Ask HN: Startup House? - <AUTHOR>

I'm thinking of applying to Startup House:
www.startup-house.com
Any thoughts?  Does this look like a legit place? <comment><USER2> You're quite right, if you're not interested in challenging yourself, developing skills you never knew you had, being or becoming flexible, and using a nimble mind, then a startup might not be the right choice.

There's nothing easy about starting a company. It can be a rough experience, and is not for the risk-averse. It's also not as easy to work at a startup, because your duties are less well defined, and doing a bad job has a real impact on the company's bottom line. If you want to do the same thing day in, day out, nine to five, you need to work for a big company.

At Startup House we believe that internships at startups can be just as rewarding as internships at big companies, for individuals who are interested in challenging themselves and thinking on their feet. Startups typically do not offer the same sort of side benefits to interns (corporate apartments, structured mentorship, events for interns, having a community of interns), and that's where Startup House comes in.

Startups, for many, offer more interesting opportunities, such as the ability to work closely with management. Startup House makes working for a startup even more attractive by providing the side benefits of an internship, community, events, activities, housing (limited by availability - and a lot more fun than living on your own), and dinners with entrepreneurs.

Our program is meant for those who would be interested in startups anyway. We seek out individuals who demonstrate an interest in technology, entrepreneurship, and enjoying life, in order to build a supportive community of interns across multiple startups. If this sounds interesting to you, you can apply by sending your resume to resumes at startup-house dot com. For additional information, check out our website www.startup-house.com or send an email to contact at startup-house dot com.

Julian Jennings-White

Co-Founder, Startup House

julian at startup-house dot com

</comment><comment><USER3> "Live the Silicon Valley Startup Experience"

Sounds like trouble to me. I'm generally skeptical of anything that tries to polish and make accessible an inherently risky and difficult process. If you're using Startup House as a way to test out working on a startup, be careful that you aren't looking for the "startup lifestyle." Only if you'd do it anyway would I think that this could ever be a good idea.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.startup-house.com></comment>


Capnproto-rust vs. C++ - <AUTHOR> http://dwrensha.github.io/capnproto-rust/2013/11/16/benchmark.html

<comment><USER2> As I said earlier on the mailing list, I suspect (without looking into it) that the cause of the I/O performance slowdown relative to C++ is something related to buffering—perhaps the I/O is not being buffered, or the buffer isn't functioning right. This would be consistent with the serialization-based I/O leading to larger slowdowns, because there would be more calls to write(2) then. If so, then this should be fixable.

I'm pleasantly surprised to see the object mode slightly faster than C++.

<comment><USER3> I should note that the Rust version currently omits some features of the C++ version, such as read-limiting and the actual counting of the throughput. These things are cheap, but they may explain why Rust is faster in that one case.

<comment><USER2> We did some benchmarking on IRC today in light of this post and we found that Rust's stdio is currently quite slow due to a flag not being set properly in libuv which causes it to punt to a thread pool. There is currently a fix in the queue: [https://github.com/mozilla/rust/pull/10558](https://github.com/mozilla/rust/pull/10558)

<comment><USER4> In case you get some time would appreciate a blog post or a comment describing what the issue was on the rust side as well as on the libuv side. Upvoted in advance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been thought all the serialization formats such as Protobuf, Thrift, BSON, or MessagePack are using compression as much as possible because saving amount of I/O is ultimate win for overall performance rather than fast calculation by memory alignment.

When I see this Capnproto, I am confusing that which one is right approach. Alignment is not exotic technique, and why didn't they align the data if there's no reason to save I/O?

Or am I totally misunderstanding these implementations?

<comment><USER6> Well, it depends on the environment. If you are doing interprocess communication, then I/O bandwidth is obviously not a concern at all. On the other hand, over the internet, it clearly is the biggest concern. For intra- datacenter traffic on a 10Gbit NIC, it's harder to say, but it _probably_ isn't the bottleneck. Cap'n Proto supports both cases by making additional packing optional, so you can choose the best trade-off for your application.

Regarding the other formats you mention, I think you may be imagining that the designers of these protocols thought more carefully about them than they really did. Protobuf, for example, was designed pretty ad-hoc to solve an immediate problem in Google's search infrastructure, and then stuck mostly because as more and more things used it, it was easier to keep using it than start over. The designers readily acknowledge that it is not an ideal format -- in fact, there are other ways they could have done the encoding which would have taken no more space but would have saved significant CPU time.

(Disclosure: I was the maintainer of protobufs for a long time, though not the original creator. I am also the author of Cap'n Proto.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It'd be nice to see some description of which compiler, version and flags are used in each case.

<comment><USER3> Author here. The makefiles I'm using are on github:

[https://github.com/dwrensha/capnproto- rust/blob/master/Makef...](https://github.com/dwrensha/capnproto- rust/blob/master/Makefile)

[https://github.com/dwrensha/capnproto/blob/benchmark/c%2B%2B...](https://github.com/dwrensha/capnproto/blob/benchmark/c%2B%2B/src/capnp/benchmark/Makefile)

I compiled libcapnp with the latest Clang g++ that ships with XCode. It perhaps would be more fair to also compile the C++ benchmarks with Clang, instead of the Macports gcc4.8 that I'm using, but unfortunately Clang barfs on some template hackery in the benchmark driver.

<comment><USER8> That would be quite useful. Otherwise it's very hard to tease apart the differences between optimization back ends of GCC and LLVM vs the Rust and C++ front ends. I feel like I have seen benchmarks showing differences around 5-20% between LLVM and GCC in speed, so the it will have an effect.</comment></comment></comment>


TSA subpoena, seize computer of blogger who publishes their security directives - <AUTHOR> http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/runway-girl/

<comment><USER2> The implication of this seems to be that while we, the traveling public, are required to abide by a long list of rules, we are prohibited from knowing exactly what those rules are.</comment>


A MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM might be about to launch - <AUTHOR> http://bgr.com/2018/06/04/macbook-pro-2018-release-date-soon-specs-geekbench/ <comment><USER2> It's fairly amazing the state of the laptop industry... the fact that we'd probably all be happy with worse screens, heavier chassis, smaller touch pads, worse speakers, worse battery life - in return for a functioning keyboard and as much ram as a solid PC from almost a decade ago... If you had told me this in 2002 I would have bet good money against it, and yet here we are...

<comment><USER3> I don't mean to single you out, but I decidedly am _not_ happy with at least a heavier chassis, and to a lesser degree worse battery life. I used to be sympathetic to the argument, until I was issued an older generation MBP for $JOB; my personal MBP is the "dreaded" touch bar model. Just looking at the specs they are only ~200 g apart in weight, but it's annoyingly noticeable during daily carry.

The $JOB MBP also has worse battery life, necessitating me to carry its power adapter more often, which is another ~300 g. That said, $JOB requires me to run some battery-hungry software _cough_ Chrome _cough_ , that I don't run when I'm off, so it's not quite apple-to-apple comparison.

For that matter, the keyboard doesn't really bother me, either, but TBF I'm probably a more forgiving typist than most. I have no issues typing on the cheap thrown-in Dell keyboards, and they're practically disposable that I don't feel so bad when I inevitably spill something over one.

tl;dr: I like the current generation MBP over the previous generation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While it's a welcome step forward, if they didn't fix the keyboard it really is moot.

It is worth noting that the Coffee Lake i7-8750H reported here can support up to 64GB of RAM, so Apple is still shorting customers the limits of the platform...

<comment><USER5> > if they didn't fix the keyboard it really is moot.

I saw this mentioned in other comments but I'm not familiar with MacBooks - what is wrong with it exactly?

<comment><USER6> Next time you're at a Best Buy or Apple store (or even nearby with a couple minutes to kill), go in and press a single key on the new Macbooks and you'll immediately understand. It's an awful experience.

<comment><USER7> I buy MB Airs and my current is a 2013 and I hate touching other keyboards now. Frustration mounts almost immediately with how clunky and odd they are. I'm so happy that I am sad, because I've maxed it out so bad that my Dr Clear is constantly showing 90%+ memory usage and so I know for sure I need to upgrade. I don't want to upgrade!! So while my pain is slightly different, I totally get how you MBP users feel when they screw with your experience. It sucks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It doesn't matter how much RAM it's got if they don't fix the keyboard. I don't think I've ever paid so much money for such a poorly designed piece of hardware.

</comment><comment><USER9> 32gb RAM, 6 cores - 12 threads! That would be a game changer and turn it into a powerhouse for docker/minikube/vagrant workloads.

<comment><USER10> For only $11,999. I wish I were only half joking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> ECC please...

<comment><USER12> For a laptop? Even my heavy usage is ephemeral workloads.

I care so much more that the dang thing works reliably without fussing or fiddling, which can not be said about 99% of laptops on the market.</comment></comment>


TI Graphing Calculator: Profit Margins - <AUTHOR> http://www.meta-calculator.com/blog/ti-graphing-calculator-profit-margins/

<comment><USER2> "At the same time, there is no financial pressure to lower the prices of its unchanged and rather low-tech graphing calculators since consumers are happy to keep buying them."

Consumers are required to keep buying them.

</comment><comment><USER3> _" For those reasons it seems that TI has little incentive to alter the basic design and functionality of its popular graphing calculator products"_

How about looking at it from the teacher's POV? If they created an entire classroom lesson plan (including handouts and worksheets) that expect the calculator to function a certain way and then TI changes the interface, what would teachers do?

What would _you_ do? Rework all of your materials, or go find another calculator that mimics the old interface?

</comment><comment><USER4> TI-83/84 are good calculators - even here at HP you see a lot of them although the enlightened insist on RPN.

