of lots of driverless vehicles buzzing around is that they'll act as a kind of traffic calming mechanism. I assume these things will have to obey speed limits and traffic laws to the letter.

<comment><USER18> The biggest reason I support self-driving cars is because on a bicycle you really see how often drivers roll through stops signs, don't use blinkers, and break traffic laws.

100% selfish reasoning, but less human drivers makes the road safer for cyclists (assuming robots use their blinkers).

<comment><USER19> I would like to see self driving bicycles, for the same reason ;)

Not trying to get into a bike vs car debate, they're all fine with me... but man some bikers I come across are just flying through intersections / stop signs too. Scares the hell out of me when I'm driving.

<comment><USER18> No disagreement here, plenty of idiots on bikes too!

<comment><USER20> Yeah, there are absolutely assholes in every mode.

It's just that assholes in cars are a lot more dangerous than assholes who are biking or walking.

<comment><USER9> Also roads are primarily designed for cars. You have to adapt the rules for bikes.

<comment><USER21> Maybe where you live. Roads can easily be designed or redesigned for other modes of transport, like bicycles. We've been doing that in the Netherlands for decades, with great results for road safety.

<comment><USER9> I'm sure you are aware that the Netherlands is more or less unique in having good cycling infrastructure.

<comment><USER21> It took us decades though. Any country can do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like that their delivery vehicle isn't any bigger than it needs to be.

An interesting idea out of this: if self-driving vehicles reduce the collision rate, road vehicles can (for some applications) get much lighter. Part of why cars are so big and heavy is safety (along with optionality for cargo and high speeds over mediocre roads). Shedding the steel safety cage could lead to improved fuel economy, which would result in a tremendous reduction in carbon output if scaled.

<comment><USER23> It's a chicken-and-egg problem. You'd want to be among the _last_ people on the road to adopt a lighter car, because being in a lighter car while other people are still in heavy cars makes it much more likely for you to get killed in the event of a collision.

I wonder if it will take legislation to solve.

<comment><USER24> > You'd want to be among the _last_ people on the road to adopt a lighter car, > because being in a lighter car while other people are still in heavy cars > makes it much more likely for you to get killed in the event of a collision.

There are many reasons to adopt a lighter car. Collision safety isn't one of them, but if that was your only concern you'd be insane to have a car at all.

<comment><USER25> The problem is that for many people (in the US), a car is simply a necessity. And car _safety_ is an important part of that. A lighter car would fare poorly against an older, heavier car in the case of a collision. Therefore, the lighter car is less safe.

That's why it's a chicken and egg problem. No one wants to be in a less safe car when there are so many accidents (and deaths from them) every year.

<comment><USER26> People only want safe cars if they don't interfere with regular conveniences. I'm sure I've posted this on here before, but if people really wanted safety, we'd have roll cages, harnesses and helmets. But we want safety only when it's convenient.

I think people talk a lot about safety, but I don't think that is as primary of a concern as everybody says that it is for them. How many people actually go research and learn about all the cars they are shopping, vs people who just go to a dealership and listen to a salesman and buy what's in their price range?

Most people don't even read the damn owners manual, they don't even know what that big yellow light is (TPMS or CEL) that has been on for months. They won't buy winter tires in the winter, even though you can get a set for like $700. $700 is too much to spend to increase winter safety by a large margin on a $30,000+ car. Hell, people don't even use turn signals. The little stick that is less than 2 inches away from where your hand should be, and you don't even have to take your hands off the wheel to activate it. The problem is you'd have to decide which of your 16 cupholders to put the cup in, then reach way over and put it down before you could signal.

<comment><USER25> > But we want safety only when it's convenient.

Regardless, safety is still wanted. Just because people don't go over the top doesn't mean they don't want any at all. Having a lighter vs heavier frame would make a significant difference in a collision between regular-style cars and new, lighter ones.

The rest of your comment is attacking a strawman.

