Learning Haskell – A Racket programmer's foray into the land of Haskell - lexi-lambda http://lexi-lambda.github.io/learning-haskell/ <comment><AUTHOR> The author spends a lot of effort trying to make his functions point-free. For example, the author first writes:

        inexactMatches xs ys = matches xs ys - exactMatches xs ys

then decides it's not very "nice", and ends up with this:

        inexactMatches = pure2 (-) <**> matches <**> exactMatches

I can sympathize with this preference. When I first started learning Haskell, figuring out how to make something point-free was extremely satisfying. And it also increases DRY, which is generally a good thing.

But over time I realized I was overusing point-free style. It was fun to write, but harder to read. If I were actually writing "inexactMatches" for something real, I would strongly prefer the first over the second. From what I've read, I think many people take a similar path when learning Haskell.

That said, I think everyone has a different threshold. For example, I've heard many people say that a for loop is more clear than something like "map" or "fold". I would disagree with that, but maybe that's just because I've gotten used to "map" and "fold".

So maybe the author's brain is just able to handle point-free style better than mine can, but I do think this particular example if far enough on the spectrum that most Haskell programmers would prefer the first version (for real code).

So if you're considering learning Haskell, don't be scared away. You will have to start getting used to point-free style, but probably not to this extreme.

<comment> lexi-lambda You're going to spend all that work using "the author" everywhere and still manage to get my gender wrong ("his")? Okay. I don't really expect any different in this field, but just noting that.

Anyway, I'm well-aware of the temptation of writing point-free code. I did include the sentence "I can see the road to hell is paved with point-free style" myself, after all. I wouldn't prefer point-free style if it ends up looking indiscernible, but in this case I sort of wanted a way to express semi-declaratively "this function is the difference between these other two functions". Does the version I ended up with do that? Yes. But for all I knew there could have been a much better, more idiomatic way.

But yes, that was both a quest to improve that code and a mere learning exercise. I'm satisfied with the version I ended up with, though I don't think it's perfect, either.

<comment><USER2> If your first focus is on the usage of "his" in the response then maybe the next language you should consider studying is English.

For starters you might want to read up on gender neutral pronouns. He/She or his/hers can be used in a gender neutral manner, however traditionally the masculine form is used in English when gender neutral is intended.

<comment><USER3> Wow, that's some extraordinary condescension.

They/them/their has been seeing broad adoption as a, y'know, _actually_ gender-neutral pronoun, and it should be encouraged. I know some people prefer he/him/his but

a) many people think that reeks of implicit sexism

b) even ignoring a), elevating that to The One Correct English Way is ridiculous overreach

<comment><USER4> Meh, I like 'hen'[0] a lot, wouldn't mind seeing a concerted effort to introduce it in English as well. I doubt it would go over well in the states, however.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen_%28pronoun%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen_%28pronoun%29)

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately, pronouns are a closed class[1] in English; the possibility of getting people to adopt a new one is vanishingly unlikely. Fortunately, we already have "they", which has been used as a gender-neutral pronoun in the singular for at least half a millennium.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speech#Open_and_closed...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_of_speech#Open_and_closed_classes)

<comment><USER4> Interesting, hadn't heard about closed/open classes in speech. I agree that "they" serves the purpose well, but it's nice to see an explicit, consciousness-raising fix (though it's the ultimate bikeshed politically, everyone feels they're qualified to comment - even me!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > It feels a little redundant to have to manually list out all the elements > when the information is known statically, and updating the list will be > necessary if the Peg type changes. In Racket, writing a macro for this would > be trivial, but alas, this is Haskell. Perhaps there is a way, I'm just not > aware of it.

A reasonably clean way would be to define

      data Color = Red | Green | Blue | Yellow | Orange | Purple
        deriving (Enum, Bounded, Show)

and then (e.g. in ghci) you can do

      >> [minBound .. maxBound] :: [Color]
      [Red,Green,Blue,Yellow,Orange,Purple]

I often define the useful function

      enumerate :: (Enum a, Bounded a) => [a]
      enumerate = [minBound .. maxBound]

for exactly this purpose.

<comment> lexi-lambda Yep, I posted this on r/haskell and someone pointed this out, which is cool. The provided type for Peg didn't derive Enum or Bounded, but it's a good trick to know.

<comment><USER6> I'm kind of surprised that `enumerate` isn't defined in any standard libraries (as far as I know) since I need it pretty often.

After a while spent programming in Haskell you would probably develop your own mini-library of functions that make your life easier. Another one I often find useful is

      (.:) :: (c -> d) -> (a -> b -> c) -> a -> b -> d
      (.:) f g = \x y -> f (g x y)

which e.g. allows you to define the absolute distance function

      dist :: (Num a) => a -> a -> a
      dist = abs .: (-)

A fun challenge is figuring out why the definition of (.:) is equivalent to

      (.:) = fmap . fmap

    !

<comment><USER7> > A fun challenge is figuring out why the definition of (.:) is equivalent to

> (.:) = fmap . fmap

> !

Of course it's not really _equivalent_ , since the most general type of the LHS is as you have said, whereas that of the RHS involves functor constraints; but inlining the definition of `fmap` for arrows gives the amusing definition:

        (.:) = (.) . (.)

I tend to figure this sort of thing out by successive eta conversion:

        \f g x y -> f (g x y)
        \f g x y -> (f . g x) y
        \f g x   -> f . g x
        \f g x   -> ((f .) . g) x
        \f g     -> (f .) . g
        \f g     -> ((f .) .) g
        \f       -> ((f .) .)
        \f       -> (.) (f .)
        \f       -> (.) ((.) f)
        \f       -> ((.) . (.)) f
                    (.) . (.)

Is there a better way?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great read. I've finally taken the plunge and have spent the last 3 weeks extensively studying Haskell in the evenings. My first attempt was a couple years ago, but somewhere between then and now I've grokked something mysterious and it's been easier to dig into. The last 6 months or so has been something like Common Lisp -> Racket -> Haskell, which may have contributed a little.

My long term goal is to write a realtime game server with it, however, I keep flopping back and forth between wrapping my head around the high learning curve and jumping to something more familiar to Get Things Done. It seems the payoff for learning Haskell is intrinsic in and of itself even if I never end up using it, yet I can't help but wonder if I'm spending my time wisely.

</comment><comment><USER9> This was a great read, I'll be passing it along to anyone wanting to learn Haskell so they can get a good feel for what it's like.

You had some advantages though since you've used Racket in the past.

I feel like your Racket experience helped you draw conclusions that many wouldn't have otherwise. Great work though, I hope you write about more of your experiences.

<comment> lexi-lambda I'm curious what conclusions you'd say those are... and if they're good or bad conclusions?

That said, I'm sure I'm totally influenced by various languages I've tried in the past. And FWIW, Racket was also plenty far from my first experience with functional programming. I know so many programming languages that I've gotten pretty used to being able to just "pick them up" in a couple of days (Racket pretty much included).

Haskell... not so much.

<comment><USER9> A little tired, but here are a few things that gave you a very _big_ advantage in your Haskell endeavour IMO.

\- Knowing to start from scratch and assuming it's some install issue with ghc-mod (this probably saved you a _lot_ of time) \- already knowing partial application and that you can use backticks to take advantage of it in Haskell \- just knowing what pointfree means \- knowing about hoogle \- knowing how to search hoogle and what type of function you needed \- having an interest in the asthetics of your code leading to experimentation that seems pointless but teaches you a lot \- having confidence/knowledge of being able to just plugin functions/types.

As far as conclusions, I'm mostly commenting on the conclusions you simply made from the types... what people sometimes call "type tetris". Knowing you needed `(a, a) -> Bool`, searching hoogle, then coming to the conclusion of I'll implement it myself and moving on.

For a while it seemed like you were going to get caught in "point free hell" and give up on your task... something I've sadly done in the past.

Then knowing to ask for help in #haskell and /r/haskell really helped you.

I know I haven't really answered your question of "what conclusions you'd say they are"... what I was really trying to say is you made a lot of conceptual leaps I wouldn't expect someone with very little Haskell experience to make.

If I remember I'll try to come back to this tomorrow and look for a few examples of those conceptual leaps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really enjoyed reading what you've written so far, and I'm hoping you continue to write more.

It was really refreshing to see somebody write about the struggle to pick up Haskell - indeed, I had a lot of the same issues. I often feel the Haskell community is burdened with this stigma of "if you have to ask questions, you're probably too stupid to get it". This is despite the fact that there is actually a really great group of people always willing to help in #haskell. It's primarily an image problem, one a lot of FP languages suffer from.

We need more articles talking about the pain points of Haskell so we can get better at making this stuff accessible. We need to be honest with new starters, tell them it's okay to find this stuff challenging and show them where to find help. More than that, though, we need to think about what we can do in the language to fix some of these pain points in a way that the community is happy with.

</comment><comment><USER11> Looking forward to reading this too. For the opposite trajectory (Haskell towards Racket) see this page from a little while back: [http://artyom.me/learning-racket-1](http://artyom.me/learning-racket-1)

<comment> lexi-lambda Yep, that was the inspiration for this. :) I actually linked to it in the short intro bit at the beginning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Aha! I thoroughly enjoyed reading all that, and do hope you continue. It sounds like you're at or slightly ahead of my level of Haskell experience (I knew you'd need Eq before you did! But then the Applicative stuff was beyond me...), so this is very insightful for me as I wonder whether to try picking it up again.