I think a large part of the success is that high-schools pretty much insist on a TI calculator. I bought my daughter's 84 on craigslist from a college freshman - I thought $120 for a new one was a bit steep.

</comment><comment><USER5> Did this article provide any new or useful information? Did I miss it somewhere?</comment>


Pattern Recognition with Google Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://econsultancy.com/blog/4155-pattern-recognition-with-google-analytics

<comment><AUTHOR> I am reproducing my comment on the article here as well:

Interesting Article. Though this is not exactly pattern recognition, but segmentation does reveal a lot of insights. For example, as you hinted, organic traffic differs in behavior from social media traffic, which again differs from your loyal visitors. Also, with this kind of analysis you can observe what is the most profitable/active segment of visitors and if they exibit any common characteristics.

However, this is just the first step. Once you infer patterns in your traffic, the next step is to leverage that knowledge. For example, having information that visitors who visit your site by searching 'computer problems' are more likely to signup for newsletter does not really hold any value unless you start targeting such visitors with a more prominent newsletter box.

And this is where analytics software such as Google Analytics fall flat. You have to do custom coding in your site to do such kind of fine grained targeting. And since there could be tens or hundreds of such segments, the whole activity of targeting becomes cumbersome and starts to look ROI-less.

We, at Wingify ( <http://www.wingify.com/> ), are trying to develop a solution to help websites setup exactly the same kind of targeting that I have written above. Not only does our solution has more advanced segmentation capabilities than GA, it also gives you freedom to target those segments on your site. Moreover, you can also setup split and multivariate tests for those segments to see how much is targeted content/UI/adverts better than non-targeted ones.

We have limited number of private betas available in case you or your readers are interested. Buzz me at email@example.com.

Oh, and by the way, we have video tutoriasl showing segmentation, analytics and targeting capabilities of Wingify at <http://www.wingify.com/video-demos/> Not just for Wingify, these videos are helpful to understand segmentation and behavioral targeting in general.

<comment><AUTHOR> Though I agree the comment is regarding my startup Wingify, I thought my comment was insightful and useful to HNers. Apologies if you found the comment inapt.</comment></comment>


Money & Affirmation - <AUTHOR> http://andrewsplastic.tumblr.com/post/20269735494/money-affirmation

<comment><USER2> I like what he is saying. Money is just one form of affirmation among many others. All of them respectable, money is just more tangible and conspicuous.</comment>


Features everyone must borrow from Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://codingwithlove.com/thoughts/3-features-everyone-must-borrow-from-facebook

<comment><USER2> Uhm, why mention Facebook if you don't list three features that are unique to Facebook or were pioneered by them? Seriously, invites, notifications and comments are hardly new concepts. They're good concepts, but they have nothing to do with Facebook.

If you want to mention something that was pioneered by Facebook and that you should copy, then it's the use of real names instead of usernames or handles. This feature is what allowed people to connect with each other over Facebook when having no other communication channel, i.e. reconnecting with old friends or classmates.

<comment><USER3> Very true and Facebook didn't pioneer the use of real names, either. Not by a long shot. Come to think of it, I can't think of a single feature Facebook truly, actually _pioneered_ \-- I can think of a great many they _popularized_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Comments could backfire on you. What if you have paying subscribers who start recommending your competitors or free/cheaper alternatives to other paying customers. How do you deal with that. Deleting the comments risks alienating customers. Removing the comments feature would annoy all the customers who now enjoy it. Doing nothing will mean you're effectively giving free advertising to competitors.

<comment><USER5> Make sure your product is better than your competitor's. You shouldn't be scared of a customer doing a fair comparison of your product against someone else's.</comment></comment>


What My Hearing Aid Taught Me About the Future of Wearables - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/02/what-my-hearing-aid-taught-me-about-the-future-of-wearables/385145/?single_page=true

<comment><USER2> I have a Bluetooth enabled hearing aid, and this guy is spot on with everything. I started off with an analog hearing aid -- when it broke, you took it in and got it fixed. Nowadays, my hearing aid syncs with my iPhone, syncs with my computer, remembers where I've manually set the volume and next time I'm there, re-sets it for me. My hearing is better than it's ever been -- but now when things go wrong, I often don't know. It's very frustrating.

But it's getting better every day. I have hope and optimism.

I recently gave a talk about hearing loss, and one of the things I said was that hearing aids make us practically cyborgs. If a hearing aid can help me with my profound hearing loss, imagine what we could do for hearing people -- make your already fantastic hearing _even better_? Sounds like a win/win to me.

I'm excited about the future -- but I also keep in mind that wearables pose many problems, just like this author pointed out. If we can solve those, we're well on our way to cyborg-hood...

<comment><USER2> I would also point out that the iOS software for my iPhone is really, really basic and unsophisticated. I'd love to figure out how to hack it myself and write my own software. I guess I should learn Obj-C first... ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think the main problem this article highlights is the lack of control users have of their wearables.

We are able to run our desktops, laptops and servers (and some mobile devices) almost only on free software. Why shouldn't we demand the same for wearables? Is it even possible? If yes, will this happen? What's keeping vendors back in this sense?

<comment><USER4> One could argue that eventually the market will settle on peripherals interconnected by something that could be open. I don't need a "smart hearing aid" with cloud connectivity... I need a quality hearing aid whose sole job is to take a secured audio stream and play it with as much quality as it can muster. I can carry the processing unit in my pocket and drive it with anything I want. I don't need "smart glasses" with integrated cloud this and proprietary that... I need glasses that take a secured stream of video data and display them with all their might. I don't need an integrated... etc etc. There's no reason the machine in my pocket driving them can't be open.

This is, of course, not what will happen at first. It will take time for the "race to the bottom" to produce this result.

I'll say this though. I don't consider myself terribly ideological on this point, but in practice I probably am. I am not turning over my hearing and my vision to a company, or indeed any organization. If it's not open, I'll play the luddite. It's not worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For a wearable to 'really' succeed it must be 1\. Unobtrusive. 2\. Elegantly hidden.

Almost all the wearables on the market today are designed to be flaunted.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "For a wearable to 'really' succeed it must be 1. Unobtrusive. 2. Elegantly hidden."

I disagree with point 2. If you make the wearable into something that it already worn (e.g. watch) and make it just as fashionable you can succeed. The problem is that technology is an industry with almost no fashion sense. The closest product I've seen to succeeding design wise has been the Apple Watch and even it looks a bit clunky (hopefully this will change as the technology improves).

<comment><USER6> That's an unfair assessment of tech as fashion right now. Personally, I think the Apple Watch looks ugly, but things like headphones (over-ear and Apple's prominent white in-ear) have been prominent and very popular, especially as a social/status signal. A lot of design work goes into technology.

I think we will continue to see successful tech follow that prominent path, but also the hidden one you suggest. Google Glass done right, hearing- enhancements that are barely visible, slim AR/VR goggles that are more like glasses, etc.

We won't see prominent tech/fashion fade away.</comment></comment></comment>


Tim Cook to Apple staff: $1TR in shareholder value isn't what drives us - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/03/tim-cook-to-apple-staff-1tr-in-shareholder-value-isnt-what-drives-us/ <comment><USER2> _it's the passion for innovation and creation (not the towering mounds of gold) that really counts_

Cool, so why don't you give away 99% of your net worth to people who really need it, and lower Apple's cut on your monopoly App Store to something like 5%.</comment>


The New Heroku Postgres Database Experience - <AUTHOR> https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2014/8/12/the_new_database_experience_with_heroku_postgres

<comment><USER2> As much as I like this tooling and the features that Heroku offers it disturbs me that I have to pay $15,000 a month to get more than 99% uptime SLA.

To me it is unacceptable to see "max 1 hour downtime" and "max 15 minutes downtime" on plans that cost way more than running your own database on cloud instances from other providers.

For reference on AWS I'm running two m3.xlarge instances in an automated failover database cluster that so far has >99.95% uptime for the past year, and it only costs about $400 a month.

Meanwhile to get automated failover and a database equivalent to an m3.xlarge you have to pay $1,200 a month on Heroku, and that could still reach 15 minutes of downtime per month.

<comment><USER3> I really love Heroku. It's so well design, but I'm considering change to DigitalOcean, AWS or something similar.

The main reason is price: Former providers are 3x cheaper to host side project. I don't make money out of it and it's getting too expensive.

AWS gives 20k to startups which is enough to take pain of maintenance/devops.

I'd be happy if I got 2 dynos for half the price for 2 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I suspect this is a response to RDS introducing Postgres support last year [0]. I switched to RDS from managed Heroku DBs at that point because there wasn't enough added value from Heroku to justify the abstractions (plus I wanted to have at least part of our infrastructure not bound up in a single vendor).

But these automatic profiling and diagnose features look great, and it can be a headache to find problematic queries in my RDS instance even with tools like NewRelic. I may yet regret moving...

[0] [http://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/rds-postgres- sla/](http://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/rds-postgres-sla/)

<comment><USER5> You have enabled pg_stat_statements haven't you? It's what heroku are obviously using.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Heroku needs to open source the testing (UPDATE: and data) it has used to claim 3X performance.

Adding a single graph for a $2000/mo DB, only performing read only transactions at 30% of its connection limit doesn't sound like putting the DB through its paces, and not real world.

<comment><USER7> > Heroku needs to open source the testing it has used to claim 3X performance.

The bottom of the bar chart says: _Database performance was measured using pg bench with 150 concurrent clients performing read-only transactions._

pgbench[1] is a performance benchmarking tool that is part of PostgreSQL itself. It ships alongside the rest of the PostgreSQL binaries and is open source just like the rest of PostgreSQL.