<comment><USER27> Its a non issue, I would buy and use a lighter car right now if it let say significantly cheaper.

<comment><USER22> A lot of the safety-related weight is non-negotiable, at least in the US. Every new car sold has a lot of airbags, and while they aren't mandatory, it's impossible to earn a good safety rating (from the NHTSA, a government agency) without them. So you could say the added "safety weight" (and drag, since the airbags make the car bigger on the outside to preserve cabin space) has been partially regulated into existence.

At some point in the future, I hope the NHTSA takes in "probability of crash" into their safety ratings for self-driving vehicles. Otherwise the safety bloat in modern cars will stick around. The equivalent of wearing a motorcycle full-face helmet while riding a bicycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My primary concern with autonomous vehicles is crime and abuse. People are going to vandalize, damage, destroy, and salvage these vehicles. There's already little being done about this in manned vehicles, so what's going to be done for unmanned vehicles?

<comment><USER22> If they're deployed in areas with continuous LTE coverage, robust anti-tamper measures are entirely feasible. Cameras (which most autonomous vehicles have for perception) will witness and record the crime (and should be able to upload the footage in near-real-time).

Stealing an unmanned vehicle-- and getting away with it-- should be very difficult.

<comment><USER29> We've got one of these that roam around our corporate campus: [https://www.knightscope.com/knightscope-k5/](https://www.knightscope.com/knightscope-k5/)

Visitors like to walk up and take selfies with it, but no one messes with the thing because it's uploading 360 HD footage to some control center somewhere.

Some drunk guy tackled the one that roams the company that makes thems parking lot. He was promptly arrested based on all the excellent, well lit HD footage of his whole run up and contact with the robot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > He said a vehicle at the demonstration didn't drive because its battery had > died.

I don't know what is worse: If that's true or if it's a lie.

</comment><comment><USER31> Ive been following grocery delivery automation since the days of "Publix direct" back in the late 90's in Seattle. I believe it was microsoft that partnered with them to order groceries straight from a smart fridge, the MS Home had one of these. I was recently reading an article on Bill Smith, CEO of Shipt which was acquired by target for 550 Million a year back. What I could not for the life of me figure out, was how that company was profitable, they charge 99$ a year, for unlimited grocery delivery, how is that profitable? After looking at their glassdoor entry, I believe its due in part to labor rates being very low which wont be sustainable in the long term and I believe is why he sold to Target. Anyhow, this automated delivery by NURO could be something although a bit ahead of its time, as cities just arent ready for autonomous vehicles just yet. I dont see why the grocery stores havent caught onto this though, and adopted a take-out system only where orderes are placed online and robots put the orders together, for bulk pickup. The battle of grocery stores isnt the time to pick up the groceries, but the time it takes to shop for what you need, parking, checkout out.

</comment><comment><USER32> I wonder why most autonomous vehicle projects are piloted in Arizona ? loose regulations ?

<comment><USER33> Having lived in Arizona, it is a perfect place to train autonomous vehicles. Most of the Phoenix region is a grid with wide roads. No inclement weather. Very few pedestrians. Clear road markings, isolated turn lanes. Basically no crazy scenarios like turning right on market street in SF. Given that autonomous cars are struggling in the most friendly environment tells me that they are decades away from ubiquitous rollout

<comment><USER34> All of those make it sound like a pretty terrible place to train autonomous cars, given how narrow the space of driving situations is. Cities like SF, where driving is kind of miserable, seem a lot more suited to training generalized models.

Though I do agree with you: I recently took a job with a self-driving car co, and am starting shortly (due to the technical challenges and great pay); but the assumed timeline most people are operating under seem pretty optimistic to me. That being said, I think much of the industry isn't expecting fully autonomous vehicles until at least the 2040s.

<comment><USER35> There's plenty of difficult places to train the robocars and I see them there often.

I rarely (if ever) see them on the westside where the roads are nice, logical grids but mostly Tempe, Scottsdale and Chandler where they aren't so nice and neat. Nothing like driving around SF admittedly.