"Fine. It's good enough. Moving On." made me laugh! It seems like you thought that could be refactored in a much simpler way. Not knowing (much) Racket, it didn't appear super obvious to me how. Were you alluding to a macro or something? How would you do it in Racket?

<comment> lexi-lambda Ah, no, I probably wouldn't do it any simpler in Racket. Racket tends to de- emphasize more complicated function composition, which tends to serve it just fine. I've always adopted a somewhat pro-functional approach in my usage of the language, but even here there wouldn't really be a distinctly better way to do it.

I guess I was just hoping that Haskell, being a more composition-oriented language in many ways, would have some nice built-in to do that for me.

<comment><USER5> In concatenative programming languages, composition is the default, and it makes point-free code much easier to write. In Factor, for example, you could write your example as:

        : inexact-matches ( x y -- n )
          [ matches ] [ exact-matches ] 2bi - ;

That is, run both "matches" and "exact-matches" on both inputs, then take the difference of the results. If Haskell had functions of multiple parameters and results, 2bi's type would look like this:

        (a, b, ((a, b) -> c), ((a, b) -> d)) -> (c, d)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That was an interesting read for me, because I started off with How to Design Programs + Racket, before switching to Haskell.

(I would count Haskell as my first 'proper' language, and prior to all this, I had zero coding experience.)

I experienced a lot of the same detours that you have gone through.

re: point-free code

There's a plug in that you can use, called pointfree (cabal install pointfree). I found that it was more useful to me for experimenting with point-free style than writing my own code in that way.

</comment><comment><USER14> From a PHP background, I've also been trying out haskell in the evenings, my guide being the learn you a haskell book[1]. So far so good, I've started a little blog[2] to clarify bits that sort of seem confusing to me.

[1] [http://learnyouahaskell.com](http://learnyouahaskell.com) [2] [http://haskellrecipes.tumblr.com](http://haskellrecipes.tumblr.com)

</comment><comment><USER15> Yeah, that feel when Cabal has the wrong version of the dependencies...</comment>


Introducing Shopify Email - <AUTHOR> https://news.shopify.com/introducing-shopify-email <comment><USER2> Seems like an extension app rather than a built-in product which I think made alot sense since existing pure-play vendors like Klaviyo have a far superior product. Also, it gives merchants the options to evaluate email marketing tool on a more-even ground since releasing as an app means that it will be reviewed just like others.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree, although I think there's also something to be said about ease-of-use and ease-of-implementation, especially for many smaller merchants who might not be using anything at all due to the adoption barrier. Imagine being able to natively pull in all of your existing digital assets, never having to worry about links not working or the wrong picture displaying, or configuring a third party program to send email from your company domain. It also opens up a potential for full-cycle tracking, from delivery rates to click-through rates to checkout time to items sold...

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone know whether they have built their own mail server or are running this on top of a SendGrid/SES or similar?</comment>


140 flights canceled so far by Alaska Airlines computer crash - <AUTHOR> http://www.katu.com/news/business/118706354.html

<comment><USER2> Well, darn; I did a quick search and found neither "windows" nor "linux" in the article. The 0'th rule of corporate incident triage being, "figure out to whom to assign blame" being thwarted, my attention span quickly approached 0.

<comment><USER3> According to the article, "The computer system went down about 3 a.m. Saturday when a backup power system upgrade was being installed and a transformer malfunctioned."

Where's the redundancy? Why is everything on one system?

Aside from the Alaskan airports (and maybe Hawaiian), their partners American and Delta are at all those airports. How many fliers got moved over to them, instead of just cascading delays and headaches through the rest of the system.

Again, from the article: "He said his flight was supposed to leave at 8:50 a.m. but still had not boarded by 11 a.m." He was probably suppose to catch a connection in Chicago or Atlanta, but he won't now. So when he gets there, now it's American/Delta's problem...

That said, when I go to Seattle, I tend to fly Alaskan. Although I don't like the Delta and American legs, the Alaskan legs are pretty good.

I fly Southwest everywhere else I go.</comment></comment>


Things You Drink Can Be Used To Track You - <AUTHOR> http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/07/01/1815204/Things-You-Drink-Can-Be-Used-To-Track-You <comment><USER2> Yeah, except that I know a lot of people that drink bottled water. Some of that stuff is supposedly from other countries, and others are made from the bottler's local water source and filtered.

But in most cases, people drinking bottled water would not show up properly in these tests.</comment>


Bay Area 2050: The BART Metro Map - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@adamsusaneck/bay-area-2050-the-bart-metro-map-ab83b22d3d8b#.fndmqyb85 <comment><USER2> This is so wonderful compared to the multi multi billion dollar boondoggle "high speed rail" that California is spending money on. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High- Speed_Rail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail)

We discussed that just a week ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11996355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11996355)

Cancel HSR and use the money toward funding transit that people would actually use!

<comment><USER3> HSR includes funding for regional and local transit in California's major metros, as well as the long distance high-speed lines connecting them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 2050?! I'll be dead by then, let's get this show on the road.

<comment><USER5> I think if you want to see the show you have to get on the road i.e. the future is happening in places like China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Didn't see author discuss the South Bay Ferry Pier they put on the map (looks to be near the Google HQ in Mountain View). Has that been proposed?

Seems like with the speed of ferries, this would be a very long ride to SF and wouldn't be practical except for a very small number of people vs just taking Caltrain (which, as mentioned, is allegedly getting electrified soon-ish, with faster service).

</comment><comment><USER7> My dream: Bart along Van Ness, Geary corridors, replace Caltrain down to Gilroy, another spur down the el camino from Millbrae to SJ. A mass transit bridge to Marin (oh, I know, it'll kill the views of the GGB. But tunnels at the GG seems impractical, given geography) and extend integrated public transit to Marin and beyond.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's sad that for most of the world cheap enough electric self driving cars will come faster than good public transport

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure why you think cheap enough electric self driving cars can't _be_ public transport.

<comment><USER10> This question was answered decades ago

[http://www.treehugger.com/cars/amount-of-space-required- to-t...](http://www.treehugger.com/cars/amount-of-space-required-to-transport- people-by-car-bus-or-bicycle.html)

It's painful that it needs to be explained.

<comment><USER11> I'm sorry for your pain.

You seem to think that bicycles and/or busses in an urban setting under ideal weather conditions are the answer to all transportation questions.

Unfortunately in the real world bicycles fail to protect against inclement weather (and are nearly unusable in winter time in some climates); can leave their passengers sweaty, wet, or dirty; have limited cargo capacity; and are not as useful for those with long commutes. So while they are a great solution for some situations, they are not ideal for others.

Busses have great bandwidth and do not have to be parked or stored by passengers, but are not efficient fuel and space unless they have enough passengers. Busses (and trains) often run empty or nearly so. They are less convenient than bicycles and cars in terms of pickup and drop off locations.

Autonomous electric cars could be made of various sizes (including as small as a bicycle) for various cargo and passenger loads, could pick up and drop off passengers anywhere, would not necessarily have to be parked (or would have to be parked for shorter periods than private cars), would protect against inclement weather, and might be safer for passenger and pedestrian alike than individual cyclists or bus drivers.

<comment><USER12> The Bay area has one of the most ideal climates for bicycle commutes in the world. Denmark, on the other hand, which can have a rather suboptimal climate for cycling, has incredibly high bicycle commute rates:

[http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle- culture/copenhagen...](http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/bicycle- culture/copenhageners-love-their-bikes)

The answer is that it's partly cultural, and partly incentives. But you can go ahead and keep enforcing the cultural bias against bikes if you prefer.

<comment><USER11> A foot of snow, sub zero temperatures, and icy roads are not cultural bias.

<comment><USER12> Feel free to call me at home the next time Silicon Valley has a foot of snow.

<comment><USER11> >>>>>>>> It's sad that for _most of the world cheap_ enough electric self driving cars will come faster than good public transport (emphasis added)

>>>>>>> I'm not sure why you think cheap enough electric self driving cars can't be public transport.

This is the context in which my post was placed. I'm not sure why you've chosen to limit the scope to the Bay Area. The poster I was arguing with was claiming that space is _the_ deciding factor and the hands-down-answered-long- ago-reason why electric cars have no place whatever in public transportation.

Unless you are arguing that people should commute by bicycle in Minnesota winters, we're not really arguing here.

<comment><USER12> Your comment directly complained about bicycles using an array of tired excuses. I would encourage you to visit a city where bicycle commuting works really well to get a different perspective.

As for the bay area, I was making the point that _even in one of the most optimal set of conditions in the country_ we still ignore biking which works well in other countries because we seem to be culturally blind. Instead we pursue techno-fantasy when we should really just be buying everyone a $300 bike and putting bike lanes everywhere.

We should also build subways and trains and use buses and all the other things, but we can't even seem to get anyone to take bicycles seriously.

<comment><USER9> Since the bay area has a very high amount of people that commute a long distance (50 miles or more)[1], how well bikes work for getting around locally is secondary to the fact that a large group of people would have to spend a significant amount of their non-working time on biking to get to work. People prefer to raise families in a more suburban setting, and as long as proponents of alternative transport ignore that, their plans are doomed to irrelevance.

1: [https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/03/05/san-francisco-bay- area-...](https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2013/03/05/san-francisco-bay-area-nations- capital-for-megacommuting)

<comment><USER12> Sure. There are a lot of intertwining problems here. Zoning has a lot to do with it. I used to live in Mountain View. The local governments in the South Bay overwhelming voted down denser housing and more office space. That ends up making it harder to live close to where you work, not only for capacity reasons but also due to housing prices. All of that compounds into a perfect storm of transportation woe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So in other words, someone in the Bay Area is jealous of New York's Second Avenue Subway and decided it's time to compete?

