Why Uber Might Well Be Worth $18 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/how-uber-pulls-in-billions-all-via-iphone/?_php=true&_type=blogs&emc=edit_dlbkam_20140610&nl=business&nlid=65508833&_r=0 <comment><USER2> My uber bill for 2014 is almost $2000 so far, and it's only June. I know that SF is not the rest of the country, but it has absolutely changed the way I get around.

That said, think about the possibilities that could come if one of their major backers (Google) continues to push forward with self driving vehicles. They will have excellent real time traffic data reported back through each vehicle on Waze, and a super efficient dispatch system. They could run 24/7 with electric driverless vehicles with crazy low operating costs. It could turn the entire industry on its head.

The economics would shift so drastically it wouldn't just be Uber vs taxies, it would be Uber vs does it make sense at all to even own your own vehicle. The automated vehicles could have utilization figures that are unheard of today. Why would you buy your own vehicle when you could have an automated Uber pick you up in 3 minutes for dirt cheap?

I think that time will come, probably sooner than we realize. And when it does, Uber will be positioned as the default dispatch gateway.

<comment><USER3> Am I the only one who thinks Uber prices are ridiculous compared to the yellow taxi ? I am fairly well to do, but am shocked by how no one flinches at the fare structure of Uber compared to yellow cab (which might be a tad bit more inconvenient in NYC but not that much to justify paying 2x-3x the price!). I feel I am really missing something here or maybe just underestimate the ability of people to spend vs. save.

If I spent $2000 on cab fare so far, I would probably freak out a bit.

<comment><USER4> Uber is 30% less than taxi's in SF. I think in NY it is also cheaper than taxi's. Your data might be a year behind, when it used to be more expensive.

<comment><USER5> Uber doesn't make it easy to know. Over the weekend I took an NYC taxi one way in my journey, it cost $26. I tried to get a fare estimate for an UberX for the way back and it said "$23 - $37". That's a huge window - and they're not telling me what affects it.

And we haven't even started on surge pricing. Uber sells itself as cheaper than a taxi, but in many ways (in NYC) it is not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Thought experiment:

Say I spent 1 billion dollars paying someone to create a new Uber app and the necessary infrastructure. I'm quite confident that for 1 BILLION DOLLARS that could be recreated.

Then say I spent 16 billion dollars on advertising. With world advertising budget of around 500 billion per year, that means that 3 out of every hundred TV ads would be for my new company. 3 out of every hundred online banners. 3 out of every hundred posters on the side of a bus. And that's world-wide (if I focused just on the US with a market around $150B it would be nearly 10% of all ads everywhere).

It would be the most talked-about company anywhere. I think this company would blow Uber away. And it is still a BILLION dollars cheaper.

That is the trouble with these absurdly high valuations -- to compare fairly you have to consider what ELSE could be done with that money, and multiple billions of dollars could do an awful lot.

<comment><USER7> Better yet, reduce the margin (Uber has a 20% margin, so e.g. offer 10%), funding the company with the other $16B until it becomes profitable. I assume it would take you a lot less than $16B.

That's what I think is missing with Uber's business plan: network effect. There is literally nothing preventing another company entering the market and undercutting Uber's prices, benefiting both customer and taxi drivers. I.e. there's no way Uber's margins can stay so high.

<comment><USER8> Getting a critical mass of drivers _is_ Uber's network effect.

However, when we are talking about $1 billion in funding that can be ripped apart pretty easily.

<comment><USER9> Contacting those drivers is as easy as using Uber to book a cab. That is how some countries are fining them, and their drivers for breaking laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think Uber's value comes from the fact that they will eventually expand beyond taxi service. They could leverage their network of UberX drivers to disrupt courier and delivery services. Imagine being able to order food from a grocery or restaurant web site that is tied into Uber's system. Uber would alert a nearby driver to stop and pick up your food and deliver it to your house. They could even smartly aggregate the driving, picking up something for you at one restaurant and picking up something from another nearby restaurant for your neighbor.

<comment><USER11> I guess I don't understand why if those things were possible why UPS wouldn't already be doing it? What is Uber's secret sauce that would make them be able to solve that problem?