<comment><USER34> I actually happened to spend the week of Thanksgiving in Scottsdale (incl a lot of time in old Town), and yea, it doesn't really compare. Weather, hills, pedestrian density and behavior, complexity of street signs and road rules, etc etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Unmanned, but "shadowed" by a car with humans. The autonomous vehicle industry excels in one thing, for sure: _moving the goalposts_.

</comment><comment><USER37> A quick thought: when a customer enters the code and the doors open, can they somehow mess with other people's food? How do they prevent this?

<comment><USER38> Looking at the photos: the vehicle itself is tiny, as is the cargo space for groceries. There are two cargo areas with separate doors, so presumably each customer's delivery could have an isolated cargo space.

I could imagine this concept scaled up to van size or even truck size, integrated with something like a refrigerated amazon locker. Exciting stuff!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Who is Kroger and Nuro's insurance carrier on this if something bad happens?

What's the liability if their autonomous grocery kart runs over someone?

</comment><comment><USER40> I have often thought:

Why isnt there an unmanned transport infrastructure which could be built between endpoints.

Take Hyperloop as a model-example. Instead of hyperlooping people about - <USER2> not only freight?

Imagine a mini-hyperloop enclosed tube about 10-feet in diameter, which has delivery sleds between hubs, which interconnect...

Then do a 20' diameter tube with sleds, and you have a trucking system which can be managed with BGP level routing experience...

<comment><USER41> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_Yor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_York_City)

Everything old is new again.

As to why it's not currently done, if somebody comes up with a significantly lower cost method of doing purely underground construction (cut and cover trenching), directional drilling or small tunnel boring that doesn't cost a huge amount of money per linear meter, they'll become a gazillionaire. Not just "loops" but all electric, gas, water, sewer and telecom utilities will clamor for the tech.

<comment><USER42> There's been a theory circulating around for a while that Musk's Boring Company is well-positioned to construct utility tunnels, and their seeming focus on transportation is essentially a loss-leader PR effort to drum up support from investors and the general public. Utility tunnels aren't exciting enough on their own, but there's a fair bit of money to be made in that industry.

Musk has been long mum on the subject but he recently said, at a National League of Cities event in Los Angeles on 2018-11-08 [1][2], that's he's open to the idea.

Of course, the big issue with tunneling, and construction projects in general, is often utility relocation, and not necessarily knowing where other utilities and surprises lie ahead of time.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2018/11/09/its- not-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2018/11/09/its-not-all- hyploops-elon-musks-boring-co-wants-to-dig-your-citys-next-sewer/) [2] [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/11/elon-musk-on-double- dec...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/11/elon-musk-on-double-decker- freeways-permitting-and-building-sewers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Another overhyped autonomous deployment. Just a gimmick like the "autonomous" Lyft ride I had in Vegas, where the car had two people instead of one in a regular run of the mill yellow cab

<comment><USER43> these overhyped autonomous deployments are how we slowly progress to accurately-hyped autonomous deployments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> A killer feature</comment>


Ask HN: What are some resources to learn enterprise data architecture? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You may try this book. It is one of my favourite. [Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann]</comment>


Marissa Mayer's life as a working mom has nothing to do with you - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/11/30/attention-women-marissa-mayers-life-as-a-working-mom-has-nothing-to-do-with-you/

<comment><USER2> Unexpected quote from Marissa, mentioning "God":

[http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2012/11/28/15509672-for- maris...](http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2012/11/28/15509672-for-marissa- mayer-its-god-family-and-yahoo)

"For me, it's God, family, and Yahoo, in that order."</comment>


I hate Xlib - <AUTHOR> https://www.remlab.net/op/xlib.shtml <comment><USER2> XCB was great for a while, but like so much else in the open-source ecosystem, people knocked it down and dragged it to the "good ^w acceptable ^w tolerable is the enemy of perfect" camp, while political operatives gobbled up another decade in the interest of securing their employers' control over the platform.