</comment><comment><USER14> Finally someone is working on this! First world cities without useful public transport are a joke (objective statement).

</comment><comment><USER15> This is really cool! How long did this project take? And how would one get started with mapmaking?</comment>


UC Berkeley joins edX - <AUTHOR> https://www.edx.org/press/uc-berkeley-joins-edx

<comment><AUTHOR> I will again be taking a MITx, Harvardx, or Berkeleyx class this fall, but haven't decided which one yet (although the SaaS class looks appealing).</comment>


Microsoft Readies Azure GPUs - <AUTHOR> https://www.virtualizationpractice.com/microsoft-readies-azure-gpus-38918/ <comment><USER2> Not sure about the exact pricing shown here, but it looks like Azure blows AWS GPU pricing out of the water.

Comparing specs:

      AWS g2.2xlarge:
      * DRAM: 15GB
      * GPU processor: 1xGK104
        * 1536 CUDA cores
        * 2.29Tflops/s peak single precision throughput
      * GPU memory: 4GB
        * 160GB/s peak bandwidth
      * Price: $0.65/hr (US East, Linux)

      Azure NC6:
      * DRAM: 56GB
      * GPU processors: 2xGK210
        * 4992 CUDA cores
        * 8.73Tflops/s peak single precision throughput
      * GPU memory: 24 GB
        * 480GB/s peak bandwidth
      * Price: $0.66/hr

I expect AWS will introduce a new GPU fleet and reduce pricing of the existing G2 fleet, in response to Azure.

<comment><USER3> I wish one of the main cloud platforms would significantly cut their per/GB bandwidth costs. It feels like there has been no adjustments in years.

Also funny story, I was 14 or 15 and was trying to figure out a name for a stupid little chat client I was trying to make in C#, and somehow azure popped into my head. Not surprisingly azure.com was taken and just had a generic microsoft landing page (this was a little before it was announced in 2008).

<comment><USER4> That's a major lock-in mechanism. Data stays in for the compute. Which is a major pity for Microsoft since all the marketing measurement startups got built on top of AWS while Azure has superior analytics tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty interesting from a video encoding point of view. We're currently using g2.2xlarge AWS instances which are Kepler based. All we really need from those instances is the GPU (more specifically, the NVENC H264 encoding chip), so other specs aren't too important.

It looks like the NV6 Azure instances use a newer Maxwell based chip, which can handle much more (concurrent, or higher bitrate/resolution) videos, compared to the 2 generation older AWS GPUs.

And the NV6 is virtually the same price as the g2.2xlarge... time to do some testing. Hopefully Amazon can catch up soon.

<comment><USER6> Just for reference:

K1 (AWS): 1 GPUs x 6 H.264 streams (max single stream 720p@30fps)

K2 (Azure K80): 1 GPUs x 6 H.264 streams max single stream 720p@30fps)

M6 (Don't know if it's used by anyone ;)): 1 GPU x 18 H.264 streams (max single stream 1080p@30fps)

M60 (Azure M60): 1 GPU x 18 H.264 streams (max single stream 1080p@30fps)

You can sacrifice encoder bandwidth (max streams) for higher resolutions or frame rates.

<comment><USER7> Is GPU better than CPU for encoding? I thought performance ended up similar. Also, are you saying that K1 AWS can reencode 6 streams at once?

<comment><USER6> The performance of the GPU is orders of magnitude better you can do multiple 1080p streams in real time with high bandwidth easily.

The quality on the other hand even for the same bit rate is considerably worse than highly optimized CPU compilers as the GPU does do a lot of hacks along the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> /r/machinelearning discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/4wd5kn/ms_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/4wd5kn/ms_expands_cloud_gpu_offerings_k80s_at_056hour/)

</comment><comment><USER9> AWS: 4 year-old GPUs

Azure: 2 year-old GPUs

Wouldn't it be awesome if a cloud provider could keep up with the GPU roadmap and ship something within a year or so of its release?

<comment><USER10> The GPUs that hosting providers are buying need to support vGPU features, which are only support by the higher-end workstation and server products.

<comment><USER9> Which is a software/binning issue (probably 100% software) not inherently HW because M60==GTX 980==GM204 and M40==GTX Titan X==Quadro M6000==GM200.

Interestingly, for the first time ever, GP100 is unique (well, OK, K80 too but K80 was too late). And since Quadro P6000==Titan XP==GP102, it's probably just a software block here as well.

Also, for the first time ever, the high-end Quadro will be the best FP32 GPU of it's generation. That's the most interesting part for me.

<comment><USER6> It is a software/bios block. Once the driver grabs a desktop card and it's initiated it's locked. The cards also come with a UEFI bios which means if your host initialized the card during boot it's also locked.

To overcome this you need to disable UEFI boot/GPU boot in the BIOS and blacklist the card in the host OS and then create a PCI-stub device that will be used for the passthrough.

This is an utter and complete hack and you can't really use for production grade implementations.

I'm not sure that Quadro actually supports vGPU also AFAIK only Tesla and Grid parts do, Tesla does have some additional in GPU support for virtualization, i don't know how GRID handles it. GRID parts are less for compute and more for game/video streaming so they aren't fully virtualized, AFAIK they do not support P2P gpu communication or shared memory access, they are only more Hypervisor friendly so they can be thin provisioned.

<comment><USER9> Bare metal grid GPUs do support P2P. Xen breaks that on AWS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I signed up for the beta but haven't heard anything back yet. Anyone else?

<comment><USER8> I haven't either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is interesting. Is there some way for academics to get discounted access for experiments (not for running heavy simulations, but for testing whether our stuff works)?

<comment><USER6> Microsoft has graned "free" subscriptions to proffessors and researchers before, so it can't hurt to ask :P [https://azure.microsoft.com/en- gb/community/education/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en- gb/community/education/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know of an access protocol (like pcoip) that supports multiple users to have concurrent 3d accelerated sessions on one VM ? Each just 720p

</comment><comment><USER14> Any idea if it worth to run a bitcoin miner on those like it used to be few years back?

<comment><USER15> No, profitable bitcoin mining is now only possible using low power ASICs.</comment></comment>


Lyft surges to the top 10 on App Store following the "DeleteUber" campaign - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/30/lyft-surges-to-the-top-10-on-apples-app-store-following-the-deleteuber-campaign <comment><USER2> Dan Primack summarised this well; Uber failed on messaging:

"Uber has done a lot of questionable things over the years, but its actions this past weekend vis-a-vis Trump's immigration ban weren't among them. An actual timeline from Saturday, which may differ from what you saw on social media:

• 4:20pm ET: CEO Travis Kalanick sent email to employees. It stopped short of explicitly opposing the ban, but did say: (1) The company would identify and compensate affected drivers. (2) Kalanick will raise the issue of how the "ban will impact many innocent people" this Friday during the first meeting of Trump's so-called CEO Council. This email was posted a short time later to Kalanick's public Facebook page.

• 4:55pm ET: NY Taxi Workers union called for a work stoppage at JFK airport from 6pm-7pm. Uber does not suspend its own service, but also does not send out any promotions.

• 7:36pm ET: Uber NYC sends out a tweet, saying that surge pricing to and from JFK has been turned off.

The claim that Uber was trying to 'break the strike' by sending out its surge pricing tweet is belied by the timing ( _i.e._ , sent after the strike was set to end). And while it is true that Kalanick has agreed to be on Trump's CEO council, it's also true that execs from both Uber and Lyft have agreed to sit on a new automation council set up by Trump's Department of Transportation. Either a pox on both their houses, or a pox on none."

<comment><USER3> Uber broke the strike by breaking the strike. This absurd focus on whether surge pricing was a multiplier or disincentive is a complete distraction.

The taxi drivers reached out and asked Uber for solidarity. They dispatched drivers to break the strike. They made their bed in the court of public opinion, now they can lie in it.

<comment><USER4> Uber is a company, it is not organized in a union. I would never expect them to participate in a strike and effectively order their drivers to stop working. Just like a taxicab company doesn't participate in the strike, but the drivers do.

This is like if Coca Cola workers went on strike, and problem blamed Pespi Co of breaking strike by not sending their workers home??

<comment><USER5> This wasn't a strike, it was a political protest.

By not participating, Uber naturally made enemies among a group of people with a tendency to boycott everyone they disagree with.

(I'm not taking sides here, just pointing out that this was a predictable outcome.)

<comment><USER6> > This wasn't a strike, it was a political protest.

The _taxis_ started a strike action (in support of the protest, but a strike nonetheless).

> By not participating

strike-breaking.

> I'm not taking sides here

Of course you are.

<comment><USER7> If the taxis are doing a strike, you can speak of strike breaking only for taxis not participating in it. Uber are not taxis per se, so there is no way they can break a strike they aren't doing in the first place.

Also there seems to be a confusion made on strike and strike consequences or demonstration. Being on strike only means stop working, not directly blocking access or service (although it is often done in conjunction). So again Uber providing service for people not serviced by taxis can not be labeled of strike breaking: Uber didn't prevent any taxis to be on strike if they want to do it.

Aside my opinion on the matter as a French who suffered more than one time from strikes is that Uber did a good job by allowing people to live their lives normally. Not being able to move, send a mail, study, lend a book, ... is really frustrating.