<comment><USER12> UPS is a shipping company first and a technology company second. Uber is a technology company first and a (taxi|courier|etc) company second. It's a difference in mentality.

<comment><USER11> What specifically is the different mentality that gives Uber an advantage? Is this a technology problem, and if so how?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What people fail to take into account is the self-driving car future where Uber takes 100% of the profits (since there is no driver). It will start taking a chunk of the people driving themselves market as well when Uber becomes more convenient and cheaper (removing the human allows them to be more competitive with every day driving).

To get to this point however does require it to start operating its own fleet (unless small regional companies form to manage the fleet and just loan out their self driving cars to uber). Either way Uber is in a good position. If it manages its own fleet, it can better negotiate the price of each car than any individual can. It will also have more data than anyone else on how those vehicles operate and can then buy it's own insurance for its entire fleet, cutting costs there. If the alternative occurs, then Uber will own the buy side of the market and have most of the leverage relative to local companies that manage their own fleet.

There are a lot of ways things can pan out, but being the most tech focused of these companies with the best engineers of any of these types of companies, puts it in the best position to own the self-driving car future. The only company better positioned is probably google.

<comment><USER14> This doesn't entirely make sense to me. One of the absolutely beautiful things about the more successful "sharing economy" companies is the degree to which they've been able to provide a highly capital intensive product/service (room accommodations, auto transportation) without having the associated capital costs and risks.

The cost of capital acquisition and debt service is a massive barrier to rapid growth and thus multiples/valuation. If a main attribute of Uber is that they run a taxi fleet and its workforce while offloading the expense of owning and maintaining one -- much like Airbnb is a lodging chain that doesn't have to bankroll any real estate -- then that's kind of the point of the model.

The idea that changing that fundamental business advantage is the "real" goal seems unpersuasive to me. People who drive cars are likely to be more efficient economically than a self-driving computer for decades at least, if not longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have lots of issues with Uber, but as they expand, there's tons of potential. Taxis in many places are lowbrow affairs with business dominated by drunks and Medicaid cab rides.

To me, the prospect of sitting in half-dried vomit in the back of a 10 year old former police cruiser isn't very appealing. Uber makes it approachable for people like me -- I'd rather have a pleasant ride to the airport or train station than deal with parking or inconveniencing my wife for rides.

</comment><comment><USER16> in 5 years that will seem like peanuts</comment>


How the Circle Line rogue train was caught with data - <AUTHOR> https://blog.data.gov.sg/how-we-caught-the-circle-line-rogue-train-with-data-79405c86ab6a#.khytg8a6m <comment><USER2> Recently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13078124](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13078124)</comment>


Why Does America Hate Me? - <AUTHOR> http://muslimyouhate.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-does-america-hate-me.html

<comment><USER2> America hates you because you're a moron who thinks that it's right to stop in public places and preach your Religion and before you go ahead and pull that you don't know about being a Muslim, I was born a Muslim, I still live in a Muslim Country and I know more about Islam than you ever will know. My family comprises of diehard Muslims and you know what, even though I come from a very religious background, I would still never do what majority of Muslims do. Cheat, lie and basically act like idiots or hate infidels or Jews.

I am honestly tired of this, you get the OMG angry stare because you deserve it, and you get bumped by people because you went out of your way to show everyone you're a Muslim. It's not their fault if your fellow brethren are hell bend of bombing them, try coming to Pakistan with your white man attitude, everyone will be sizing you up and finding ways to exploit you or kidnap you for ransom.

If you're a Muslim it doesn't mean you're special, as much as you want to hide it, you hate infidels, you would cut them off given a chance. Sure we can say it's a religion that is peaceful, BS bro. Religion is great for guiding people, and it's an amazing tool when used correctly, which in this case it doesn't.

In short, America doesn't hate you, you hate yourself and you hate everyone else. I suggest you move to Qatar or Pakistan, you will feel at home here and before you begin to bitch about more, Christian in Pakistan are treated the same way maids in the movie The Help are treated. Muslims are racists as well.