AwesomeWM started as a tiling WM built for the new frontier, before xcb crumbled around it. After about four years with scant updates, the maintainer's statement that he didn't see a future for it with the community abandoning its central technology, and a precipitous increase in "I just want this dumb thing to build so I can use my computer" keyboard-smashing sessions, I switched back to KDE. These days, a Windows 10 VM with passthru'd sound, USB, and GPU is my primary workstation environment.

I hear Wayland will be ready for the big time any day now. Been hearing that for the last three years or so. Maybe we can have a Year of the Wayland Desktop before a Year of the Linux Desktop.

<comment><USER3> We tried to use XCB with a cross-platform windowing/input library, but very quickly we ran into a lot of small issues, where XCB was even less documented than Xlib, so you had to resort to reading the source code, or where functionality was just missing, so we had to fallback to Xlib. In the end we reverted the XCB changes and just went with Xlib again. It's a pain, but at least you can make it do anything you need to and it's somewhat documented or enough knowledge aggregated over time.

<comment><USER4> Xlib isn't just somewhat documented, it's exceptionally well documented.

I'm no fan of X, but the books documenting it were from an era when the UNIX industry was flush with cash and printed technical writing was at its peak.

It pains me to flip through my volumes of printed O'Reilly X books, knowing how much time and care was put into documentation for such a technical abomination.

[https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/xlib-reference- manual/9...](https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/xlib-reference- manual/9780937175262/)

<comment><USER5> Sun's OpenWindows documentation had a man page for every OPEN LOOK cursor! How you'd figure out the name of the cursor you see on the screen to look it up in the manual, I have no idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> X extensions come with their own libraries, and those libraries always use and depend on Xlib, so you're stuck with Xlib if you want to use any non-trivial X extensions.

XCB wasn't the first non-Xlib way to talking to an X11 server that had this problem. We had the same problem in the 90's when we wanted to use Display PostScript with Common Lisp which was talking to X with CLX, an alternative to Xlib written in Lisp.

</comment><comment><USER6> I did a smidge of work with X11 and it was amazing how far from the underlying network protocol Xlib feels, and not in a way that seems helpful.

</comment><comment><USER7> 'If XInitThreads() is not called anywhere in a multi-tasked program, the program will usually work. But weird crashes and other race conditions are bound to happen over time, as Xlib maintains some global data that is shared across all threads and all "displays".'

Is there a reason you can't catch this with static analysis tests? Also, I don't really see this as an issue with xlib any more than I see it as an issue with a careless developer who didn't read documentation or check or examples.

<comment><USER8> Hostile APIs are a problem. If you require a dance for the correct outcome, people will fail. Make it easy to do the right thing.

<comment><USER9> Multi threading usually involves a dance to get the correct outcome. Xlib does that for you with a single call at the start of the program or you can do it yourself with every function call you want to make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Classic rant about X's clipboard subsystem, ICCCM:

[http://www.call-with-current- continuation.org/rants/icccm.tx...](http://www.call-with-current- continuation.org/rants/icccm.txt)

(original mailing list hosting is no longer available)

<comment><USER5> [https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-x-windows- disaster-128d39...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-x-windows- disaster-128d398ebd47#3f73)

Ice Cube: The Lethal Weapon

One of the fundamental design goals of X was to separate the window manager from the window server. "Mechanism, not policy" was the mantra. That is, the X server provided a mechanism for drawing on the screen and managing windows, but did not implement a particular policy for human-computer interaction. While this might have seemed like a good idea at the time (especially if you are in a research community, experimenting with different approaches for solving the human-computer interaction problem), it can create a veritable user interface Tower of Babel.