I think this line from the article is interesting:

> In addition to Heroku Postgres DbX we are launching new database plans with > double the memory and speed improvements of up to 3x at the same price as > our current plan lineup. These plans feature an upgraded and re-engineered > infrastructure to drastically improve their memory and speed.

I wonder if the bulk of the price/performance gains are from switching to newer instance types on AWS and/or switching the underlying storage from magnetic disks to the new SSD EBS volumes[2].

[1]: [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/pgbench.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/pgbench.html)

[2]: [http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2014/06/16/introdu...](http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2014/06/16/introducing-the-amazon-ebs-general-purpose-ssd-volume-type/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hard to argue with 2x memory & 2-3x performance for the same price. Nice!

<comment><USER9> I'm pretty sure they actually dropped the price for the second cheapest production db. If I recall correctly, it used to go from $50 to $200, now it goes to $150.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> pg:diagnose looks awesome, can I use it on my own Linux server? [https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2014/8/12/pg- diagnose](https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2014/8/12/pg-diagnose)

<comment><USER11> From a cursory glance it seems to be a pretty presentation layer on top of [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/pgstatstatements.h...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/pgstatstatements.html)

If you use Rails, there's [https://github.com/ankane/pghero](https://github.com/ankane/pghero) . Other frameworks / languages have equivalent projects, but I haven't used them. But in the end, the data comes from querying special views in database, so it's easy to roll your own if you so desire.