I am technically a Muslim but I was lucky to be part of something else, something much bigger than one religion. For me everyone is equal, your race, your religion doesn't matter. If I hate you it's only because you did something that deserve my negative attention. That doesn't mean Americans are awesome, no they're idiots as well. Well, majority of them are idiots but you get that everywhere. Stop pulling the religion card, if you're such a devoted Muslim, go in the cave and look for guidance there, leave the rest of us alone. Is that hard?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't agree. I stopped to pray in that airport because it was time to pray and I knew I'd miss the prayer time if I didn't pray there in the airport. I wasn't showing off for anyone other than Allah.

And I don't claim to be a diehard Muslim. I'm a convert. I have no idea how much I don't know about Islam - which is probably a lot. But I do know that I love being Muslim more than I love being American - and America hates me for it.

-WT

<comment><USER2> Try skipping one whole day of prayer, I am pretty sure ALLAH can forgive you for it. I mean listen to yourself. You DON'T NEED RELIGION to live a decent life. Stop being a damn zombie.I don't know how the hell you got the idea that Islam is going to help you out.

Try moving to an Islamic Country, only then you will understand my simple yet logical point of view.

<comment><AUTHOR> Believe me man. If I could afford to move to a Muslim Country I probably would. God knows they hate me, and other Muslims, in America.

<comment><USER2> They will hate you more here. You have no idea how badly you're pwning yourself.

<comment><AUTHOR> What are you talking about? You say you're in Pakistan. That's a Muslim country. Why would I, a Muslim, be hated in Pakistan?

It has to be better than being in a place where Islam itself is seen as the enemy and you're not allowed to practice your religion openly without harassment or the threat of violence.

<comment><USER2> Well, it's the same in Pakistan, but here they will kill you or at best beat the hell out of you. You get treated the same way as non-Muslims get treated in Pakistan. Oh btw, if you're a Muslim and plan to switch, you pretty much tell everyone to axe you.

So much for being an awesome religion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why can't we just prefix IPv4 - <AUTHOR> Instead of the complexity of switching to IPv6 couldn't we have a an IPV4.1 that supports variable length addresses with 0 indicating legacy.
So:
0.192.168.0.1 -> 192.168.0.1
0.0.0.192.168.0.1 -> 192.168.0.1
188.8.131.52.1 -> new address space 25 with IP of 126.96.36.199.1
184.108.40.206.3.4 -> new address space 25.100... with IP of 220.127.116.11.3.4
then the CIDR notation would just become:
126.96.36.199.1/32 for 220.127.116.11.0 ->22.214.171.124.255
Router's could use the x.y.z.0.0.0.1 address as gateways by default, making routing easy.
Under the covers it would be possible to use IPv6 as the protocol like 6to4 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6to4) but with variable sized addressing from a consumer's perspective.
Just a thought. <comment><USER2> There was a longer article on this, linked a few weeks back (actually written in 2002).

TL;DR: this would work, except for a completely minor issue: a large-scale HW+SW overhaul of _everything_ up and down the net stack would be necessary before this extension would work (just as with IPv6). Therefore, no significant benefit over IPv6 (plus a bunch of brand new, IPv4.1 specific problems).

[https://blog.sesse.net/blog/tech/2016-01-06-20-54_ipv6_non_a...](https://blog.sesse.net/blog/tech/2016-01-06-20-54_ipv6_non_alternatives_djbs_article_13_years_later.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> What would that make easier? You still need new networking stacks, have to redefine all protocols carrying IPs to allow for those, legacy hosts still can't use it, ...

\+ Networking really doesn't like headers of varying length if avoidable, because it makes fast parsing (esp in hardware) harder.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a very good point. So here's an idea. Use the scheme I mentioned from a user point of view but translate to IPv6 as a transport protocol (since we're tunneling 6 over 4 at the moment this is not impossible).

<comment><USER2> So, IPv4 over IPv4.1 over IPv6? What good is the middle step?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Legacy" IPs would have no way to access "new" IPs; they have no way to differentiate "0.192.168.0.1" from "184.108.40.206.1"

<comment><AUTHOR> You'd need translation on router's of course because without upgrades they wouldn't understand the variable sized address space - but since I'm seeing people route IPv4 over IPv6 it's not completely insane.

<comment><USER2> You'd need translations _everywhere_ \- you couldn't just "let the router decide", the end nodes would need to support this as well.