If you sit down at a friend's Macintosh, with its single mouse button, you can use it with no problems. If you sit down at a friend's Windows box, with two buttons, you can use it, again with no problems. But just try making sense of a friend's X terminal: three buttons, each one programmed a different way to perform a different function on each different day of the week — and that's before you consider combinations like control-left-button, shift-right-button, control-shift-meta-middle-button, and so on. Things are not much better from the programmer's point of view.

As a result, one of the most amazing pieces of literature to come out of the X Consortium is the "Inter Client Communication Conventions Manual," more fondly known as the "ICCCM", "Ice Cubed," or "I39L" (short for "I, 39 letters, L"). It describes protocols that X clients must use to communicate with each other via the X server, including diverse topics like window management, selections, keyboard and colormap focus, and session management. In short, it tries to cover everything the X designers forgot and tries to fix everything they got wrong. But it was too late — by the time ICCCM was published, people were already writing window managers and toolkits, so each new version of the ICCCM was forced to bend over backwards to be backward compatible with the mistakes of the past.

The ICCCM is unbelievably dense, it must be followed to the last letter, and it still doesn't work. ICCCM compliance is one of the most complex ordeals of implementing X toolkits, window managers, and even simple applications. It's so difficult, that many of the benefits just aren't worth the hassle of compliance. And when one program doesn't comply, it screws up other programs. This is the reason cut-and-paste never works properly with X (unless you are cutting and pasting straight ASCII text), drag-and-drop locks up the system, colormaps flash wildly and are never installed at the right time, keyboard focus lags behind the cursor, keys go to the wrong window, and deleting a popup window can quit the whole application. If you want to write an interoperable ICCCM compliant application, you have to crossbar test it with every other application, and with all possible window managers, and then plead with the vendors to fix their problems in the next release.

In summary, ICCCM is a technological disaster: a toxic waste dump of broken protocols, backward compatibility nightmares, complex nonsolutions to obsolete nonproblems, a twisted mass of scabs and scar tissue intended to cover up the moral and intellectual depravity of the industry's standard naked emperor.

Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes. \- Jamie Zawinski

<comment><USER11> I am laughing at all the horribleness here :-)

I39L caught my eye, I think it's one of the earliest abbreviations of that form that I have seen. Do you know where it came from?

<comment><USER5> Thanks! ("X11: It gets worse.") I just made it up (around 1992), based in I18N (which was in use at the time, but not as widely known as today), to make fun of how long the full title of the ICCCM was. It's also a nice way to censor short naughty words like "F2K Y1U"!

<comment><USER11> Ah, I thought the Unix Haters Handbook was a bit earlier than that, so I wondered if it predates i18n

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> (2008) or so, given the mention of "7 years" since XCB's creation in 2001.

</comment><comment><USER13> > _However, most real-life programs access Xlib through higher-level > libraries, and the libraries do not initialize Xlib threading on their > behalf._

Do these libraries assume that XInitThreads() was called? If they do they could all link against an "libxinitthreads" library where XInitThreads() is called in a constructor function.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wish there was an easier way to do graphics on Linux. Xlib is really hard to use and OpenGL depends on the Xlib extension GLX. I've read that Wayland creates OpenGL ES contexts using nothing but the kernel's generic buffer management and direct rendering manager. Not sure how that works. Not sure if Vulcan is usable without dependencies either.

<comment><USER15> Wayland _compositors_ have to use lower-level APIs like libdrm, in order to be handle clients using OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Vulkan, libva and other hw-related APIs, all at once.

Wayland _clients_ don't have to. For OpenGL, OpenGL ES there's EGL, for Vulkan, it's the other way and Vulkan provides extensions for WSI (window system integration).

<comment><USER14> Thanks for clarifying this for me. I didn't know about libdrm. I'm going to read the source code now to learn more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I do wonder how much of Chrome OS (which uses the linux kernel) owes it's performance, low latency UI, and memory efficiency to ditching X11.

<comment><USER17> Any window compositor add UI latency to avoid screen tearing.