<comment><USER10> Oh nice, thank you!</comment></comment></comment>


Bite-size coding challenge: implement if/else in JavaScript without `if` or `?:` - <AUTHOR> Here's a bit of Friday fun for you: your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to implement if/then logic in JavaScript without using `if` or the ternary operator `?:`.
Implement a function with the following signature:
```` function ifThenElse(cond, trueFn, falseFn) { } ````
If `cond` is truthy, execute `trueFn`, otherwise execute `falseFn`. `ifThenElse` should not have a return value.
Here's a gist that contains a very tiny test harness: https://gist.github.com/shinypb/befb5363395c754758b157b850cf747a
Put your implementations into your own gist and then reply to this thread.
I'm curious to see what sort of horrible atrocities you can all come up with. :) Happy hacking!
PS: Here are my two ideas:
https://gist.github.com/shinypb/85d6dd19e712f4d7962bd4c0cb30dfec
https://gist.github.com/shinypb/78dd126d946bec6cc77245d40d0748cb <comment><USER2>
      function ifThenElse(cond, trueFn, falseFn) {
          ({ true: () => trueFn(), false: () => falseFn() })[cond]();
      }

</comment><comment><USER3>
      function ifThenElse(cond, trueFn, falseFn) {
        cond && trueFn();
        cond || falseFn();
      }</comment>


Lenovo collects usage data on ThinkPad, ThinkCentre and ThinkStation PCs - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/article/2984889/windows-pcs/lenovo-collects-usage-data-on-thinkpad-thinkcentre-and-thinkstation-pcs.html <comment><USER2> Many people are saying "just use Linux" or "always do a clean install of Windows on a new laptop."

However, that's no guarantee to help you escape this kind of malware. Even if you replace the hard drive and put an open source OS on a laptop, you're still booting from an increasingly complex, opaque blob of UEFI firmware that you can't get rid off in most consumer devices. Who knows what goes on in there?

Then you've got the NIC firmware, the TPM (which is basically an entirely separate computer), and for corporate laptops often Intel's vPro stack as well.

Realistically, if a vendor wants to track or trick you, they'll always have the means to do so.

And if the past few years have taught us anything, it's that they really want to track you.

<comment><USER3> The TPM just sores keys. Intel's "Active Management Technology" (the OS in vPro) is a serious problem. Igor Skochinsky's talk[1] about this is very troubling.

The final piece of the puzzle is the new "Software Guard Extensions" in Intel's latest CPUs. This is clearly designed to protect SMM[2]. It is going to be a lot harder to "root" this stuff when the RAM is encrypted.

[1] [http://www.slideshare.net/codeblue_jp/igor-skochinsky- enpub](http://www.slideshare.net/codeblue_jp/igor-skochinsky-enpub) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2_-VXz9E-w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2_-VXz9E-w)

[2]...and DRM in general. See this diagram of GlobalPlatform's "Trusted Execution Environment"; in particular, note how the "Rich OS" (windows, linux, etc) is allowed to run outside the chain of trust, with the DRM being protected by hardware. [http://i.imgur.com/rjbzWyB.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/rjbzWyB.jpg)

<comment><USER4> Some of the new extensions are also intended as yet another band aid against C style memory corruption.

<comment><USER3> You only need a memory manager for pointer protection. Intel states their intent for SGX on their website[1]. Some of the more important goals are:

        1. Allow application developers to protect sensitive data
           from unauthorized access or modification by rogue software
           running at higher privilege levels.

        ...

        5. Enable the development of trusted applications [...]

        6, Enable software vendors to deliver trusted applications and updates [...]

        ...

        8. Enable applications to define secure regions of code and data that
           maintain confidentiality even when an attacker has physical control
           of the platform and can conduct direct attacks on memory.

This isn't about buffer overflows. You don't need to create a system where software vendors can create regions of memory that are protected against a _logic analyser_ or _cold boot attack_ to fix C style pointer bugs. You do need this capability if you want to hide things from the owner of the computer.

It's not like they are hiding anything - "trusted applications" has been a dog whistle for DRM at least since "Palladium" (later called "Next-Generation Secure Computing Base"), part of Microsoft's "Trustworthy Computing" plans ~15 years ago.

[1] [https://software.intel.com/en- us/blogs/2013/09/26/protecting...](https://software.intel.com/en- us/blogs/2013/09/26/protecting-application-secrets-with-intel-sgx)

<comment><USER5> Aren't there also legitimate use cases for these things? E.g. a password manager loading itself into a confidential memory region to prevent infiltration?

<comment><USER6> That may be, bit I'm absolutely confident it is perfect for malware and spyware too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh, but they've been doing this for ages now! They install Perion Network's Conduit toolbar in their Lenovo SafeProtect toolbar. When I tried to track down what it installs, I found Perion's website and created my own free toolbar with the same components, and I attached it to notepad.exe.

It gathers location data and other nasties.

I asked Lenovo about this but they denied it was malware, but they would not tell me what information it was gathering. Interestingly, initially they denied installing it at all!

That was... Until I pointed them to a press release that showed that they were indeed paying Conduit Client Services...

[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140618005930/en/Peri...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140618005930/en/Perion- Partners-Lenovo-Create-Lenovo-Browser-Guard#.VgJxdyNknCQ)

Perion later acquired them:

[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140102005313/en/Peri...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140102005313/en/Perion- Completes-Acquisition-Conduit's-ClientConnect-Creating-Leading#.VgJxxyNknCS)

</comment><comment><USER8> Honestly, I would not trust any pre-installed OS, no matter the manufacturer. They pretty much all load crapware.

The case where lenovo were using a UEFI dropper in their consumer machines to reinstall malware after a reinstall was really bad. But what would make me stop buying their machines is if a similar below-the-OS malware/backdoor injection were present in their business thinkpads. Is there any suggestion that this is the case?

<comment><USER9> Do they deserve a chance to explain if it's there or not?

Probably not. They're off our purchasing list.

Problem is: now what? Hardware vendors have all turned to crap in the last 5 years. Lenovo ships crapware and poor quality kit now. HP is stupid expensive and even enterprise support is crap. Dell are unreliable as hell. Literally all other vendors won't support a model more than about 6 months old i.e. no part stock, no service, just replacement with another chunk of junk that will fail in a few months (Acer, Asus I'm looking at you mostly).

Just leaves Apple but then they're just glued together folding iPads with keyboards attached now with no chance of maintenance and reliability issues as well. New battery? Get the paint scraper and heat gun out.

I'm using a Lenovo X201 myself with Mint and I suspect this is the last brand laptop I'm going to use. Back to the custom desktops at home.

<comment><USER10> Dell looks good right now. From what Ive been hearing they're QA is at Lenovo levels.

<comment><USER9> __stares at the large pile of dell XPS machines that are dead in the corner of the office __.... Not quite there yet...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Up until the Thinkpad X230, there was coreboot support which was great. However, with the new Intel chips now enforcing 'Boot Guard' this is no longer an option [1], is it?

I wouldn't be surprised if Lenovo decided at some point to also distribute malware modules for Ubuntu as well.

[1] [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel- Bo...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-Boot-Guard- Kills-Coreboot)

</comment><comment><USER12> Reading the source blog post rather than boingboing, it looks like this code is _supposed_ to just report back to Lenovo on the user's use of the Lenovo specific code on the machine in question.

Unfortunately, Lenovo has seriously blotted their copybook in this area & the onus is on them to demonstrate trustworthiness. It's notable that prior to the Superfish debacle, they didn't even bother to notify the end-user if the blog post is to be believed.

</comment><comment><USER13> It is interesting that the author reminds us that this tracking, while certainly an issue of trust, is much less tracking than MS is doing with standard Windows 10.

<comment><USER14> To echo Cory Doctorow's BoingBoing article (where this originally linked), you only suffer from this if you put Windows on your ThinkPad.

<comment><USER2> It only matters if you use the Lenovo image for Windows. A fresh install will also work around this.

<comment><USER15> Still, do you want to give money to these wankers?

<comment><USER16> I'm not defending Lenovo for their actions.

However:

3 years ago, my department went with Acer V5-571P laptops. Every single one has been broken and destroyed from casual use. We've found serious manufacturing defects and other flaws, and Acer is not interested in fixing it.

5 years ago, however, we had a small batch of Lenovo E430 devices. These devices are in much better shape than the devices two years younger than them. We have a few other groups of 'incremental updates' that have the exact same results. Lenovo devices hold up much better.

Say what you will about Lenovo's shady practices, but their computers are built like tanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ugh. This is a such a fuck you to us.

I've well aware that computers come pre-installed with crap. Shocked to see the tricks being used to keep it there. Maybe I'm just naive...

</comment><comment><USER18> The stupidity of large OEMs seems never ending in that case. See Windows 10 for another recent example.

<comment><USER19> Why does OEM versions of Windows even exist in the first place? How is a bloated, crapwared system ever going to be a better user experience than a clean install?

<comment><USER20> As for the why, have you ever tried installing vanilla Windows on a modern notebook? I know Linux has a reputation for bad driver support, but in my experience with Dell, Lenovo, and HP, a vanilla Windows installation will have no graphics driver, no network driver (neither wired nor wireless), sometimes the sound drivers are missing. It is a shitshow. Meanwhile, Linux on the same machine generally works out of the box.

But the answer to the question "Why do OEM versions of Windows even exist in the first place" is that without OEM customization, a Windows computer is a non-functional computer.

<comment><USER7> So how do most corporate IT teams build SOEs?

<comment><USER21> They get the drivers from the OEMs.

<comment><USER22> They are also paid teams to put the image together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> URL changed from [http://boingboing.net/2015/09/22/yet-another-pre- installed-s...](http://boingboing.net/2015/09/22/yet-another-pre-installed- spyw.html), which points to this.</comment>


Stanford study shows walking boosted a person's creative output by 60 percent - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/inc./steve-jobs-practiced-this-1-habit-that-triggers-creative-ideas-according-to-neuroscience-c678d5ac381 <comment><USER2> I can't read but it is hard to imagine how they measured creative output.

</comment><comment><USER3> Requires an account. Not quite a paywall, but an irritation.

<comment><USER4> Looks as though Medium intends to use ads to solve their revenue challenges.

<comment><AUTHOR> They should be doing it already. I checked their portal and they want to charge $5 month to ready some articles. Does not make sense for me right now.

<comment><USER4> Probably so. My comment points to the fact that their CEO swore they were going to be different.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Integral House: math professor and violinist commissions architectural good thingy - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123872378357585295.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Make sure to click on the slideshow.

More technical reading: [http://www.canadianarchitect.com/issues/ISarticle.asp?id=191...](http://www.canadianarchitect.com/issues/ISarticle.asp?id=191046&story_id=47156141405&issue=09012007&PC=)

Some more pictures: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/integralhouse/>

</comment><comment><USER2> "Masterpiece" is pushing it. The section is entirely banal, with little imagination beyond plan extrusion. When you think of the possibilities of the site, the client, and the conceptual domain (math, music), it is more of a missed opportunity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I wanted to sensationalize it because the story has been missed here before with the given headline and it is pretty cool both as a house and because it was commissioned by someone famous for being a calculus professor. How often does that happen? Editor can change the headline as desired.

"I think it's one of the most important private houses built in North America in a long time" is the quote from the MoMA director.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't very impressed it looked like a postmodern house with a concert hall added in. Was expecting much more from the title and came out disappointed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> really he couldn't think of anything better to do with 24M?

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing you can do when you have a house like this is host fundraising parties. Dr. Stewart definitely likes hosting parties. So over Stewart's lifetime in Integral House he will end up raising a lot of money for his pet charities.