( Let's say we had IPvIII, consisting of just three bytes per address: 10.1.2 - and now we went from that to 10.1.2/24, i.e. 10.1.2.0-255. How does the router to know that an IPvIII client is requesting 10.1.2.15 ? It doesn't. The extension from IPv4 to IPv4+ is equivalent.)</comment></comment></comment>


China Makes Chat Group Administrators Criminally Liable for Unlawful Messages - <AUTHOR> https://globalvoices.org/2017/09/13/china-makes-chat-group-administrators-i-e-regular-users-criminally-liable-for-unlawful-messages/ <comment><USER2> _The regulations also demand that all chat room users in mainland China verify their real identity..._

 _Effective 8 October, the following types of content will be prohibited in chat groups on China-based messaging platforms:

1\. Sensitive political content 2\. Rumors 3..._

Holy shit. What is this going to do to the Chinese tech scene? The liability being created here is crazy to consider.

Lets all hope these practices aren't looked at as successful by other governments, I'd hate to see other countries following suit.

<comment><USER3> I'm no expert on China, but this fits the pattern of them making extreme laws (ie death penalty for corruption) and then selectively enforcing them. Laws are tools for the party to use when it feels it might benefit, not universal rules.

<comment><USER4> What's really interesting about this is how unstable it makes the country. Clamp down and eventually you end up in a USSR situation where the government suddenly disintegrates with little real warning because there is no feedback loop to maintain stability.

Things seem ok because everyone ends up walking around pretending things are good even the people enforcing the rules. Untill you get a little spark and suddenly nobody is willing to stop it.

PS: I am not saying it's going to happen, but I expect the odds of complete failure in the next 20 years are well over 5%. And if it does fail things could get insanely ugly.

<comment><USER5> Chinese government is panicking over its crashing economy, and it shows in its actions. As of this year, it

\- banned soft cheese

\- banned all korean music and entertainment

\- (got rid of) Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Laureate, and prevented his wife from leaving China

\- banned ICO

\- banned a bitcoin exchange

\- prevented its companies from investing overseas (Wanda, etc)

\- (rumored) prevented the richest person from leaving China

\- banned beards and veils in xinjiang

\- banned 'muhammad' and 'jihad' as baby names

\- banned entertainment news that promotes western lifestyles

etc

<comment><USER6> The xinjiang things are fully justified. Serious problems with terrorism, random knifings, random needle injections, etc. Very bad stuff. As long as china doesn't allow the han population to carry defensive weapons they have no choice but to suppress the murderous muslims there. You want to go to a restaurant or a store? Metal detector and xray machine for your bags. (My wife is originally from there and she has relatives who live there now).

<comment><USER7> Maybe there are legitimate grudges the "murderous muslims there" have which are not addressed by the state? Like the right to political self- determination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _A man from Jieshou county of Anhui province was frustrated by traffic police, who had established a late night checkpoint for drunk driving. In a chat room that he created, he wrote: "Are they nuts? Checking in the rain? [They are] a bunch of assholes who just want money." As the insulting comments created negative social impact within his circle, the man was detained for five days for picking a quarrel._

At this point, it would seem the cost of running a chat room would be a bit too high if that's the punishment for "negative social impact" for the writer. I would expect the owner to be just as on the hook.

</comment><comment><USER9> Makes me so happy to live in what is probably the country with the most freedom of speech. The USA may be behind other countries in some things but not freedom of speech!

If you live in a country with such draconian (and increasing) measures, there is only one thing to do:

Use encryption. If only a few people use it, then they are targeted. If merely 10% of people use an encrypted protocol, it may be blocked. But if EVERYONE uses it, it will be computationally infeasible to decrypt everyone's messages. And banning eg TLS or SSH would be very hard to do.

In addition to this, DECENTRALIZE ALL THE THINGS. When there is no single server, there is nothing to shut down. There is no central owner to intimidate. People will have to go back to the bad old days of "tattle tales" and KGB spies among the regular people.

And seriously, if democracy works at all in these countries, all lawful means must be taken to defend what is left of freedom of speech. Who are these people who are actually making these laws, anyway? Every time they break them, it should be publicized.

<comment><USER10> > The USA may be behind other countries in some things but not freedom of > speech!