<comment><USER16> Sure, but things have progressed quite a bit since XLIB. After all it's designed for high latency/low bandwidth network connections using an ancient protocol with all kinds of caching, complexity, and vector oriented UIs out of tech with today's mostly bitmapped UIs.

There's something crazy like 64 ways to join to vectors. 100s of dot/dash combinations for drawing a line, caching of color maps, etc. etc. etc.

<comment><USER5> X11 is hardly vector oriented. You can draw lines and ovals, but the graphics model itself is totally pixel oriented.

See the 'X-Windows Disaster' section 'Myth: X is "Device Independent"':

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-x-windows- disaster-128d39...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/the-x-windows- disaster-128d398ebd47#9d2d)

Myth: X is "Device Independent"

X is extremely device dependent because all X graphics are specified in pixel coordinates. Graphics drawn on different resolution screens come out at different sizes, so you have to scale all the coordinates yourself if you want to draw at a certain size. Not all screens even have square pixels: unless you don't mind rectangular squares and oval circles, you also have to adjust all coordinates according to the pixel aspect ratio.

A task as simple as filing and stroking shapes is quite complicated because of X's bizarre pixel-oriented imaging rules. When you fill a 10x10 square with XFillRectangle, it fills the 100 pixels you expect. But you get extra "bonus pixels" when you pass the same arguments to XDrawRectangle, because it actually draws an 11x11 square, hanging out one pixel below and to the right!!! If you find this hard to believe, look it up in the X manual yourself: Volume 1, Section 6.1.4. The manual patronizingly explains how easy it is to add 1 to the x and y position of the filled rectangle, while subtracting 1 from the width and height to compensate, so it fits neatly inside the outline. Then it points out that "in the case of arcs, however, this is a much more difficult proposition (probably impossible in a portable fashion)." This means that portably filling and stroking an arbitrarily scaled arc without overlapping or leaving gaps is an intractable problem when using the X Window System. Think about that. You can't even draw a proper rectangle with a thick outline, since the line width is specified in unscaled pixel units, so if your display has rectangular pixels, the vertical and horizontal lines will have different thicknesses even though you scaled the rectangle corner coordinates to compensate for the aspect ratio.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Estonia's and Latvia's National Game - <AUTHOR> http://deepbaltic.com/2015/11/09/from-east-asia-via-great-britain-the-story-of-estonia-and-latvias-national-game/ <comment><USER2> On a slightly unrelated note, "Kiiking", a sport that was invented in Estonia and that hasn't reached much popularity elsewhere, looks like a lot of fun. It's definitely something I want to try one day. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiiking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiiking)

<comment><USER3> That looks incredible.

I don't see any safety restraints, though - sort of a "hold my beer and watch this" situation.

<comment><USER4> The Wikipedia text states

        A person is fastened to the swing base by their feet.

so unless there is a major equipment failure or your stomach decides to rebel all should be fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like the same game (Korona) that I used to play when growing up in Finland. Fascinating to read history of it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Did not expect to read about novuss on HN today... or ever.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting... Didn't make it to Lithuania?

</comment><comment><USER8> In india we play carrom which is played without the sticks.

<comment><USER8> It should be corrected to south asia as east asia=japan,china, korean

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> wow .. I actually played this in chinese language school here in UK. Seemed quite popular with the kids.</comment>


Python 3 rounds 14.5 down to 14 (i.e. rounds .5 toward even numbers) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/4qkn23/sooo_i_just_noticed_this_but_for_some_reason/ <comment><USER2> Okay, I'll bite: Python programmer doesn't know how IEEE rounding (IOW, every programming language of which I'm aware) works, announces ignorance to the world. And this is on HN why...? I ask that sincerely, not the usual snarky "passive-aggressively stating that I don't think this should be on HN" way. What object lesson did I miss?

<comment><USER3> The way the title was phrased made it seem like there was a weird bug that only affected the number 14. Extremely bad title.

<comment><USER2> Good an explanation as any, and kind of how I initially read it. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>