<http://www.uc.utoronto.ca/content/view/379/1855/> is one I found when googling more info.</comment></comment>


The Uber Bombshell About to Drop - <AUTHOR> https://danielcompton.net/2017/03/14/uber-bombshell <comment><USER3> _Uber passengers only pay 41% of the cost of trips, with investor capital making up the difference_

FWIW this assertion (which isn't really core to the central thesis of the post, but still) is wrong. That number comes from

[https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/2180647/the-taxi- unic...](https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/2180647/the-taxi-unicorns-new- clothes/)

but the author of that story misread the data. Uber only counts their cut as revenue not the full cost of the ride.

Despite this repetition (now corrected, thx!) of this incorrect data I find the overall thesis of the post compelling! As a disinterested bystander, it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

EDIT: It turns out the original 41% statement comes from [http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever- deliver...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver-part- one-understanding-ubers-bleak-operating-economics.html) not from the Financial Times. It can be hard to trace these things back sometimes.

<comment><USER4> You know what, I may get downvoted for this, but my take is you just can't stop these guys. They'll do whatever it takes to win. I probably spend around $2,000 USD on uber trips per month. And frankly, as much disturbing stuff I hear about these guys, Uber beats the heck out of renting a car in a snowy area (especially after having taken a red-eye to a client site). It also beats the crap out of taking a cab in most places, I usually have to navigate to where I want to go and the taxis aren't as clean or the drivers as friendly. They could double the price, and as long as my company reimbursed it, I'd still take it, because they've just got it down so well. Lyft and the other competitors suffer from availability issues, and the average time it takes for a driver to get to me on Uber is much less than the other ride shares. They've got their product down pat, it's so well designed. What I don't support however is their workplace attitude towards women (whom I applaud for coming out about it, takes guts.) It's made me rethink using the service a few times, but when you've got a product that good and such a demanding schedule, the (sad?) truth is that you'll take whatever little comforts you can that make your life that much easier.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious how one would spend $2000 on uber per month? For what group of people would that be typical?

<comment><USER6> At a guess: cross country sales travel. You could easily rack up 2 or 3 fairly long distance Uber trips / day doing that (Airport -> Hotel -> Client -> Airport to travel to the next client)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Among the circumstantial evidence, the self-funding aspect is what jumped out at me the most. This is the equivalent of a hedge fund manage buying something based on inside information, but only for his personal account. Why cut other people in on the wink-and-nod-guaranteed payday? Besides, Lewandowski couldn't realistically raise money through proper channels if his pitch amounted to, "I stole stuff from Waymo."

<comment><USER8> In hindsight, a better crook would have accepted outside funding just to cover this line of attack (Assuming the Otto Founder is guilty; of course it might be otherwise).

<comment><USER9> Due diligence during funding is designed to uncover these kinds of IP issues. That would probably have been a larger risk.

<comment><USER10> They could have taken capital from Uber to fund themselves and then waited longer for Uber to acquire them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yeah, this is a big deal. Uber has gambled everything on self-driving cars, what with their absurd burn rate and all. If that gets shut down because of trade secret injunctions, I don't think they have time to pivot to another strategy, especially after their reputation has nosedived.

<comment><USER12> I'll be really interested in seeing what happens if Uber can't recover from the burn rate and make a sustainable business without self driving.

I can see in the best possible scenario we end up with more cities like Austin, Texas that have their own nonprofit ride sharing app. I actually have huge respect for what Austin did in banning Uber and Lyft and making their own app (Ride Austin) that isn't designed to make investors and owners rich, instead just benefit drivers and riders.

<comment><USER13> Clearing up some serious misconceptions here:

1) Austin did not ban Uber or Lyft. The city council passed an ordinance that required a gradually increasing percentage of rideshare drivers pass an FBI- approved fingerprint background check. (These rules are in place in other locales in which Uber operates, such as NYC and Houston.) Uber and Lyft formed a PAC that got a proposition on the next local election ballot that would have overturned the ordinance, then spent $9 million on a massive advertising campaign supporting the proposition. The proposition failed overwhelmingly.

2) Uber and Lyft stopped providing services of their own volition within 48 hours. Considering they abide by the same regulations in other cities, it seems pretty obvious to me that it was done in retaliation in order to show other cities considering doing the same that they will actually pull out.

3) Several upstart ridesharing companies immediately jumped into the market and were fully operational in less than a month and are complying fully with the regulations. (Examples are Fasten, Fare, RideAustin, and GetMe.)

4) RideAustin is registered as a non-profit organization, formed by several local tech entrepreneurs affiliated with Capital Factory, an Austin accelerator/VC firm. It is not owned or operated by the city in any fashion.

<comment><USER14> Are you sure it was to make an example or there was something unique / different about Austin that made both companies not want to provide business there?

<comment><USER15> It's my impression that they thought of Austin as an "innovation friendly" place and they were "offended" that Austin tried to regulate them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Outside of the case, the most striking thing to me about this is the level of detail that Google has over the logs and actions of their laptop. They were able to tell that a _memory card was plugged in for 8 hours_ a year ago?

I have trouble finding exactly how a customer encountered a 500 10 minutes ago.

<comment><USER17> I was a Windows engineer for Google's Corp Eng PaaS SRE team and have familiarity with this topic.

It's not hard to get this data or set this data collection up on a Windows domain or machine. Anyone can set this up as long as you have the TBs to collect the data and the presentation/searching layer to find it.

Windows has the ability to log _everything_ , including device installs/uninstalls, file opens/closes/creation/deletion, logons/logoffs, you name it. The Windows Auditing library is really, really, really extensive.

Additionally, setting this up in Active Directory is really easy, both manually and magically with Powershell. It takes about ten minutes or so.

As you would iamgine, most of these policies were enabled on the domain to which most users authenticated and the data it collected was siphoned off to essentially a giant cluster of syslog servers.

In fact, just about any domain will audit device plugs/unplugs. Had Anthony known about this (it's easy to find out even if you're not an admin), he would've not plugged in that memory stick :)

In general, it's pretty hard to do stealthy stuff on Google's network. Everything is logged eight ways to Sunday, especially with GAIA and key-based, two factor auth to EVERYTHING. And unlike most other networks, I wouldn't put it past their security engineers to find shady behavior in a moment's notice.

<comment><USER18> I don't think GAIA has been publicly commented on by the company, in case that matters to you at all. Could be wrong, though, as it seems the term is present in the deposition and un-redacted.

<comment><USER19> FWIW Google seems to refer to the GAIA ID in stuff like random error messages, documentation for Google Apps, and in data downloaded from Google Takeout. If it's not supposed to be public information then Google isn't doing a very good job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For all the noise and excitement at the start of these clashes, don't they usually get settled with a licensing agreement that both sides can live with?

Sometimes we also see a medium-sized payment (not ruinous) to address the allegedly bad conduct. That usually gets paired with some lawyer-like phrases that amount to a blend of quasi-apology and face-saving evasions.

It's still an interesting suit. But after Apple/Samsung, Oracle/SAP and many others, it's hard to expect that the eventual resolution lives up to the pre- trial buildup.

<comment><USER21> Why would Uber be awarded licensing terms they could "live with" for code they (allegedly) outright stole from a competitor?

<comment><USER22> Because lawsuits can drag on for years (if not decades!) and Google is a major investor in Uber. Google/Waymo might not want to actually destroy the company.

<comment><USER23> But if Google won a huge judgement they would outright own the company and not just be an investor.

<comment><USER20> They'd own a broken company. Bear in mind that this sort of litigation can run five to ten years if you let the lawyers on both sides wrestle to their hearts' content. It becomes all consuming. Executives spend much of their time preparing for depositions, tussling about what ambiguous documents mean, tussling about what obvious documents might mean if you try hard to misinterpet them, etc.

It's no fun to be working in such an environment. Everyone who can afford to get out, gets out.

<comment><USER24> > tussling about what obvious documents might mean if you try hard to > misinterpet them,

In this case, it really sees this is cut high and dry. We will see but this really looks bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This part looks to be the most smoking-gun:

> December 13, 2016 - A Waymo employee was accidentally copied on an email > from one of its LiDAR-component vendors titled OTTO FILES. The email > contained a drawing of what appeared to be an Otto circuit board that > resembled Waymo's LiDAR board and shared several unique characteristics with > it. (Filing 59)

<comment><USER26> "accidentally copied"

Thank god for the honest among us.

<comment><USER27> It could have also been a simple mistake. Several Otto employees came from Waymo. Not hard to send email to John Smith <email@example.com> instead of John Smith <email@example.com> by mistake if you were in regular contact with that person as part of their role at a previous job doing largely the same thing.

<comment><USER28> I like autocomplete email addresses but I do worry that the day will come when I send something embarrassing or damaging to the wrong person. I never have afaik although I have sent a couple emails that resulted in a frantic follow up to please don't read the prior message.

<comment><USER29> You can have some Mail apps highlight (in red) email recipients with "outside" domains.

[https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19137?locale=en_US](https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19137?locale=en_US)

[https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1299903](https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1299903) (Outlook macro)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can't imagine what Lewandowski and Uber were thinking here. The timeline is just too constrained to even be taken seriously.

<comment><USER31> Even at the time, knowing none of the characters or background I found Otto a very odd startup, one I almost didn't believe looked legit, and their rapid acquisition by Uber was one more "huh, strange" moment - how could they have bootstrapped out of nowhere and had tech worth that kind of money so fast?

It's almost hard to believe Uber would be so brazen as to put something like this together, except that breaking the law has been Uber's business model since day 1.

<comment><USER32> > _except that breaking the law has been Uber 's business model since day 1._

So tired of hearing this. It's just parrots talking in the echo chamber. Show me a court verdict that Uber broke the law.

<comment><USER33> "Uber will pay as much as $25 million to settle a civil lawsuit with the district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco" [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/technology/uber- settles-s...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/technology/uber-settles-suit- over-driver-background-checks.html?_r=0)

"Uber settles driver lawsuit over background checks, to pay $7.5 million" [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-lawsuit- idUSKCN0Z12GS](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-lawsuit-idUSKCN0Z12GS)

"Uber has agreed to pay $28.5 million to settle litigation brought by customers who alleged the ride hailing service misrepresented the quality of its safety practices and the fees it charged passengers" [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-tech-safety- settlemen...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-tech-safety-settlement- idUSKCN0VK2J1)

Need more?

<comment><USER34> Settlements are not admissions of guilt.

<comment><USER35> Nor are they admissions of innocence. However, if they were to lean one way, I'd say guilt is the direction they lean.

<comment><USER36> I don't think anyone has ever admitted to being innocent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> _(Possible) Consequences: ... Without any way to raise more money or reduce their costs, Uber runs out of money and folds._

Highly unlikely. Why? Investors who stomach multi-billion dollar annual losses will probably just shrug off a mere lawsuit or a "bad media narrative". If the choice is to either write off $15 billion or to give another couple to help the company go through a rough patch (what a buying opportunity!) I think I know what investors are going to do.