And that's why it's important to fight those who would introduce Chinese-like censorship to the west in the name of combating "hate speech" or whatever else tickles the moral panic of the day. Efforts like Google's Conversation AI seriously worry me: they have the potential to shape thought the same way that the Chinese approach does.

In a sense, it doesn't really matter whether it's the government or a big corporation that performs automated censorship. Either way, your life can be adversely and drastically altered because some god damn neuron tripped over its activation function and called you a monster.

<comment><USER11> "In a sense, it doesn't really matter whether it's the government or a big corporation that performs automated censorship."

It does matter. If it's a company doing this, you still are free to run your own servers and say anything you want. If it's the government, you don't have that freedom. You can be jailed, fined, executed, exiled...

<comment><USER10> > If it's a company doing this, you still are free to run your own servers and > say anything you want

The Daily Stormer recently had a different experience. Besides, when your entire life's infrastructure depends on an ecosystem of data services, being suddenly disconnected from that ecosystem is tantamount to banishment. That's definitely the kind of punishment that can discourage speech.

<comment><USER12> It really can. That's what it is supposed to do. However, some companies don't wish to associate with certain speech. That's as much their right to free speech as anyone else's right to free speech. You can create your own stuff and no one is stopping them. From a government perspective you have free speech. No business has to sponsor your speech if it offends them or hurts their business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Chiba-City Their bottom up innovation will come to a screeching halt. They will export more young utility focused entrepreneurs fed up and not wanting in to that domineering state whacking their friends. We had a different colonial trajectory, but our own McCarthy era had disastrous cascading outcomes. "Rights to be forgotten" is another peculiar notion popular in some TV propaganda driven Western countries loving makeovers. Keep on rocking in the free world while it lasts.

<comment><USER13> Don't underestimate the nationalism of young Chinese.

And I very much doubt the CP is going to go after administrators who on-the- whole moderate with a pro-Beijing slant because they took 5 minutes too many to delete a comment.

Making assumptions that all young people hate the CP and would betray their country to the west at first opportunity sounds like one of those classic mistakes the West makes when it projects it's own sensibilities onto the world.

<comment><USER14> Most outsiders probably do not realize the impact of 24/7 propaganda in every media channel there is. That's what OP is overlooking, and that's ultimately what this action is ultimately about...

<comment><USER15> Just like we underestimate our propaganda. When you are inside the soap bubble, it's very hard to realize how much our brain have been washed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is fair amount of really smart people inside China (in tech scene and otherwise) that probably want out [of the country] but don't know a clear path for doing so, I think efforts should be made to that clear path; to work on companies outside China [where they don't fear for their life if someone made a anti-government comment on their site]. Due to censorship by the national dictatorship such online effort must be done using randomly generated domains (known by word of mouth), hard to censor texts (eg. text inside images that use weird fonts; as intro inside pirated comics/movies/videogames, private messages inside Alibaba and other platform that the Government won't shot down)

<comment><USER17> There are also a fair amount of really smart people outside of China (in tech scene and otherwise) that want in [to the country].

Almost half the people I've met are trying to go to China to start one thing or another.

I would say over a quarter of my Chinese American friends have moved to China to start a company, while an even larger portion fly back and forth quite often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> These laws are starting to appear now because for the first time AI and machine learning are making censorship at this scale economically feasible.

<comment><USER19> Yes, feasible, but what makes large-scale censorship so apparently desirable, or at least so widely desired? The first obvious thought is that there are repressive governments around the world who wish to keep power. And this is true. But it can't be the whole explanation since plenty of relatively free western democracies and businesses are enthusiastically embracing censorship, laws about 'hate speech', and so on.

My guess is that a clue lies in the censorship going on much closer to home, in our _own minds_. Thoughts which contradict our ideas about who we are and what we should do are suppressed all the time. They fail to reach the light of consciousness. In other words, like the individual mind, it seems the hive mind must eventually develop an _ego._

<comment><USER20> I have noticed that any pattern i see in the large world, I also find reflected in my own mind.

When i've found myself unhappy about some aspect of the broader world beyond my control, i've often been able to find the same pattern reflected in my own mindset, locally.