<comment><USER8> That seems like an absurd splitting of hairs. Under that logic the concept of a strike breaker couldn't exist. "It was coal workers who were striking, but the replacements are not coal workers per se they were non-participating laborers who happen to perform the same function"

<comment><USER9> If my mom arrives at the airport and needs a ride, am I supposed to refuse because of the strike? Will the union let me vote on the strike on that basis?

<comment><USER10> > If my mom arrives at the airport and needs a ride, am I supposed to refuse > because of the strike?

Do you intend on charging your mother for the ride she needs? If your answer is "of course not," you aren't providing the same function as a taxi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Completely stolen from [https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5r2apd/lyft_sur...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5r2apd/lyft_surges_to_the_top_10_on_apples_app_store/dd3yi66/)

This is all a consequence of bad messaging on Uber's part here; they're not in the wrong.

Uber's Surge system is all automatic--if demand goes way up, and supply doesn't follow suit, prices will increase in the app. Unfortunately, demand goes way up during catastrophes like terror attacks, so Uber has had a few bad instances where, in the wake of a crisis, surge goes up, simply because of the way the system is set up.

People who don't know about how Surge works might assume that Uber is deliberately raising prices in these crisis zones to gouge people in peril, which obviously isn't the case. To address cases like this, Uber put into place a surge shutoff system so that people in these positions aren't charged extra.

What happened here was that Uber, in the interest of avoiding another PR disaster, turned off surge to allow protesters (identifying with a cause which their CEO has openly supported) to get to the venue without extra charge. This backfired because that wasn't made clear in their announcement, and they instead came off as strike busters because the NYC taxi firms stupidly chose to express solidarity by shutting down the ability of protesters (not to mention uninvolved travelers) to get to and from the airport via their services.

I don't envy Uber--they're in a damned-if-they-do-damned-if-they-don't position. It's maddening to see the #deleteUber hashtag get this much traction, especially given that Lyft also continued to operate during the strike, but c'est la vie.

<comment><USER12> I don't think the pricing is the extent of people's concerns, or even the majority.

I'm not a fan of Kalanick, personally, but I was prepared to have been wrong about him when I saw his Facebook post about taking care of the drivers who were stranded by this idiocy.

Then, I saw they were taking fares to JFK during the taxi strike — effectively breaking it. To my eyes, and those of many others, that is an ugly repudiation of the gesture.

It was _one hour_. Having someone on the president's Business Council thing take a public stand like that in solidarity with the very industry he's trying to destroy would have sent a powerful message, and pretty cheaply.

More to the point, turning off surge pricing _hours_ after the strike — that was announced to last one hour — was over is moot.

<comment><USER13> As someone who is only just finding out about all this, I don't fully understand why the cab drivers stopped picking people up. I think the fact that people were using Uber (and Lyft) to leave the airport means they needed to (which is ESPECIALLY if true if surge was in place for some period of time and people still willingly took it). As poetic as they might think it is, taxi drivers not welcoming people into the country is, practically speaking, very similar to the airports not welcoming people into the country.

All I'm saying is that it would really suck to be someone caught at the airport in the mess, maybe with a few kids you've had to endure protecting/managing for a 5-10 hour flight, and the cabs aren't going. I'd be pretty upset at the cabs, even if I stood with the protesters (which I do). (Keep in mind, this would also include people coming from the many other countries not called out in the EO.)

Side note: I think it's crazy how quickly so many different SIGNIFICANT articles are hitting #1 on HN and Reddit. The ban, the judicial pushback, the firing...I think I'm all caught up, I sit down at home, throw open HN, and there's an entire sub-story that went down about cabs, Uber, and Lyft sitting at a new #1. It's all too much for me...

<comment><USER12> > _All I 'm saying is that it would really suck to be someone caught at the > airport in the mess..._

Then imagine how it must feel to be one of the people affected by the ban.

That's the point of the strike: "Oh you think _this_ is inconvenient?"

<comment><USER14> When has this strategy ever worked? This is not how you appease or bring about change.

<comment><USER15> How do you think the two-day weekend and the forty-hour week was created? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight- hour_day](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day)

<comment><USER16> By an hour long unplanned "strike" called for with hours worth of notice?

Yeah, didn't think so. This conversation is getting absurd at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's funny to me how Lyft positions itself like the poor little underdog that deeply cares about humans. People are so susceptible to marketing it's crazy.

They provide the exact same service, and Lyft cloned most of uber's features once uber had achieved the unbelievable mindshift of changing people's behavior.

Whatever people think, in a few years if Lyft is popular enough, guess what: they too will become the "big evil capitalistic entreprise" and some new venture backed company will send a christmas email to their users telling them they love them and should all dance together on the beach.

<comment><USER18> Neither company has any stickiness with me. By that I mean, I can switch between them willy nilly with no real affect on my life. I like to tip when my work picks up the bill, so I most often use Lyft... If either of them offered a rewards program (like frequent flyer miles) I would probably use that one exclusively. I have no idea why neither has implemented that yet.

<comment><USER19> I find this kind of strange, given that both of them seem to be sinking massive amounts of money into subsidizing rides. Like, they're going to be all about user retention when people are only going to care about which option is cheapest. Google, or somebody, is gonna come in and mop up on the ecosystem they've created. They won't even have this huge ethical problem of laying off thousands of drivers.

<comment><USER20> Because its still about building an overall market for Uber to capitalize on later. Lyft is burning through their own VC money helping Uber build that mass with little possibility of actually beating out Uber in the long run.

Not aquiring Lyft was such a masterful move that I completely missed at the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Lyft sent me a political message in an email so I deleted Lyft and now don't have either one. I used them, because I thought they were nicer to the drivers and allowed me tip. And I support the refugees and think this is a stupid and dangerous ban. Oh and I was a bit in the same boat as some of them and on a few occasions was not allowed board the plane with a ticket in hand, and was not able to get home to US.

But Lyft is just a driving app nothing else. There are also a few games, a spectrogram utility and other crap. Should I expect my chess game to start sending me "OMG we so hate Trump, stand with us".

This is getting ridiculous. We and our allies have bombed the crap out of those countries. Destabilized, them turned them into failed states. (Iran is probably the only sane one who arguably has a functioning government). We bombed hospitals, civilians, funded ISIS. Obama alone, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient just last year managed to drop over 26k bombs but but there is a stupid travel ban and the apps on my phone start emailing me political support statements...

<comment><USER22> > This is getting ridiculous. We and our allies have bombed the crap out of > those countries. Destabilized, them turned them into failed states. (Iran is > probably the only sane one who arguably has a functioning government). We > bombed hospitals, civilians, funded ISIS. Obama alone, the Nobel Peace Prize > recipient just last year managed to drop over 26k bombs but but there is a > stupid travel ban and the apps on my phone start emailing me political > support statements...

I'm really confused by this. Are you mad because the political climate is encouraging people to wake up and go, "Oh wait maybe I will not be complacent with this?"

If you're interested in a more proactive electorate but then mad that that touches your life, I'm not sure what you're actually asking for. If you'd like a pro-Trump ridesharing app I bet you can get a lot of reddit gold thrown your way to start one...

<comment><USER21> > I'm really confused by this. Are you mad because the political climate is > encouraging people to wake up and go,

I am mad that an app on my phone is now sending me emails about what I think is a fake outrage and jumping on a bandwagon.

> Are you mad because the political climate is encouraging people to wake up > and go,

People should wake up. And one can argue, a good thing about Trump is perhaps we'll see a start of a new party and a new generation who is more involved and will be successful next time during election. But I don't want apps on my phone to wake up. They should keep quiet.

> but then mad that that touches your life,

But my life is already touched. Don't need Lyft to touch me more.

> I'm not sure what you're actually asking for.

A taxi app that doesn't send emails every time Trump does something stupid. I imagine that is probably too much.

I heard there is a "support Starbucks" thing now as well because they vowed to hire 10k refugees. So I should make an extra effort to get some of that tomorrow. I remember when they were the corporate burnt coffee and independent-suppliers crushing overlords. Then I should enable G+ because Brin was in the news protesting at SFO. I am sure there is a longer list I can find on how I can "support the refugees and squash Trump by buying these 10 great services and products.

<comment><USER23> I don't disagree with your point, whatsoever, but I did see another perspective that I might not have otherwise considered while working with a larger company recently.

During the public debates regarding marriage equality, the company showed a very public display of support for marriage equality. They updated their branding and I assume their marketing as well to show that support.

From the inside, it was clear that this was to ensure the people who worked for the company could be proud of where they worked. From my perspective, it seemed the affect on the customer was second priority to the affect upon the employees, and that seemed to do well for all parties involved.

<comment><USER24> That's an interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing.

Another perspective is that Christian and Muslim employees of those companies were told that the management's official policy is that certain aspects of their religious beliefs are wrong. Can you imagine those employees weighing speaking up for themselves vs. their need to keep their jobs?

I've seen employees in that situation, and their morale was definitely not boosted.

<comment><USER25> > Another perspective is that Christian and Muslim employees of those > companies were told that the management's official policy is that certain > aspects of their religious beliefs are wrong.

How so? To my knowledge, the modern "Christian" marriage (and marriage rites) are dogmatic and have no basis in the either the old nor the new testament. Those whose sensibilities were offended were creating, to use your words "fake outrage". Would they be offended if the Government passed a law that allowed non-believers to pay a tithe?