They may demand Kalanick's head in the process (and I think they will -- not that it would really hurt him much personally though...) but seriously a whole nother level of crap would have to happen before investors start getting comfortable with the thought of letting go those $15 billion.

<comment><USER38> As they say, if you owe the bank $100 you have a problem. If you owe the bank $100 million the bank has a problem.

</comment></comment><comment> d--b It's not a bigger bombshell than what was already in the news. We know what stealing means. The guy is an engineer at Waymo and plugs a USB stick in a laptop to download 9GB of code. And he hoped to get away with this? I'm pretty sure everyone at Google knew, they were just waiting to time it right.

"Hey, what about now? When Uber is taking fire from all directions?"

<comment><USER39> i can't believe someone as smart as he is would just blatantly stick in a usb. With how much money he was going to make he could have researched some more annomous ways to get it. Not the least would be to intercept a team members auth/pw and use that to access the data.

<comment><USER40> He had a Windows laptop according to the filing.

Engineers rarely use windows. He was also a manager at Google. Very techy folk don't take on manager responsibilities because it quickly saps time.

Both those things tell me he was more of a people person than a technical person.

<comment><USER41> A lot of engineers use Windows, especially in circuit design since a lot of the design tools are only on Windows.

And as a Googler, I can comfortably state that most engineering managers are very technical. I know because I've worked under many of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Uber, in their usual rule-breaking way, may come out OK on this. Suppose everything in the complaint against Uber is proven true. Google/Alphabet/Waymo gets an injunction against Uber using their rotating LIDAR, a clunky technology that's on the way out. (The future of high-volume 3D LIDAR is either flash with a staring sensor or MEMS with chip-sized moving mirrors.) G/A/W gets paid a few billion dollars, but far less than the $16 billion Intel just paid for Mobileye's inferior technology. Uber has enough cash for that.

<comment><USER43> > a clunky technology that's on the way out.

How much do you want to bet?

<comment><USER42> Quantergy, Velodyne, and Leddar have all announced low-cost solid-state LIDAR units for self-driving cars, to be available in 2017. Somebody is going to deliver.

Continental is targeting shipments in 2020. They're a large auto parts maker, and they bought the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts, which has sold good but expensive flash LIDAR units for years. They're demoing now, and will probably end up selling millions of the things to auto companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> No relationship between Uber's Ottomotto and the self-driving vehicles of OTTO Motors: [https://www.ottomotors.com/company/newsroom/press- releases/o...](https://www.ottomotors.com/company/newsroom/press- releases/otto-motors-releases-statement-on-waymo-v-ottomotto-lawsuit)

Disclosure: employee of Clearpath, the company behind OTTO Motors.

<comment><USER45> And we don't want to confuse Otto motors or Ottomotto with Ottomatika, the CMU AV spinoff acquired by Delphi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I actually think this might be a blessing in disguise for Uber. I always argued self-driving cars would destroy Uber should Apple or Google want to enter this space.

Why? Because self-driving cars are basically a fleet service driven by a software. Once you remove the driver (where Uber spent so much acquiring) The only differentiator is the consumer facing experience. Neither Uber or Lyft will have as much power as Apple and Google since they ultimately own the mobile experience.

I ultimately envision this business as kind of a Kayak mobile on the phone managed by Siri or Google/Apple maps that will call the nearest taxi or the cheaper rate aggregating from multiple possible vendors. Larger fleets (Uber, Apple, Google) to smaller individually manage fleets. Car companies might decide to also enter that market in collaboration with financial underwriter.

So having a network of drivers ultimately gives Uber some leverage and removing them from the equation, I think it'll actually destroy Uber. This is why I think, this could be a blessing in disguise.

<comment><USER47> Uber's drivers aren't really fans of them though, nor are they loyal to a single company. Uber could disappear tomorrow and all its drivers would be fine on Lyft.

<comment><USER48> This may no longer be the case, but doesn't Lyft have a stricter vetting process than Uber? It could be that some (most, none, all?) of Uber drivers may not be that happy with Lyft.

<comment><USER49> Not really. I'd be surprised if most Uber drivers weren't already at least onboarded to Lyft. About half of the drivers I see have two phones on cradles in their cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'll be curious to see if the Uber-Otto acquisition gets strained.

It's common for the acquired company to make specific "representations and warranties", particularly around IP.

"We own our IP and didn't steal it" is typical, and some percentage of the deal is held back for ~1-2 years in case there is a problem.

But if there's fraud, all bets are off.

Does Uber throw Otto under the bus? It would be "The Uber Way", based on what's been published recently.

<comment><USER51> _Does Uber throw Otto under the bus?_

My prediction is that Kalanick and Levandowski will soon be attempting to throw each other under the bus to save their own job, money, and reputation. With any luck they will _both_ wind up under a bus.

<comment><USER52> I have always wondered where such CEOs/founders end up post the fiasco.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> "That Otto hadn't received funding from any VC's is unusual. With 91 employees, getting paid $150k/year (this might even be too low given they are working on self-driving cars, one of the hottest spaces in tech right now), they would have had a $13.6 million/year burn rate just on salaries. Otto always aimed to get to market quickly, but getting to profitability without funding seems like it would have been very hard, especially on the accelerated timescale they were working towards and the need to likely hire many more people to get to production. All of Otto's public self-driving car and truck competitors have taken venture funding. However, as someone working on a bootstrapped SaaS application, I'm sympathetic to wanting to self-fund."

Anthony Levandowski has a personal net worth in the hundreds of millions, that is not counting the other founders plus they could raise money at a whim, or get acquired whenever they wanted

"The next day, January 15, 2016, Mr. Levandowski's venture 280 Systems - <USER2>

became OttoMotto LLC - was officially formed (though it remained in stealth mode for several

months). On January 27, 2016, Mr. Levandowski resigned from Waymo without notice. And on

February 1, 2016, Mr. Levandowski's venture Otto Trucking was officially formed (also

remaining in stealth mode for several months)."

not sure if that timeline is accurate, any way to check when the ot.to website was registered? the site used for looking up [http://whois.domaintools.com/280systems.com](http://whois.domaintools.com/280systems.com) doesn't work for ot.to

<comment><USER54> Where does it say Anthony Levandowski is worth hundreds of millions?

<comment><USER45> Levandowski sold 3 companies to Google for a rumoured 500 million. He then received another massive undisclosed sum for meeting benchmarks on Google's self driving car program, along with several other key team members.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Related HN thread on Uber acquiring Otto (From 7 months ago):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12315205)

The consensus seems to be: "Huh, that's weird."

</comment><comment><USER56> _> December 3, 2015 - Mr Levandowski searched for instructions on how to access Waymo's design server on his work laptop. Based on Gary Brown's deposition (a Google forensic security engineer) this was an SVN server. (Brown 15)

> December 11, 2015 - Anthony Levandowski installed TortoiseSVN and downloaded > 9.7 GB of data from the SVN repository. (Brown 17)

> December 14, 2015 - A USB card reader was attached to the laptop for eight > hours. Google doesn't appear to have logged what the laptop did over that > time, but the implication is that data was copied from the laptop to a > memory card. (Brown 18)_

If these three things are true, then that looks extremely bad for Otto. I imagine they'll be a lot of questions regarding the purpose of that USB stick.

</comment><comment><USER57> How credible are all these logs? Email records (came up in Oracle Android case) are one thing, emails are a known thing. But how trustworthy are Google Drive logs, a record that only exists within Google, when what they've recorded helps their case? I'm not casting aspersions, just curious how a new kind of evidence plays out.

<comment><USER58> Let's not pretend that you can't fabricate emails too.

I strongly suspect that the existence and timestamps of the Drive logs can be verified at multiple levels and exist in backups made around that time.

HTTP logs as well as MTA logs have been provided as evidence before, those too could be fabricated.

<comment><USER57> Yeah, I didn't mean to imply fabrication: just there are going to be hiccups and weird inconsistencies in any data source, and it's not one where the hiccups have been seen before in a legal context. You have multiple levels, some slightly disagree, which is correct?

Email you have a bunch of different parties: the sender, the receiver, the servers in the middle, all of which are going to record something, and maybe they differ in weird ways, but if you got it you go it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I read the whole article and it was very interesting. Thanks for the info! However, could someone explain to me why Uber is losing money from their taxi services? Obviously the drivers take home a large chunk of revenue, but what about the rest of the money they receive from the fares? Shouldn't that be enough to cover the overhead of running a mobile app? Are they trying to do too much? What gives?

<comment><USER60> Everything else they're invested in. Subsidizing rides (in new markets I think they sometimes pay the drivers more than the passenger pays) maybe. But new R&D, lik building self-driving cars, doesn't come cheap.

<comment><USER61> I think people are really underestimating how generous these subsidies are. They're not usually on the riders side, but the drivers.

In Edinburgh, Scotland over NYE all Uber drives were on £75/hr minimum, regardless of how many rides they took. A friend of a friend who decided to ride for them that night said he was out for about 7 hours and picked up about 10 people the whole night (was very busy after midnight but quiet otherwise).

The fares totalled about £150. So Uber probably got £30 but subsidised the driver by £525. Pretty crazy if you times this by all the 'newer' markets uber is in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Just the way companies incur technical debt, there is also ethical debt. It is accumulated by taking ethical shortcuts and avoiding painful decisions (a case I have seen several times is letting star devs/sales misbehave).

Eventually the payment on the ethical debt comes due. In Uber's case, they have been building it up for a long time without any down payment. A hard cleaning is needed from top to bottom.

</comment><comment><USER63> [replying to a deleted post]

I also found the SVN allegation to be circumstantial at best in the coverage that didn't focus on any other points. Installing a tool and downloading gigs of design data is a nuts-and-bolts operation for many disciplines (even for those that don't normally use version control but interact with a team that does).

If Levandowski didn't typically access SVN on a frequent basis, it's still very circumstantial on it's own. Seeing this all laid out in the context of the surrounding allegations, it becomes an important and fairly damning point.

<comment><USER40> All the technical stuff seems fairly circumstantial.

The USB sd card reader could just be so he could sync his holiday photos.

The downloading of the entire SVN repository could just be so he could grep it for a file he didn't know the path to, or perhaps to try to compile something he wasn't sure the dependancies of. Reinstalling to linux could simply be because the software wouldn't build under windows. (it seems doubtful the self driving car uses a windows software stack).

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> \- Google's recently revised goal for their program is to license to existing manufacturers vs. building a car. (1)

\- It's unlikely that whichever automotive company achieves autonomy first is going to immediately get into the ride sharing game, except perhaps Tesla but they don't have enough manufacturing capability (yet, or anytime soon) to be a global threat to Uber.

\- Uber is never going to be a manufacturer but they have partnered with Volvo and Daimler (2) recently who seem very amenable to licensing / leveraging third party tech to continue to be competitive in selling automobiles.

\- Why does Uber need to build autonomous tech vs license it? Are they concerned that the Google / Ford partnership is going to leave them out / decimated?

(1) [http://www.techtimes.com/articles/188654/20161213/alphabet-l...](http://www.techtimes.com/articles/188654/20161213/alphabet- lowers-goals-for-google-self-driving-car-project-plan-for-no-steering-wheels- and-pedals-in-vehicles-put-on-hold.htm)

(2) [http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/31/14453704/uber-daimler- part...](http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/31/14453704/uber-daimler-partnership- self-driving-cars-mercedes-benz-volvo)

<comment><USER65> > \- It's unlikely that whichever automotive company achieves autonomy first > is going to immediately get into the ride sharing game