Matrioshka dolls:

[http://markneyer.com/wp/?p=1078](http://markneyer.com/wp/?p=1078)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Jesus that's so repressive. And I'm sure the laws are pretty subjective as well or at least not something the average chat admin is fully up to speed with. Essentially the outcome of this will be to kill chats or send it underground to tor or something.

<comment><USER22> In Spain, you as a website admin can be found liable for unlawful messages left by your users too. So it's not like this is unexpectedly repressive for me.

A verdict that shows so: [http://www.asesoriayempresas.es/jurisprudencia/JURIDICO/1959...](http://www.asesoriayempresas.es/jurisprudencia/JURIDICO/195962/sentencia- ts-128-2013-sala-1-de-26-de-febrero-derecho-al-honor-comentarios-ofensivos- insertos)

<comment><USER23> Also true for Finland.

<comment><USER24> Also true for Germany.

<comment><USER25> Also true for basically every Gulf country, but slightly more repressive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Comrades don't need to indoctinate when is way easier for them to just censor by making illegal everything they don't like. Didn't Maduro in Venezuela told its minions a month ago to prosecute twitter users who expressed dissent? He even inspired them to put them 30 years in jail. What we are seeing here is the instantiation of that strategy in internet messages. That doesn't mean that it is not their normal for every other aspect in society. Remember this the next time that The Economist, Time magazine or New York Times tries to talk about "the wonders" of communism.

<comment><USER27> The Communist Party does not practice communism - it never has. They are no more communists than the DPRK is democratic. Communism was co-opted very early on and became just another form of authoritarianism.

<comment><USER28> Yes, this can't be stressed or repeated enough!

The Soviet Communist Party was/is rather like Scientology. At the noob level, in the Pioneers (a lot like US Boy Scouts) it was all about ideals/ideology and honor. At some point, you realized that members got nice perks. More money. Access to stores that carried better food and stuff. And eventually, as you got into higher-level leadership, you started to get that it was all bullshit.

<comment><USER29> did you ever stop to wonder why every communist state ends up the same? is it possible they misunderstand human motivations and psychology and will always devolve to authoritarianism?

<comment><USER30> Because so far every communist state has been created by violent revolutionaries side stepping the democratic process. The type of people who join a party that wants to shove the beliefs of 10% down the throats of the 90% are inherently authoritarian. Its no wonder they never become real democracies once they have total power.

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure this argument works -- many democratic states (including the US) were also created by violent revolutionaries.

<comment><USER30> The american colonies were not democratic, they needed a violent revolution to create a democracy. There was no peaceful mechanism for them to take power.

Russia and China were already democracies before the authoritarian parties took over. They could have peacefully taken control in elections if they were able to convince the voters. But instead they disbanded the legislatures and stopped having elections.

<comment><USER32> _" Russia and China were already democracies before the authoritarian parties took over._"

Russia was not[0]. One of the key reasons that laid foundations for revolution there was wide discontent of nobles and their arrogance towards common people.

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsarist_autocracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsarist_autocracy)

<comment><USER30> The people overthrew the Tsar and had one free election:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Constituent_Assembly_e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Constituent_Assembly_election,_1917)

The authoritarians (bolsheviks) didn't like the results (thought the people weren't conscious enough yet to be trusted to be democratic) and disbanded the democratic assembly. Instead they used their own assembly made of up representatives indirectly elected via small local groups where they controlled the voting by force. Which caused a civil war in which the authoritarians won.

The authoritarians were just more organized and better at violence.

<comment><USER32> An interesting history fact I didn't know -- thank you. But I doubt one election, which results were immediately negated anyway, is enough to call Russia "a democracy". It looks like it was just a (failed) attempt of bolsheviks to get an international legitimacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tushar-r Ah yes. India has this law as well. I am part of a whatsapp group from my old school. They decided to make all members administrators. Nice solution except that the person who implemented it is the one who sends most of the crackpot controversial messages. Planning to leave the group, especially since I dont really interact on it.

</comment><comment><USER33> India beat China in this. Since more than 1yr Whatsapp admins are responsible for posts in their groups.

<comment><USER34> "beat"? Is there a competition to become the most Orwellian state before the other?

<comment><USER35> You're reading too much into how he phrased it. He just means that it happened in India first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Be in western country

Join a large WeChat group

Offer to sell some drugs or talk about corruption of the party in the group

Basically send any group manager to prison... Just from your couch!