<comment><USER22> Attempting to disentangle modern faiths from their culture and social controls is a fundamentally flawed idea and gives no one pause. Everyone is primed by even decades of training to dismiss one aspect of holy text for another. And even if you could win that argument, a "personal" relationship with their deity (actually: their status within their religious community) will still reinforce their position until their rationalizations can be drafted.

Trust me on this. I spent years learning how to call Catholics hypocrites while dismissing every book in the new testament. We were very good at it, and they were very good at pressing us.

<comment><USER25> > Attempting to disentangle modern faiths from their culture and social > controls is a fundamentally flawed idea and gives no one pause

Thanks for spelling it out plainly! I had not considered that "religious beliefs" can be anything one wants it to be, it doesn't need to be rooted on any theology. I guess it serves me right for my arm-chair sociology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is an example of the economic principle of goodwill. Uber has a poor reputation that leads to actual losses, but the negative value of the reputation is difficult to quantify. Conversely, Lyft has fostered positive goodwill that strengthens it in indirect ways.

This controversy will likely blow over with a small amount of damage, but it's a reminder of the vulnerability that Uber's management style brings to it. I think they should pay careful attention to how much people really want to hate them.

<comment><USER27> I think this is the only interpretation that makes sense, really. If you dig down into what actually _happened_ regarding the taxi strike, then none of the reactions make a lick of sense. This is more that people are looking for reasons to hate Uber and like Lyft. That's a battle Uber has been losing for quite a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Quite the PR coup by Lyft, since they were doing the exact same scabbing at JFK. In this waning neoliberal order, I hope the best protest people can muster is better than being deceived by most cunning brand.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr- gridlock/wp/2017/01/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr- gridlock/wp/2017/01/29/uber-triggers-protest-for-not-supporting-taxi-strike- against-refugee-ban/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Another reminder that emotion trumps (unintentional pun) reasoning on social media. I find it depressing that people don't spend any time verifying stories and separating facts from fiction. I would classify the #deleteuber event as a form of fake news.

You know what would be a good personal assistant or bot to build (using ML)? One that detects and informs users about fake news. Apparently the vast majority of people are pathetic at detecting fake news and this fact has real implications.

<comment><USER29> >I find it depressing that people don't spend any time verifying stories and separating facts from fiction. I would classify the #deleteuber event as a form of fake news.

The worst part is, this problem will only continue. It's so easy to fake news these days, and lets say a bot was built to vet authenticity...which bot do you trust, the one made by CNN or breitbart? it just feeds back to the original problem, except a bot doing it would just increase the volume of bias news stories that are "vetted" by their version of the truth.

<comment><USER30> Maybe the thing to do is make a fake news app. Just pump that channel so full with fake news that the only rational option is to seek less news, higher quality.

<comment><USER31> You mean The Onion?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It's unfortunate that such a literal instance of hashtag activism was based on pure speculation by random people on Twitter. Uber definitely botched the messaging, but they were in a no-win situation.

Their surge pricing algorithm will raise prices in times of low supply and high demand, which a protest coinciding with a taxi strike will definitely hit. I can understand why they would want to announce that they're going to turn off surge pricing, to make it clear they're not trying to profit off of this situation.

In retrospect, they would've been better off not saying anything, and perhaps refunding some portion of the ride price later. By making a public post devoid of context or justification, they invited fired-up commenters to arrive at their own interpretation. Some felt that Uber was trying to break the taxi strike, some felt that Uber was incentivizing protesters to clear the airport quickly (as some have pointed out, rides _to_ JFK were not discounted).

This coupled with impassioned public largely powerless to react against government action, made a private company which has stoked people's frustrations for a while an easy target for hashtag activism. Lyft's marketing was ingenious -- they quickly capitalized on this unexpected development by donating a million dollars to the ACLU -- actions that are commendable on their own, but definitely appealed to large segments of the population.

<comment><USER33> Yes. And then, Uber's CEO reminded everyone that he wasn't the only one working with the Trump administration, and Musk and others had too, and the dumb Twitter mob started running around accusing him of "snitching", as if that list wasn't already publicly available. It's so preposterous how gullible and hateful mobs are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm no fan of Uber but come on, this is so stupid, and dangerous for Lyft, because now they are stuck into this kind of pandering. Do they really think these customers will be loyal? at the first political blunder, with enough outrage, they are done. They are pandering to a crowd that is never happy with political posturing. They'll learn it the hard way. Uber absolutely did the right thing here. They chose not to play with fire and play the long term game.

<comment><USER35> In the end, what really differentiates these companies? There aren't many reasons to pick one over the other. Any opportunity that Lyft has to say "Hey! We're different" is good for business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Seems like Uber didn't really do anything wrong here other than fail on their messaging. Perhaps worth asking why so many people assumed they would be doing the wrong thing though and had little faith in Kalanick's explanations. Flocking to Lyft instead implies people make a distinction between the two in terms of ethics (which Lyft capitalized on) though probably not for any good reasons.

This doesn't seem like a good reason to delete Uber but there have been plenty of those in the past so I don't find myself very sad to see them lose business.

<comment><USER37> > This doesn't seem like a good reason to delete Uber but there have been > plenty of those in the past so I don't find myself very sad to see them lose > business.

That's how I felt about the situation. There were plenty of reasons already that I should've deleted Uber. It doesn't really matter if this was _the_ reason to delete Uber, so much as it was a reminder to finally get around to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is ridiculous.

There is no reason to punish or berate some person/entity/company for NOT participating in a strike. It would only make sense if the company openly tried to take advantage of the strike or attempted to stop or disturb the strike.

Inaction should not be considered as malice

</comment><comment><USER39> It was the Taxi Worker's Union that participated in the Strike, not Cab companies. Is it really fare for Uber to force their contractors to stop working and making money in "solidarity" with this union? If Uber drivers wanted to support the strike, they could have stopped doing pick ups.

</comment><comment><USER40> What do the people flying into the airport have to do with the Muslim ban?

The taxi industry is sickening, they feel no empathy towards the people travelling, then why should I feel any empathy towards them?

If angry taxi drivers want to do protests, there are ways to do it without harming innocent people travelling in. If they resort to such a thing, how can they claim moral high ground?

<comment><USER41> Because it's the biggest way to show power the taxi drivers have.

This has always been the logic of the strike as a means of protest - sure, it's unfair, but its also the way labor politics works. And honestly, with a strike lasting only an hour, it feels much more symbolic than a real hardball days-long strike.

<comment><USER40> > This has always been the logic of the strike as a means of protest - sure, > it's unfair, but its also the way labor politics works.

Except this has nothing to do with labour politics, the controversial "Muslim ban" had nothing to do with taxi laws. Using a labour union to push a political agenda is basically abuse of power. Imagine if pro-Trump police would start striking...

> And honestly, with a strike lasting only an hour, it feels much more > symbolic than a real hardball days-long strike.

If you are visiting the US for the first time, you probably won't know that, and you might not even be able to get off the airport.

They could have had their protest in an area where people would have noticed them and in a way that does not harm innocent bystanders.

> Because it's the biggest way to show power the taxi drivers have.

Any amount of power they have, the state has more of it. The only way they can achieve something is if they get the public on their side.

<comment><USER41> Labor unions and labor movements push political non-labor agendas _all the time_. For example, general strikes led by labor movements are standard tools of nationalist and anti-colonial independence movements, and Western labor unions have gone on strike to demand better environmental policies.

>> Because it's the biggest way to show power the taxi drivers have.

> Any amount of power they have, the state has more of it. The only way they > can achieve something is if they get the public on their side.

This is an argument over tactics, where I believe the left-wing outpouring of support has vindicated the decision to strike. They've drawn attention to their cause, and brought to mind a productive sector of the economy dominated by immigrants (particularly from the Middle East and South Asia). People are often persuaded by the depth of feeling shown by others, and strikes (since they damage your own income) are a good way of proving your dedication in a material way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> "The Taxi Workers Alliance had asked all drivers, Uber included, to not pick up at JFK"

Uber isn't a driver. What does the taxi workers alliance have to say about taxi dispatchers? Did cab companies participate in the strike? For a company to do this might very well be illegal collusion. Individuals can strike, companies aren't as well protected.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm curious about how taxi drivers are viewed in the US or this specific region. In Turkey, they're mostly hated, because they will go to any length to extort money out of the customers. This ranges from picking longer roads if they detect that the customer doesn't know the area well to asking for 500 euros to even pick them up after terrorist attacks. So, Uber was seen as the savior as their drivers wouldn't try to do any of this and were generally nicer in people's experience (it really doesn't take much to be nicer than a taxi driver here).

<comment><USER30> In the southwest they're generally someone you'd only hire once or twice around an airport on a vacation. They're around public restrooms for favorability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> That perfectly timed million dollar donation to ACLU was marketing genius. I can't imagine how you go about making a decision like that and quickly pull the trigger in such a fast paced volatile environment.

<comment><USER45> which is enough reason for me never to use Lyft.

#hasta-la-lyfta-baby (work in progress delete Lyft hashtag).

<comment><USER46> Can I ask why donating to the ACLU made you delete your account? It may be a waste of VC money, but they do stand up for civil liberties.

<comment><USER45> You signed up to ask me that? Maybe you're from Lyft or ACLU?

Today I'm interested in the gritty details of social media manipulation, political marketing and celebrities using their Twitter power to influence customer loyalty.

I was replying to guelo, who suggested the 1 million donation from Lyft was well-timed marketing genius.