I think GM shows clear signs of interest of being in the ride sharing game if they have an advantage there.

Would you rather be the first self-driving ride sharing company, and use that to displace Uber in high margin areas, or would you rather try to make a little bit of money off the premium segment buying these cars and then be a fast follower?

The main argument for being a fast follower would be to let someone else deal with regulation for you, but otherwise being able to undercut everyone in rich markets seems like a no brainer that would bring a tonne of revenue and experience to the project very quickly.

<comment><USER15> The buzzword is "mobility", and yes GM is already in the game, through pilot programs (Maven), Lyft and Cruise Automation.

Disclaimer - I work for GM, but not on any of these things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> The internet is being absorbed by greed and hunger for power. I hope that somewhere in northern Finland, there is an awkward teenager writing something that will later be known as, "The Great Decentralizer"

</comment><comment><USER67> What is the possibility of criminal charges being brought forth if it's determined that Kalanick actively conspired with Lewandowski?

<comment><USER68> Seems likely.

[https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/man-sentenced-for- distribut...](https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/man-sentenced-for-distributing- avionics-trade-secrets)

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Hey, it's all part of the "sharing economy".

Driver satisfaction will improve once it's composed entirely of autonomous vehicles.

As for the real drivers, who are paid less than taxi drivers, I'm wondering how that put them into the red when they pay less than taxi companies and skirt regulations. They must have interesting books.

</comment><comment><USER70> > "Uber gets dealt an injunction on their self-driving car project. They have > to start again, a long way behind other companies."

How is this actually implemented? How do you prevent a new project starting from scratch with the same employees from ending up with the exact same tech as before?

<comment><USER71> Pretty much the same way you could do it with any other manufacturing/industrial process.

Imagine re-creating a fairly large complex project without access to any source control, build systems, or bug reports. It'd be easier than starting from scratch, but not much - especially for hardware, all the tradeoffs and manufacturing tricks you had to investigate and implement your devices would have to be recreated.

Your end result would probably look similar, but the way you get there would be different. Just like the wings on an insect are different from the wings of a bird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Off topic but I'm going to assume anyone who misspelled Levandowski as Lewandowski is a soccer fan.

</comment><comment><USER73> So at this point, Uber's name is mud, and they're getting tons of bad press. Does there exist a contrary interpretation of recent events in which Uber is still somehow OK as an employer or a business? In my news bubble, I haven't seen any.

</comment><comment><USER74> Does this have the potential to kill Uber?

<comment><USER75> Uber is too big to fail really

<comment><USER70> This usually means the government will bail you out if you do fail...

Can you define your usage here?

<comment><USER76> They probably mean network effects. Facebook is the prime example. For Uber, a critical mass in users and drivers makes it hard to unseat.

<comment><USER77> There is no network effect here. Each additional driver does not increase the value of the network to the other drivers and similarly for passengers. Uber and Lyft are old-fashioned market makers. They increased the pool of suppliers and consumers and connected the groups. In cities where both Uber and Lyft exist, substituting Uber for Lyft and vice versa does not change the value the driver or passenger derives from either service.

<comment><USER78> Yes, that is called a two-sided market/network effect.

Each driver increases value for riders, and each rider increases value for drivers. This two sides.

A 1 sided network is facebook. A two sided market is like the video game industry (more video games are good for gamers and more gamers are good for video game devs)

For taxi apps, imagine if there was only 1 driver in SF. That wouldn't be a good experience for consumers. Thus, network effect.

<comment><USER70> > A 1 sided network is facebook.

Almost every user in Facebook is both a provider and consumer of content. It's like an exponentially-sided network.

In Uber, drivers provide supply to riders. Riders provide demand for drivers.

<comment><USER78> Yes, they are both a provider and a consumer.

That is the definition of a 1 sided market.

Sorry, I am using economics jargon.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two- sided_market](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-sided_market)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Strangely I do not see this said in discussions about Uber, but I think they are operating in a way on good publicity and the false premise of Uber being ride-sharing, which is not really the case.

Compared to other services in this market, e.g. taxis or buses, Uber has a significant portion operation costs implicitly discounted and/or indirectly subsidised. Uber drivers are self-employed, which in many parts of the world has lower tax rate as opposed to employment contracts (which is pretty common for bus drivers). Uber cars are registered as non-commercial vehicles with less restrictions inherently increasing utility value (a family can have one car used for Uber and weekend driving, but having a Taxi car may very likely result in the need for another car) and non-commercial insurance rate despite increased accident risk, which results in elevated overall risk of non- commercial vehicles which all (non Uber) drivers must share.

Bad press for Uber may result in law changes that level the playing field and either increase operation costs for Uber significantly increasing their burn rate or lower operation costs for their competitors decreasing Uber's attractiveness and revenue thus increasing burn rate.

</comment><comment><USER80> >Uber passengers only pay 41% of the cost of trips, with investor capital making up the difference.

Holy hell. That's not exactly a sound business model.

<comment><USER55> It's 41% of the driver's cut of the ride (So closer to 12% of the trip cost).

<comment><USER3> That is also not correct. Uber's cut of the ride (which is a bit under 20% of the fare) is covering 41% of their total corporate expenses (which are not the costs of delivering rides).

<comment><USER55> So, they are losing 12%/ride, but some of these costs will scale with the number of rides, and some will not.

<comment><USER3> That is also not correct. TBH I have no idea where you are even getting that 12% number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> The most horrifying aspect of this story is people using SVN in 2016.

<comment><USER82> SVN is popular for hardware groups. Why? Better sparse checkout than git when you are dealing with large binary design files. It's not what git is optimized for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> What happened with Uber's Pittsburgh research facility? I thought that was the hub for their self-driving car program?

[http://fortune.com/2016/03/21/uber-carnegie-mellon- partnersh...](http://fortune.com/2016/03/21/uber-carnegie-mellon-partnership/)

<comment><USER84> It's still chugging along. Volvos and Ford Focus with LiDAR scoot around town daily. The ATC (advanced technology center) is fully staffed and operational. Pittsburgh also recently got some sort of certification/designation as a sort of "robotic testing ground" for autonomous driving, I think by the US government?

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Was the Otto sale the quickest $680MM ever made? Has anyone gone from zero that amount (exit price, mind you) in that short a period of time?

For those reasons alone, I think there is definitely something fishy going on. Perhaps not as fishy as Daniel claims, but something just does not smell right here.

</comment><comment><USER86> "the information" had a great article on Uber's finances recently. One of the stats cited was from an internal Uber study that said moving to a fleet of self driving cars would only achieve a 5-10% profit margin for the company.

</comment><comment><USER87> Hmm, he got the name of one of the main protagonists wrong. Pierre Yves => Pierre-Yves Droz.

You need to demonstrate some attention to detail, if you're going to claim an ability to 'read between the lines' in this dossier.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I've fixed this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> Would an implosion of Uber be the first step of the end of this tech bubble?

<comment><USER89> No. It would definitely lead to a torrent of click-bait headlines though. So we have that to look forward to....

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> If all of this is true, the logical end to me, not suggested by the author, is that Google buys Uber. For less money than anyone could. Travis is out.

Makes industrial sense for Google to be in that business too.

<comment><USER91> Why? Uber's technology is literally stolen from Google. What would Google gain by buying them?

<comment><USER92> The userbase and momentum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> > By the time Otto was acquired, they had 91 employees. This seems like a lot > of salary commitment to take on via self-funding by Otto's four co-founders > (all ex-Google).

Were these founders previously Google executives or "9th engineer from the left" individual contributors? If you were getting exec pay, it might be semi- believable that you could come out of it and be able to self-fund salaries for 91 employees, but if the latter, I can't see how. Sure, Google pays engineers a lot but come on...

<comment><USER94> According to Bloomberg, veteran Waymo employees were paid "F-you money". [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-13/one- reaso...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-13/one-reason- staffers-quit-google-s-car-project-the-company-paid-them-so-much)

<comment><USER93> Thanks for the link. And they self-funded a startup, wow. Waymo money than I'll ever see...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> I just hope this doesn't somehow delay the deployment of much safer driving technology. The death, injury and property damage statistic are staggering:

      Global Annual Estimates:
      Deaths: 1.25 million
      Injuries: 20-50 million
      Cost: $580 billion

[https://www.cdc.gov/features/globalroadsafety/](https://www.cdc.gov/features/globalroadsafety/)

</comment><comment><USER96> When it comes to the self driving car business I really hope Alphabet kicks Uber's ass, because as a consumer I must trust the car to do the best in my interest and safety and I don't trust Uber for a second. This company would do every dodgy thing to become quickly profitable. I rather trust Alphabet or Tesla.

</comment><comment><USER97> More interesting version:

Google will let Levandowdki off the hook for testifying against Uber.

Mission accomplished.

</comment><comment><USER98> Just a thought… Isn't it one of those things where Google has access to so much data, they could acquire (illegally) some of it from their servers, and then use parallel construction for finding other evidence ?

</comment><comment><USER99> Where is my confidential and proprietary information, Levandowski? Where is it?

</comment><comment><USER81> Does Levandowski go to prison if this all bears out in court?

</comment><comment><USER100> That is gross.

Uber - all the recent examples - it must be truly exceptional environment.

Stellar growth, massive burn rate... I would imagine they are profitable, cashing 25% of the total fee?

</comment><comment><USER101> This looks like a bunch of circumstantial evidence. The two LiDAR boards need to be compared to prove that Otto stole Waymo's IP.

<comment><USER84> Did you miss the part where the schematic was shared from a 3rd party vendor? Seems like all the comparison you'd need to file a lawsuit

<comment><USER40> The boards are presented side by side in the documents, but redacted.

I assume they must look similar enough to a non-technical judge for them to be presented in that form, or they would be presented with an expert analysis of the similarities.

My guess is they are identical except the logos. The dimensions of the redaction boxes is very similar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> Does Daniel Compton live in the Far East, like Japan, New Zealand or something?

The date of the blog post is March 14th. Is his calendar a day ahead?

<comment><AUTHOR> New Zealand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> Sounds terrible but probably Uber will pay $200mm confidential settlement and have the know how. Sounds like a win for Uber...

<comment><USER104> Google doesn't want or need only $200 million dollars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> Why didn't Uber hire Levandowski, instead of having him build a startup they could buy for hundreds of millions?

<comment><USER106> hiring a guy for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars might look strange to future investors, but buying a company for that much is commonplace. alternatively, they could have done it in the attempt to limit any potential liability (like this waymo lawsuit) to otto without risking the mothership (uber).

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> If this goes to a jury, could the damages shut uber down?

<comment><USER108> Hard to say. If I were Uber, and we seemed likely to lose, I would try to convey the following...

The only thing truly gained by stealing Waymos's LiDAR designs was a temporary period of lower cost , but high quality, LiDAR unit. Effectively, a short term discount. You can buy high quality today...It's just expensive. More affordable LiDAR is coming, for everyone, regardless of what Waymo does. They are not the only entity using innovation to drive the cost down.