</comment><comment><USER37> Rule of law v.s. rule by law

</comment><comment><USER38> and all it takes to be in this thought prison is to be unlucky to be pushed out of your mothers vagina on that particular plot of land. even if you don't want to have anything with the gov that essentially owns you...

<comment><USER39> Wouldn't it be possible to fix with educating mothers and fathers to choose birth rate wisely?

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> And there was some news that Chinese would start trading crypto coins on telegram and other chat messengers. I believe that will be really hard now, too much risk.

</comment><comment><USER41> How many people live in China? Most news from China on this subject make me think of that Simpson's meme, you know the one: Old Man Yells at Cloud.

</comment><comment><USER42> I wonder what chat room means in this case. Does anyone in china use IRC?

<comment><USER43> I'm guessing WeChat groups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> expect some more WTFs over the next month, but then their congress will be all cushioned in again and none of this will matter

</comment><comment><USER45> BUT,WE Chinese live a way far more free.

There are laws but we don't care, we live as we wish and we don't need other's permission.

However when it come to a group, or a company, you are right, there are laws just right for you.

<comment><USER46> How typical on HN for a Chinese perspective to be downvoted to the bottom of the thread while everyone else flagellates themselves for how "free" the USA is.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Food Truck fan communities/startups? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in the process of creating Fruckies.com for Food Truck Foodies. I haven't really seen any real activity in this niche market yet. If you love Food Trucks or know of a good local community, please let me know. :) <comment><USER2> I'm the developer of TruxMap, a real-time food truck map for 21 US cities. Check out the iPhone or Android apps + the web app at <http://www.foodtrucksmap.com/la/> . Let me know if you have any questions, info [a.t] truxmap.com</comment>


Show HN: Vraple - a wrapper around search engines - <AUTHOR> http://vraple.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I've written about my motivation for creating Vraple on my blog: [http://saltvedt.github.io/2013/08/06/searching-and- retrievin...](http://saltvedt.github.io/2013/08/06/searching-and-retrieving- with-vraple/)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'd definately recommend adding in some other variety, since DDG is basically a wrapper+intelligence already. I do like the concept of the "meta search" but this sorta reminds me of Cuil...</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep away from HN? - <AUTHOR>

HN => Information Overflow => Drooling/Reading News for Hours => New/Awesome things every 10 minutes => !Addiction!
I just drew a notice on my wall - http://ideamonk.blogspot.com/2009/03/whats-on-my-wall.html
What do you do for this ? <comment><USER2> Build something like this for web monitoring:

<http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/snuznluz.shtml>

...5 cents every time you visit a page on your blacklist. Money is automatically donated to AIG pension fund or the enemy dujour... Parlay the user base into holy grail micropayment service = profit.

<comment><USER3> WOW, Thats a good start up idea tho...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's wrong with the noprocrast setting? Just set it to keep you away for at least 5 hours at a time. It can't be overridden anymore, which is sweet.

<comment><USER5> I think you can override it by logging out of HN (no commenting then, but you can still read).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reserve time for HN in your schedule. So you won't spend too much time on it. :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> I can't stay away when in office, but when working on my own at home, I hardly visit HN once in may be two hours for 5-10 min.

</comment><comment><USER8> I go outside.</comment>


Star Wars Aurebesh learning page - <AUTHOR> http://dendory.net/aurebesh/

<comment><USER2> Haha, this is awesome, well done!

I've always fancied the idea of building translation systems around languages like these (e.g, Hylian from The Legend of Zelda, etc). Would be a fun project.

Did you make the font for Aurebesh? Including instructions for OS X is probably a good idea (and pretty easy).

FWIW, projects like these are also fun to see for most of my coworkers (I work with myGengo). Neat stuff!</comment>


Unix Command-Line Kung Fu - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/vacuum?url=http://www.deer-run.com/~hal/UnixCommandLineKungFu.pdf

<comment><USER3> Non-Scribd link: <http://www.deer-run.com/~hal/UnixCommandLineKungFu.pdf>

<comment><USER4> You know, I remember back when PDF links used to seem like torture. And yet, this one is like a breath of fresh air.