I'm surprised so many people think that money is the answer to everything. Money and hashtags. The more money ACLU gets the more they can apparently fix all these nasty issues.

I'm fatigued by the moral high-ground of social media megaphone hissy fits. Viral wisdom for all to follow or else suffer more hashtags.

What happened to the business model of simply providing a good reliable service? Investing time and energy into consistency, reliability and the primary business mission? Instead we have companies setting up whiteboards, mapping out the risks vs rewards of viral stunts relating to issues completely removed from their purpose.

I don't like hearing that Susan Serandon tweets "delete Uber" and the media picks it up and it goes viral. Not cool. Uber didn't deserve that attack, nor its drivers.

<comment><USER44> I wasn't making a value judgement when I called it marketing genius. I see the donation as cynical manipulation. But there's no denying that as marketing it was extremely effective at generating app installs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> these types of events usually blow over in a month or so. but it does confirm what everyone already knows: ride hailing apps have no stickiness. at the end of the day no one cares what service provides the car.

<comment><USER48> Can someone please help me understand why traditional taxis haven't adapted the same tech as Lyft and Uber? You're right, there really is no moat. Tech is mostly a big ol database. Is it due to disjointure among small companies?

<comment><USER49> There's a startup called Flywheel that has been selling shovels to taxi cab companies -- in the form of electronic dispatch, payments, navigation and GPS- based metering.

[https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/22/flywheel-expands-uber- like...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/22/flywheel-expands-uber-like-system- for-taxi-cabs-to-nyc/)

<comment><USER50> And it works fine. I've been using Flywheel since 2013. Their software started out rough, but now it's solid. It may be a bit more expensive, but the average driver I get has been driving in SF more than a decade, so they're knowledgeable and competent. Plus I know they're insured and properly regulated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Thiel is a big investor, Icahn is a big investor. Both are closely tied to the Trump administration.

<comment><USER52> This.

Ichaan, a Trump supporter from the first day of candidacy, has a $100mm stake in Lyft... Not sure what Theil's numbers are.

If this election has taught me anything it's that people unfortunately think with their hearts to the point of being almost braindead.

Reminds me of how Whole Foods was founded by an Ayn Rand loving libertarian _, but somehow people think their money goes to a hippy-dippy left leaning institution every time they shop.

_ Not that there's anything wrong with being a libertarian... just making a point about perception.

<comment><USER53> I agree wholeheartedly, but I think this phenomenon is to be expected.

I don't know any more about the founder of Whole Foods than I do about the founder of Target, nor is it really relevant to me as a consumer. All the vast majority of people have to form an opinion on their image is the companies themselves and their experiences with them. So, we do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why protest an issue that affects innocent people by creating another issue that affects innocent people? This is not persuasive and only leads to further disagreement against the actual movement. Creating more friction is not the way to motivate change.

Immigration/border officials going on strike and refusing to follow the ban order would be much more effective.

</comment><comment><USER54> It will be most interesting to see whether Kalanick follows through with his promise to discuss the EO with Trump [0], and whether having a seat at Trump's shiny business table actually amounts to anything. If it does not, it proves that the council only serves as a prop to promote Trump. This administration is not beyond using cheap props for marketing purposes. [1]

If the council holds no actual sway, Kalanick should then visibly and publicly resign from it if he truly stands behind his commitment to fairness. I'm withholding judgement until then.

0\. [http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick- will...](http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-will-talk-to- trump-about-immigration-order-2017-1)

1\. [http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/the_slatest/201...](http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/11/170111_SLATEST_trumpPresserFolders.png.CROP.promo- xlarge2.png)

<comment><USER55> As an avid fan of Uber, I'm waiting for Kalanick's update this weekend. I'm hoping for at least a matching $1m donation to ACLU before using Uber again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> One hour Uber. One hour. Just had to support the taxi strike for one hour.

<comment><USER57> Why should their drivers participate in a union strike without being in the union? If anything Uber looks more palatable to me because they were available when other options stopped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I finally took the plunge and installed Via, which some friends swear by and is more literally "ride-sharing" than either Uber or Lyft. Was pleasantly surprised to get an email a day later announcing free legal aid for drivers and passengers affected by the ban.

Useless in Queens and most of Brooklyn, unfortunately, but served in my little slice.

</comment><comment><USER59> "The lesson for other companies is clear: no business is going to be able to ride out the Trump years without being held accountable for their actions or inaction."

Note that arguing right or wrong of the action or reaction is not relevant - this is a description of the present mood of your market.

</comment><comment><USER60> It seems clear to me that by not supporting the strike, Uber avoided choosing sides, which among Tech companies is as if it explicitly came out and supported Trump's executive order.

However, I don't understand how the strike was intended to help the victims, or change policy. A strike is meant to inconvenience a group of decision makers. If a company won't pay fair wages, the the employees stop performing work. Then the company cannot make profit and must find scabs, or give in. If university officials implement unfair or corrupt policies, then students occupy the decision makers' offices.

However, it seems like this strike was meant to inconvenience no one related to the problem. Perhaps someone can comment on what I'm missing.

</comment><comment><USER61> Uber didn't lose here.

They are getting all kinds of press. There's no real logic in getting rid of the app and those who have tried that have recent phones know that you can't uninstall it - at best you can disable it.

But the reality is that there are many people that need rides and they'll use the app tomorrow just like they did yesterday.

Heinz didn't take a stand. People are still eating ketchup. Why should anyone waste their time or inconvenience their lives picking on Uber?

The only thing this political stunt has done is drawn attention away from the very issue that it was hoping to highlight. It was poorly thought out from the beginning.

</comment><comment><USER62> Twitter's absurd character limit played a part in this

</comment><comment><USER63> Companies make mistakes all the time that cost them. Uber just made one that will be talked about in hundreds of ways now. Just like Friendster, MySpace, Magnolia, Digg, etc.

It may not be fair, but it happens. Knowing how to make good decisions counts a lot regardless if you are at the top on on the way up.

In in the end, the customers decide what they feel is best.

</comment><comment><USER64> Legal trailblazing costs a lot of money. Attacking entrenched establishments costs a lot of money.

Uber was never going to be able to solve the ridesharing problem for just Uber, and its competitors are going to be unhindered by the massive amount of money Uber has spent on changing regulations.

</comment><comment><USER65> I deleted Uber because they changed their app in a way I found distasteful. I can either A: Alow Uber to access my location data even when I'm not using the app. B: Type in the physical address whenever I need a ride. Not cool. I chose to delete the app instead.

</comment><comment><USER66> Is there a word for when a mass movement rejects a service because of hype, and then comes crawling back looking like a fool later? That is what is happening here. Kind of cringe.

</comment><comment><USER67> They did the same thing that uber did, yet some how avoided flack

</comment><comment><USER68> I'm still going to use Uber. Keep up the good work, fellas.

</comment><comment><USER69> Honestly I'm not sure that uber and lyft could have coordinated a strike in the timeline it sounds like they were given, short of disabling the app or something.

</comment><comment> village-idiot What a petty and pointless distraction. Use Uber or not, I don't care, but claiming that this is a protest thing is just useless feel-good drivel.

</comment><comment><USER70> How does taxi airport strike help travelers?

<comment><USER71> For any employee the outcome of a labor dispute and its indirect influence on working conditions in their own industry vastly eclipses the inconvenience of being delayed at an airport for an hour, or a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Edit 1: Deleting unnecessary comment.

<comment><USER73> No, we had a brief experiment without politics on HN, then reverted to the rule since forever, which is that most politics are off-topic: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

It fluctuates. HN isn't immune to the how politicized the outside world is right now. At the same time, it's our job to make sure politics doesn't dominate the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> Don't care if I get crucified for saying this, but #DeleteUber is a distraction. It's taking away valuable cycles that could be spent against, you know, that actual fuckers involved in causing this ban.

</comment><comment><USER75> Can't delete Uber, it's installed as system app.

</comment><comment><USER76> Seeing Americans be so against strikes is disheartening.

</comment><comment><USER77> meh.. this will pass like grubhub ceo email episode. outrage ADD is a thing.

In 2009 Obama govt profiled Indian immigrants at NY airports. indians were massively abused and hundreds of them were deported from the airport without proper procedure. I was called a dog by an 'immigration officer'. " we will kick you out like dogs if this doesn't verify" \- first sentence when i walked up to him and handed him my passport.

Now all of a sudden everyone cares about immigrants.

</comment><comment><USER78> Kalanick and Musk are basically the only two remaining adults in SV. Musk basically said on twitter, "I'll go and talk to the guy". Everyone else is more concerned with political correctness and virtue signaling. Hundred thousand bombs dropped into five countries on that list -- not a goddamn peep from anybody. 2150 people killed by drones -- same. Iraqi refugees banned for half a year -- no one has even heard of it. Cuban refugees banned permanently -- okie dokie. But god forbid anyone gets stopped on the border, no sir, we can't have that.

<comment><USER79> A serious question: do people who leave comments like yours, and the even shorter ones that are literally just the words "virtue signalling", really believe that doing so presents a devastating critique which will convince others of the error of their ways and change their minds? Or is it something you do to demonstrate your affiliation with a particular set of beliefs and positions? Does this phrase have empirical content to you, in that there are theoretically people/positions you could disagree with which you would not use it to describe? Or is it something you will say to/about anyone who you dislike or disagree with, as a way to show that you and they are members of different tribes with different values?