I would try to have the punishment match that gain, versus something more catastrophic.

Of course, IANAL, and have been mystified by judgements in the past. Some were immensely lower, some higher than what seemed to make sense.

Also, who knows what else was stolen? The LiDAR stuff might just be the one Waymo could most easily demonstrate before filing suit...perhaps there's more.

<comment><USER40> One might imagine them saying:

This LIDAR costs $10k. Other LIDAR costs $100k. At the time of this lawsuit, we had 25 test cars on the road. Therefore triple damages are $90k * 25 * 3, so we'll pay you $7 million.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> if it plays out that Lewandowski did intentionally steal trade secrets, the way he went about it was pretty boneheaded.

</comment><comment><USER110> Fumus boni iuris

</comment><comment><USER111> The bombshell is that Google uses SVN.

</comment><comment><USER112> TL;DR: The "Bombshell" is Alphabet/Waymo's lawsuit against Lewandowski and Uber for stealing trade secrets, and an interpretation that Lewandowski formed Otto basically as a cover to get a big payday from Uber in exchange for the secrets.

<comment><AUTHOR> The bombshell part specifically would be Levandowski arranging with Uber to steal Waymo tech, form Otto, and Uber would acquire Otto. In all of the reporting I read about this after the first filing, this was missed.

<comment><USER113> Yes, I think this could be a very big deal.

As someone who several years ago "managed" to take over a publicly traded company (via a federal judge's order once certain evidence was presented) and gather and present evidence of massive fraud, etc., and working entirely as an amateur in this effort, managed to aid in recovering assets and capturing the former CEO and sending him to prison for several years, I find stories of (allegedly) fraudulent action (and solid response) like this heartwarming.

If Uber had no self-driving car program to speak of before talking with Levandowski, and discovery shows they basically started from that conversation, then that would seem to open up all of Uber to any discovery process - they can't justifiably claim "it's the self driving car division that did all this". This seems much more than a civil process from my reading of it. It could be great theater.

If I was on Uber's BOD, I'd immediately relieve the CEO simply based on the allegations here, and if I didn't have the votes to do that, I'd immediately resign my seat.

<comment><USER114> Removing a CEO based simply on allegations sounds to me as a pretty extreme response.

Would you feel the same if the company in question would not be Uber (whose CEO may be a liability for Uber ATM anyway) but, say, IBM? This is an honest question.

<comment><USER115> To be honest, given the history of Uber's CEO, I think he's no longer afforded the benefit of the doubt. The onus would be on him to prove to the board that these accusations are not true.

<comment><USER116> What crimes or violations was he convicted of?

Enough accusations and then you are guilty until proven innocent?

Wtf

<comment><USER117> Having not been convicted of a crime (with the assistance of one of the world's largest legal budgets) is not the usual measure of being the sort of respected and trusted person you'd want at the helm of your corporation.

The man is unquestionably toxic - it's entirely possible the entire company is toxic.

<comment><USER116> Innocent until proven guilty as a legal prescription has nothing to do with respect and trust and some peoples (filtered) opinions.

<comment><USER117> Exactly.

Board members and shareholders aren't responsible or particularly concerned with innocence or guilt, but are very concerned with trust and respect that customers (or potential-investors/business-partners/governments) have in their company's leadership.

They're not deciding whether to put him in jail or not, but board members are legally obligated to determine whether or not he's adding or detracting from shareholder value.

Even if every single accusation against him and the culture he's built is false - the public perception needs addressing. Perhaps "remove" is the wrong wording, but if you're an insider/board member who thinks every single accusation and report is false - you'd at least have to seriously consider asking Travis to publicly "recuse" himself while the investigations are under way - without that anything coming out of the investigation is going to be about as believable as the Police Union guy announcing "We've investigated the matter and cleared ourselves of any wrongdoing!".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER118> The notion that these companies are meaningfully suing each other over "trade secrets" as opposed to "government help" is rather laughable to me. Fuck Google and their attempted U.S.-sanctioned digital monopoly on Earth.

</comment><comment><USER119> Another big bombshell is that apparently Google laptops store every single thing you do on it, including whether you attach a USB drive, etc. That's pretty scary if you're an employee.

<comment><USER120> Everyone at Google knows about that. There's nothing scary about it, it's a work laptop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> I still love Uber and will continue to use them. They provide a great service: point A to B at a good price and no hassles. That's why I use them.

I don't care at all about the rest of the drama. It's hard to even keep up with it. I suspect most people are the same.

<comment><USER122> It is easy to love a company that is tossing free money at you to use their service. It will be harder to love them if/when they are a de facto monopoly on public transportation and are limiting service and raising fees to recoup their years of investor subsidies.

Enjoy your cheap rides!

<comment><USER121> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Entitled "The Witch Hunt Continues" or "Why Americans can't have Nice things".

</comment><comment><USER32> > _August 2016 - Levandowski received his final multi-million dollar payment > from Google (presumably a bonus?)_

That's a pretty fat check for someone who just ran away with the crown jewels. How do we know Google didn't have Lavandowski do all this on purpose to lure Uber into a compromised position by buying Otto? Unless the courts are rigged, doesn't Google have to prove Uber acquired Otto with full knowledge that they were buying stolen property?

</comment><comment><USER123> Not related - but I do find it ironic that google is up in arms about stolen tech given Steve Jobs' vendetta against google over stolen smart phone ideas. And yes I realize that the gravity of the situation here is different but it's still an amusing thought - not sure why everyone is so offended by this comment.

Regarding the lawsuit - I've learned that we have no clue what is going on behind the scenes, so why stress over it. For all I know this is a power play by google or some evil scheme by Uber. Let's just wait and see how it plays out.

<comment><USER124> Given the context provided in this post, it seems pretty blatant and obvious. Stealing a design is one thing, stealing the circuit board design from an unreleased product is espionage.

<comment><USER125> Out of curiosity, what is it about a user interface and a circuit board that makes you consider the design of one to be protected but not the other?</comment></comment></comment>


Three laws to fix online advertising - <AUTHOR> https://haxel.ca/three-laws-to-fix-online-advertising.html <comment><USER2> Don't forget to address the whole native advertisement issue, its exploded in recent years and has been destroying online communities.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I appreciate your feedback.

I wonder if fixing the rest of online advertising would suffocate this technique. If, by adhering to these three laws, we gradually develop a vastly superior way to connect sellers with buyers, then destructive methods like native advertising (and I'm sure there's more) might be much less appealing to sellers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No joke: you should try to get a TedX talk and inform the world on this subject. I think it's golden.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I appreciate your kind words. Perhaps one day I, or someone else who runs with these laws, will be credible enough for a talk like that. Right now I'm focused on developing software to let us abide by Law 1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great!</comment>


Redefining Digital Imaging. Is it a hardware issue, a software issue or both? - <AUTHOR>

Nowadays with digital photography and imaging consumers and manufacturers are in a mega-pixel craze. The next best thing always has more resolution crammed into the same space for a higher quality image. And then the bells and whistles kick in with the ability to record audio/video, lcd touch screens, a flash, zoom capability and the works. However, in most senses, the technology is the same. It's light that gets captured as a certain color within a certain position in the view of the lens, which then gets converted to a pixel of an image that gets converted into some sort of raster technology like the JPEG.
But what if I wanted to say, "locate the red VW Jetta"? The camera has no understanding of what that is. The camera doesn't know Johnathan from Natalia, even though we do. I think we're moving into a time where the consumer will want that. Just as they are able voice activate their Ford Fusion and tell it what song to play, or to check their Facebook page, I don't think that wanting the camera to be able to distinguish one object from another and then appropriately capture it is far behind.
How do we do that? How do we develop an imaging system that works similar to the human brain in a way such that it can distinguish the difference between two people after being given the definition of them? Or between two cars, or even just two colors to start. I say "photograph the blue ball" and it focuses heavily on that in the image and puts the red ball out of focus.
Is that a hardware issue? Do we have to develop an entirely new way of capturing images that isn't based on pixels and raster technology? Is it just a software issue and we need to develop better software to reach that type of interaction with our imaging equipment?
The best example I can think of visually is Iron Man 2 -- the inside interface within the suit helmet. I know it's all CGI, but the way the software was able to scan the screen and distinguish people from objects, weapons from non-weapons, and threats from non threats is the type of ability I'm speaking of.
I'm just sort of thinking out lout here...
Any thoughts? <comment><AUTHOR> ___thinking out loud_ __</comment>


Shot Towers: The Buildings That Revolutionized Ammunition Manufacturing - <AUTHOR> http://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/03/shot-towers-buildings-that.htmlhttp://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/03/shot-towers-buildings-that.html

<comment><USER2> your link is broken; you should be able to edit your submission to fix it.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you remember where you left off when you start work the next day? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> A good way that works for me is dumping on a piece of paper what are you open point at the moment you are left, could not be the best (or only way) to handle it but it's fine .

Eg. Yesterday i've been working on a web form Before to leave: \- Check if Button x behave as described by req.1 \- Add javascript alert on button y click \- Verify that procedure x works for a given impunt

Hope this helps

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't turn off my computers. I use Xmonad and have tasks running on different 'desktops' which I leave open for days/weeks. In terms of code, I leave the Emacs sessions running with buffers, repls, etc. open until I logout or reboot.</comment>


Couple Sues Pokemon Go Creators, Say It Turned Neighborhood into a 'Nightmare' - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/08/15/pokemon-go-neighborhood-nightmare/ <comment><USER2> 2016's version of "Get off my lawn" but with Lawyers and insane people.</comment>


Spotify adds new QR-code to app to facilitate music sharing - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/05/spotify-codes/ <comment><AUTHOR> Quikkly gives the impression that Spotify is using their technology to generate the QR-style scannable codes, see [https://quikklycodes.com/quikkly- blog/2017/4/3/welcome-spoti...](https://quikklycodes.com/quikkly- blog/2017/4/3/welcome-spotify).

I guess that should be read as "Welcome Spotify to the group of companies that create their own flavor of QR-like codes (which you can also do with Quikkly)"?</comment>


Email from Elon Musk to Tesla Is a Master Class in Emotional Intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/elon-musk-sent-an-extraordinary-email-to-employees-and-taught-a-major-lesson-in.html <comment><USER2> Reminds me quite a bit of the Alcoa safety story, which has been covered in a number of books as a fantastic success story and an example of great leadership. [http://www.businessinsider.com/how-changing-one-habit- quintu...](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-changing-one-habit-quintupled- alcoas-income-2014-4)

</comment><comment><USER3> _Elon Musk holds a hammer_

Headlines: Elon Musk's arms demonstrate musclepower which in the history of times has never been seen before.

I feel like he wrote a reasonable letter. That's about it.

<comment><USER4> First off, Mjölnir is not just a "hammer".

Second, most CEOs of comparably sized companies would use the command chain to make improvements. Some SVP's goal for the next 6 months would be to reduce rate by 25% over 6 months and (s)he would be required to report on progress weekly. The fecal matter, as they say, rolls downhill.

Musk's actions are often perceived larger than they should, but he's certainly taking injuries at Tesla personally. Good for him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _" [I] would like to meet every injured person as soon as they are well"_

I would get injured just so I could meet Elon. ;)</comment>