(Part of the reason is that PDF has been around long enough that better tools have evolved to replace the astoundingly awful Adobe Acrobat of yore. Thank you, Apple Preview! Thank you, Foxit Reader! Thank you... um, whoever wrote that Linux PDF reader that I can't remember the name of, but which comes with Ubuntu and just works!)

<comment><USER5> It's funny, because saying "Here's a PDF link" in response to a Scribd document is to me almost like saying "here's a WMV version" to a YouTube page.

// _in fact, it's almost exactly like that, since the latter (Scribd/YouTube) is just a presentation layer for the former (PDF/WMV)_

EDIT: Could the person who downmodded me please explain? I'll delete my comment afterward. Thank you.

EDIT2: After reading the two posts below, I now redact everything in this comment. :) I didn't say what I meant. I agree, I have no problems with PDFs either. However, I don't have a problem with WMVs either, since they open flawlessly in VLC. My point was that it's funny because I've gotten used to the worldview of "Oh noooo, PDF!" (and similarly, "oh noooo, WMV!"), and now it's kind of funny to see the opposite happening ("here's a PDF!" instead of screams of anguish).

Also, Paul, this is why I add a comment edit requesting clarification each time I get downmodded to 0 without a reply (and suggest my peers do likewise). Not because I disagree or find it questionable (I don't), I would simply like more feedback than that and hope it instills that habit into people reading my edit and the person who modded me down, since feedback is what makes Hacker News.

<comment><USER3> I didn't downmod you either, but I'll explain why I posted the link.

In my opinion the difference is that PDF is the lesser of two evils when it comes to PDF vs. Flash, whereas Flash is the lesser of two evils when it comes to Flash vs. WMV.

You haven't considered the difference in the formats. A key advantage of YouTube over WMV is that it loads instantly, makes streaming-while-it- downloads simple and transcodes into a quick-to-load low-bitrate version, which just completely doesn't apply to PDF - viewing PDFs using Scribd actually makes things slower and more clumsy /not/ faster or more accessible from my end. PDF is also a open format, a de facto standard and cross-platform compared to multiple codecs for video which can make life harder than necessary for viewers. Another key difference is that Scribd is used by the site as an unwanted front-end to content readily available elsewhere - <USER2> this to YouTube which is often the exclusive host of their content and so there isn't a choice.

FWIW, when an alternate format is available for a YouTube link I often use them too as it makes life easier for managing windows or deciding to keep on the desktop knowing I won't need a net connection or have to buffer later. A recent example was John Resig's talk on the future of jQuery which was available as a download on Vimeo.

<comment><USER5> I agree, and that's not what I meant by my comment. I agree it was poorly worded. Read my second edit. Thanks for the reply!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Let me add two more:

<Alt> <.> brings out the last argument of the last command, and can be pressed multiple times.

<Alt> </> prints the contents of the cwd, or the directory from the path you're typing.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have also written 3 blog posts about command line kung fu:

Bash's Vi Command Line Editing Mode:

[http://www.catonmat.net/blog/bash-vi-editing-mode-cheat- shee...](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/bash-vi-editing-mode-cheat-sheet/)

Bash's Emacs Editing Mode:

[http://www.catonmat.net/blog/bash-emacs-editing-mode- cheat-s...](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/bash-emacs-editing-mode-cheat-sheet/)

The Definitive Guide to Bash Command Line History:

[http://www.catonmat.net/blog/the-definitive-guide-to-bash- co...](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/the-definitive-guide-to-bash-command-line- history/)

All three articles come with a downloadable cheat sheets (pdf and txt).

</comment><comment><USER8> This is fabulous for us recovering Windows users. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER9> On the front page? C'mon this is kindergarden stuff! I thought this was Hacker News. :-)

<comment><USER10> Kindergarden sure has progressed since last time I went there!

<comment><USER11> Hey, Barack Obama started preparing in Kindergarten to become President. Kindergarten's no time for slacking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> More unix kung-fu:

screen (<http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/>)

recs (<http://code.google.com/p/recordstream/>)

</comment><comment><USER13> I guess it's the white belt...

</comment><comment><USER14> Huh, interesting (well, for me), that guy's business is about 500 meters from my parents' house in Eugene.</comment>