<comment><USER78> Nah, a serious question wouldn't presuppose a particular answer. I think you've made up your mind long before you asked it.

But I'll oblige anyway. Virtue signaling in this context means that actions of individuals are directed mostly at people within their political and social group, not outside it. Their main purpose is similar to that of a Facebook "like", to communicate adherence to a shared set of beliefs, not to change anything per se. Indeed, in this political climate, where silent majority is actually in favor of the ban, to be in favor of it in the social circles of coastal elites could be harmful to one's well being. These days you have to constantly and proactively reaffirm your adherence to the latest groupthink.

This is further exacerbated by a rather severe level of hypocrisy demonstrated by those within the currently active protest group. When "their" people do the same or worse things, there's no protest or condemnation. Why? Because that wouldn't signal virtue to the socio-political group in question.

People on the right are prone to this too, but seemingly to a much lesser extent. In particular they don't seem to care much about protests.

<comment><USER80> One thing I don't understand is why America seems to have developed a sense of us vs them within their own country. Like "coastal elites", wtf? Your biggest and most populous and useful cities are on the coast, they are also where all the immigrants are. It's almost as if one group of people, that has no clue about anything to do with immigration are saying they are massively against it, whilst those that live with the immigrants don't have an issue with it.

America you need to sort that shit out, people that have no business caring about immigration shouldn't have a say on it. They definitely shouldn't be able to out-vote the population of your coastal cities which seems to be your only chance of relevance this century.

<comment><USER79> It's always been with us, since independence.

One of the most important and difficult debates during the drafting of our Constitution was whether representation in the national government should be equal for all states, or proportional based on their populations. The makeup of our Congress (one house where every state is equal, one where they're proportionally represented), and the manner of electing the President are compromises introduced in the 1780s to assuage fears from smaller states that larger, more populous states would be able to tyrannize them.

There are also historical roots here in slavery: many southern states actually had large populations, but only when slaves were counted as part of the population. So those states wanted slaves to count at least partially, even though slaves were of course not allowed to vote (which is how we get the infamous compromise where a slave was counted as 3/5 of a person for proportional-representation purposes).

And the economies of the northern and southern states diverged very early on; northern states' economies were based more on trade and manufacture, southern states on agriculture and resource extraction (supported by slave labor until slavery was abolished, then by things which emulated slavery as closely as was legal, like exploitative sharecropping and debt slavery).

This naturally leads to a divide and a conflict of lifestyles and values, wherein there are basically two countries existing within the same set of borders. One of those countries has always had a larger (free) population and always been more urban, dense and globally connected. The other has always had a smaller (free) population and always been more rural, sparse and isolationist. The southern and now midwestern rural/sparse/isolationist faction has also consistently used the compromises of the 1780s to their advantage, since they are represented and wield power in the national government disproportionate to their percentage of the population, and can at times effectively reverse the original fear and tyrannize the majority northern and coastal urban/dense/globalist faction.

But so long as the Constitution of the United States continues to be based on those two-hundred-year-old compromises, this tension will continue to exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> As we all debate about this on Peter Thiel backed YC Hacker News.

<comment><USER82> Hacker News (February 19, 2007) predates Thiel's involvement in YC (Mar 10, 2015) by quite a few years, no?

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Strikes should not be a feature of free societies. What do we achieve by striking and making it hard for normal Americans to go abut their lives ? Trump and his officials probably laugh at you from their taxpayer funded jets.

An Uber or Lyft driver is poor than me and I do not want him to earn less because I want to engage in virtue signaling. I would suggest putting up donation boxes and raising more money to donate it to ACLU and other organizations instead of disrupting normal life.

<comment><USER84> _Strikes should not be a feature of free societies._

Choosing not to work for whatever reason is a feature of a free society, I should think. If one wants to publicly declare the reason, that's exercising another important freedom.

Strikers understand that it's going to be an inconvenience of some sort: that's part of the way it attracts attention. They're also willing to pay the price for their actions. They understand that some will not look upon what they're doing favorably, and there may be repercussions.

Your suggestions regarding donation boxes are also very worthwhile. Some issues are important enough to warrant inconveniencing others.</comment></comment>


Archy - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy <comment><AUTHOR> Defunct Textual User Interface which attempted to implement the ideas Jef Raskin had intended for use in the original Macintosh. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef_Raskin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef_Raskin)</comment>


A Saudi Arabia Telecom's Surveillance Pitch (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://moxie.org/blog/saudi-surveillance/ <comment><USER2> Shameless self-promotion, as this article is one of several that inspired me to work on this.

I have been secretly working for several years on a drop-in iOS technology based on the latest peer-reviewed crypto research, pinned certificates, PFS, and implemented in a safe language that doesn't buffer overflow.

It's invitation-only right now but many customers are running it in production. We have to position it as a performance technology (and it's very very fast) since security doesn't make sales. But my personal goal is to Make Things Dark Again™.

Unfortunately the hardest part of security work is funding it–performance and business concerns drive a lot of the conversations which limit how much time is left to work on making bulletproof transport security dead simple for app developers. And it needs to be dead simple to get deployed in enough apps to protect the average user from pervasive surveillance.

But if you believe in the problem, and your employer can create a budget for the problem, I would love to chat with you (email in my profile). There is still time to rewrite the future and keep totalitarian governments out of our communication. We just have to decide we actually care enough to make it happen.

<comment><USER3> How does your idea compare to noise protocol or QUIC?

<comment><USER2> Noise is not really a protocol but a toolkit to build one. It's really a symptom of the problem. We expect individual developers to take these tools and figure it out, when they won't because they don't care enough. If by some miracle they care they will probably screw it up unless they like reading crypto papers. It also has various practical problems (e.g. the 64k message limit) that you have to deal with some way, probably at the expense of performance which is a useful vehicle to sell security technology, possibly at the expense of security (e.g. early session termination).

QUIC is more interesting and I'm evaluating if we can deploy a modified form of it into our transport layer. The key problem with QUIC alone is that in practice many networks block UDP traffic, so you need a TCP fallback solution so customers don't complain that every other app works except yours. But when your threat model is "government compels certificates" then you can't fallback to TLS. The government will just block UDP traffic at the router, downgrade you to TLS, and now they've got you. This is one consequence of a larger design issue: QUIC is trying to provide "equivalent" security to TLS, but if your threat model is "something is wrong with TLS" that's not enough.

<comment><USER3> How about something like spiped?

<comment><USER2> spiped is GREAT tech, and shares a lot of the same philosophy: small implementation, simplified protocol, no negotiation, key pinning, etc. It is really, really solid for the problem it solves.

However, it's designed around a simplified threat model. In spiped, you use pre-shared keys (the same key on client and server), that "somehow" you got a copy onto both systems without anyone seeing them. But you can't just drop your key into a mobile app binary, submit to the app store, and expect people not to reverse-engineer it and start reading other people's traffic. So now you need to figure out how to derive spiped keys on a per-session basis in a cryptographer-approved way™ and distribute them securely and verify the key someone told you to use is not actually from the NSA, and then on top of that think about perfect forward secrecy and certificate pinning and various other "beyond TLS" guarantees.

There are solutions to all those problems, tarsnap ships really cool solutions, but we are not talking about spiped anymore, we're talking about spiped _and_ a long list of other things, and the other things are easy to get wrong if your name is not cpervia.

Another practical problem with spiped is the performance degrades for small messages. This doesn't matter if your use case is doing backups, but if your use case is "I typed the letter 'c' in the search bar and where are my search results? I thought this was supposed to be a performance technology" it matters a LOT.

<comment><USER3> What about Axolotl, with the addition of the server signing a hash of the master key with an ed25519 private key whose corresponding public key is shipped with the app? Perhaps with a fixed 2 step "CA" trust path so each individual server can have its own signing key.

The server would be authenticated to the client, but not vice versa. Clients would have to provide some credential in band, but it could be bound to their identity key after that so it shouldn't need to be done again even when creating a new session (eg. fresh connection with different server)

If a server is compromised its signing and identity keys can be replaced. The DH ratchet heals the compromised session keys, compensating for the lack of an out of band key revocation mechanism. Sessions could be time bounded to mitigate the damage of clients sending with compromised message keys in between DH ratchets. Where that fails the server could reply with a message disclosing the compromise, forcing DH, limiting the damage of continuing to use the compromised hash ratchet.

For additional security clients could sign all their messages with their identity key. If the server logged all of them, then it would be possible to check after a server compromise that the attacker didn't forge anything.

You'd have to do something to break up big messages into chunks for UDP transport. There's a BSD licensed ratchet implementation from Silent Circle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Council#Saudi_Arabia)

The UN has always been a joke in my eyes because of this.

<comment><USER5> "In January 2016, Saudi Arabia executed the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr who had called for free elections in Saudi Arabia"

Sounds like a perfect candidate for the UN Human Rights Commission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few things leap out

\- WhatsApp's TLS is insecure but twitters is ok? I assumed everyone would use the same stack.

\- hang on - whatsapp now uses silent protocol right? Isn't it now really secure and a billion people have it?

But apart from that, I am honestly burying my head over this stuff.

I have a job and family and tv to watch and now I have to "Understand a complex moving environment and make sure I am secure whilst still providing my family with access to Facebook and hang on that printer wants to send photos to where!. I give up"

I think a set of good baseline practises would be good to start with. Begin by flashing your commercial Router with openWRT or building a router with RPi and then moving onwards. How can we live a connected life without polluting - it's a hard problem and one I realise I need help with. Speak up though, I have sand in my ears

</comment><comment><USER7> What bothers me most is most Saudi's are aware that they are being monitored. They assume if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't care for privacy.

<comment><USER8> Among the things that Saudis are aware but fine with, concern for telecom privacy is at the bottom. :D

<comment><USER9> It would be interesting to see how people feel about money vs. privacy. If the choice was:

1\. Guaranteed employment for everyone, at middle class- or higher, living standard. But with 100% surveillance of communications and movement.

2\. Privacy and democracy but with no guarantees of employment or living standard.

<comment><USER8> For 1. We already have that model running in North Korea and I heard the people love it absolutely.

For 2. We already have that model running in USA and I hear it is the absolute worst place to live in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please add 2013 to the title.</comment>


Security Through Hilarity: Statistics on funny ID photos - <AUTHOR> http://www.adamsonic.com/blog/?p=524

<comment><USER2> Anyone else notice that you're apparently more likely to get a ticket when pulled over by a cop if your ID has a funny photo?

Given how easily the percentages convert into low samples (50%/50% = 2/4 or 3/6 vs. 67%/33% = 2/3) I definitely don't trust the statistical significance of this data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah the sample rate was pretty low for police interactions. I try not to get pulled over that often. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wish he cited his sources for the statistics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sources were from personal experience using these IDs. I appreciate the feedback and I'll update the blog.</comment></comment>


U.S. Apartment Market Shows Signs of Losing Steam - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/apartment-market-in-the-u-s-shows-signs-of-losing-steam-1460067027?cx_campaign=poptart&mod=cx_poptart#cxrecs_s <comment><USER2> >Average rents, meanwhile, increased by 4.1% to $1,248 in the first quarter from a year earlier, compared with the 2015 first quarter's 5% increase, according to Axiometrics Inc., an apartment research company.

So rents increased 4.1% instead of 5% as they did a year ago. Both of these numbers are higher than the rate of inflation [0]. So rents are still rising in real terms.

Can we really say the market is "cooling", then? I would think that the "heat" of a market would be measured by the first derivative of price, rather than the second.

[0]: [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-inflation-rate-in- past-1...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-inflation-rate-in- past-12-months-doubles-to-13-in-january-2016-02-26)

<comment><USER3> The market could be "cooling" while still "hot".

<comment><USER2> Sure, but in the article (and your metaphor as I understand it), "heating" and "cooling" refer to the rate of change of the rate of change, i.e. whether the year-on-year increase in rental price is increasing or decreasing. "Hot" (and presumably "cold") would then refer to the YOY increase itself.

I'm wondering whether the clearer metaphor isn't to use "heating" and "cooling" to refer to positive/negative YOY increases, respectively, and "hot" and "cold" to describe the average prices.

I guess "Market still heating up, just not as fast" makes for a less compelling headline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My rent in Palo Alto fell 5% on my last renewal, and my apartment complex is letting me renew for 3 months at the 12 month price. Yes, Palo Alto's market is usually a lot hotter than the nation as a whole, but yes, it's currently following the average.

<comment><USER5> Almost the same at my rental in Oakland. My landlord has put me on a month to month lease at the same price as my twelve month lease. I'm pretty sure that new renters in my building are probably paying less rent than me.

<comment><USER6> What is the reason they are doing the month to month. Did you ask for it? This is super useful due to the fleeting nature of employment.

<comment><AUTHOR> A landlord (or tenant) on month-to-month schedule can provide a 30-day notice to vacate, while those in 12+ month leases must provide a 60-day notice. So it's partially about increasing landlord's flexibility (which might or might not involve raising the rent or kicking the tenant out in case prices go up), and partially about what the market will accept - it seems that everybody else is doing 12-month leases and switching MTM afterwards.

<comment><USER7> (Landlord here). From my perspective for a residential tenant a shorter lease is typically better. Mainly because you aren't going to want to spend money on legal action so with the tenant tying the property up you have less flexibility (note most of my tenants are commercials and credit worthy so it's the opposite).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of dumb money is funneled into apartment complexes, there has probably been a lot of overbuilding.

Right now there are probably a dozen 200 unit+ complexes going up -- I live in a lower population region (say 250k people), and there's no way the market can absorb that many fancy apartments.

I've also noticed in my area that condo conversions have dried up.

<comment><USER9> Are you talking about Jersey City?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It costs an insane amount to rent an apartment in a good neighborhood in most big cities now in the country. San Fran is so expensive folks are leaving. No surprise that things are leveling out!

<comment><USER11> Want to know how much a 1br in SOMA / south beach is going for today? $3815 (mean of 292 listings)[0]. Three years ago, I was paying $500 less than that for a 2br new high end unit in the same neighborhood. Fucking ridiculous.

I'm considering moving to NYC for the lower cost of living. 1br in Brooklyn is $2220 (mean of 523 listings, excluding fees)[0].

Really happy to see people finally let the market do it's thing and produce a product (in this case housing) that's in such desperate demand.

[0]: [https://github.com/brbsix/craigslist-rental- market](https://github.com/brbsix/craigslist-rental-market)

<comment><USER12> You need to divide Brooklyn into the parts you'd actually want to live in (commute times and safety). Split it in half. You'll definitely pay more than $2200 in the more convenient safer areas

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> To what extent is there a "U.S." apartment market?

Honest question.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure what your question is. There are millions of apartments in the US. How would there not be a market?

<comment><USER13> Sorry, to be clear: I mean, is there a single market that's useful to track collectively, as opposed to just narrowing in on individual cities?

It seems like the apartment markets in Detroit, San Francisco, and Eudora are all going to be very different, hinging on radically different factors.

Some US economic trends will affect all three, sure, but... my instinct is that they won't resemble each other very much at all. Apartments that are hundreds or thousands of miles away aren't exactly fungible commodities.

I don't know much about this area though, so it was an honest question, maybe they're all more linked than I realized.

<comment><USER15> Of course every local market is distinct from every other, but there are some national factors that affect price in every local market. For example, mortgage interest rates are generally agnostic to location. Landlords pay a mortgage to buy the properties they rent, so the "price" of the mortgage (the interest rate + down payment) will affect the price of rent.

If the US national average for interest rates drops from 5% to 4%, you would expect to see downward pressure on rental prices across all markets. Sure, not every landlord is refinancing or getting a new mortgage, but as long as some contingent of landlords is able to undercut the going rate of rentals, they will exert downward pressure on the rental price in their local market.

<comment><USER16> I'm not disagreeing with your statement, but _" mortgage interest rates are generally agnostic to location"_ isn't fully true. 'Risk of default' and 'ease of finding a new buyer after a default' are factors in determining the rent one pays on a mortgage, and lenders may use location as a factor in assessing those.

For example, if a bank has to repossess a house in the valley, it will not have much problems finding a new buyer. For a house in Detroit, that likely is different.

That likely doesn't have much effect on deltas in the short term, though, as those factors are relatively stable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My gut feeling is that this is just following simple demographics.

Children of the baby boomers are starting to get into child rearing age and so apts are becoming far less desirable for a myriad of child rearing related reasons.

So single family detached homes are becoming the new fad, as the boomer's children want to raise their children like they were raised and no longer want an urban apt close to the all the bars/nightlife/restaurants.

Also read: bars, nightclubs closing becoming a trend?

<comment><USER12> Everything seems to follow the development of the 1985 baby boom but nobody actually acknowledges or realizes it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just anecdotal but I've heard from 5-6 friends and friend-of-friends that rental prices have fallen in SF, at least in some areas. IIRC one was offered a larger place and a small reduction.

No idea if this is true but one can hope.

</comment><comment><USER19> Update: the law of supply and demand continues to be a law.

<comment><USER20> > the law of supply and demand continues to be a law

There's no such thing as "the law of supply and demand", there's the law of supply[1] and the law of demand[2]. These laws contribute to the supply and demand model[3], but you won't find "the law of supply and demand" printed in any economics textbook.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_supply](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_supply)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_demand)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand)

<comment><USER21> So, tack on an "S" and you're good! The laws of supply and demand.</comment></comment></comment>


An Atomic Hash Table - <AUTHOR> https://ticki.github.io/blog/an-atomic-hash-table/ <comment><USER2> Note, this is a component of the sibling front page article on TFS file system here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14386331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14386331)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always admired the wizardry of Cliff Click's concurrent hash:

[http://www.azulsystems.com/blog/cliff/2007-03-26-non- blockin...](http://www.azulsystems.com/blog/cliff/2007-03-26-non-blocking- hashtable)

[https://youtu.be/HJ-719EGIts](https://youtu.be/HJ-719EGIts)

I'm not sure what to make of an "atomic" hash. I don't think OP does as well: "Doesn't this kind of defeat the point of concurrent algorithms? Well, in a sense, it does make it non-atomic, but it isn't really a spin-lock or anything like that, even though it can seem like that:"

Concurrent hash seems to be more correct and clear.

</comment><comment><USER4> This might be just what I need.

I had this idea for a quantum computer simulation which stores states similar to how the physicist writes them. Eg a|00> \+ b|11> becomes {(0,0):a, (1,1):b}. In general sums of kets, bras, operators are represented by dictionaries.

Implementing operations on a QC is a very parallelization task, but is hard to do concurrently with built-ins.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's also [https://github.com/facebook/folly/blob/master/folly/docs/Ato...](https://github.com/facebook/folly/blob/master/folly/docs/AtomicHashMap.md) that I know of trying to solve this problem.</comment>