Prince Of Persia Code Review (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://fabiensanglard.net/prince_of_persia/index.php <comment><USER2> About the disk format: the Amiga native disk format was just one huge sector per track. That is how the Amiga fitted 880K on the same disk MS-DOS filled with 720K and MacOS 800K.

One of the custom chip on the Amiga had hardware for teh track decoding. So the Amiga could read the disk while performing other operations, the data would come in via DMA (direct memopry access) of the co-processor.

(MacOS used variable-speed, that is how it fitted more sectors on outer tracks and achieved 800K.)

<comment><USER3> I owned an Amiga 500 and at a certain point I bought for it a HDD (20 MBs, if I remember correctly) => then later I switched to an IBM-compatible (386sx with a HDD) and, subjectively, I thought that the HDD of the IBM-compatible was slower than the one I previously used on the Amiga => any HW reason why the Amiga-HDD might be faster than the IBM-HDD, or did I just imagine it?

<comment><USER4> It might have been a SCSI drive/controller, but it might have also been that you used FastFileSystem, which was pretty efficient.

One of the HD manufacturers of the time, either Conner or Maxtor, was known to use Amiga 3000 machines to test their SCSI disks, because of the CPU/chipset/OS/FS combination. Not many systems were able to extract 90%+ of theoretical throughput like the A3000 could.

<comment><USER3> Thx - it was just some sort of standard HDD for Amiga 500 - cannot remember anything specific about it... .

Can it be that the Amiga 500 had in its case a place for a HDD? (I don't remember using external cases, but maybe I have forgotten...)

<comment><USER4> The A590 was a drive that plugged on the left side of the A500. It usually came with a 20MB SCSI disk inside...

There was no room in the A500 for a 3.5" drive. Later, the A1200 and A600 had a built-in IDE controller and an internal bay, but for a 2.5" disk.

<comment><USER5> The 590 had a SCSI controller with _DMA_ , but only for the external SCSI connector. The internal drive was 8-but IDE and dog slow. So if it was faster, it must be chalked up to better OS, better filesystem and I would assume a 68000 at 7Mhz was faster than a 4.77Mhz 8088 at shuffling data around. Especially since the memory data bus was 16 bit wide for the Amiga but only 8 bit wide for the PC. (Right?!)

<comment><USER4> The A590 had both a SCSI and an XT header for internal drives (on the right side):

[http://amiga.resource.cx/photos/photos/a590-5.jpg](http://amiga.resource.cx/photos/photos/a590-5.jpg)

I only ever saw them with SCSI drives in person, but they also sold XT units. Maybe you saw the latter?

<comment><USER5> If they sold'em with XT-IDE inside, I was probably unfortunate to have on of those. Still beat swapping floppies. Thanks to the HDD I could compile C programs without switching floppies all the time. IIRC I had the compiler and the headers on one floppy and the linker etc on another. Eventually I made DICE (Matt Dillon yo!) fit on one floppy. Or was it an early Lattice C?? Can't remember.:-P By that time I had bought a 486SX for uni, so I reluctantly used Turbo C instead. Turbo C was just too good to pass up...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6>
       ORG directives were really just hints.
       There was no operating system and no
       linker/loader on Apple II: The developer
       had to "somehow" manage to transfer the
       instructions from floppy disc to the
       intended location.

Well, no. .ORG directives had nothing to do with any of that. They were (and are) used to tell the assembler how to fix up absolute references such as JMPs, JSRs, and loads/stores to variables defined in the code.

As he points out, when building complex programs on the Apple II, you had to keep track of where to load modules yourself, precisely because there was no metadata in the object file. Nothing prevented you from loading a module compiled at one ORG at a different address... well, nothing except the fact that it would probably crash.

<comment><USER7> You could write 6502 code to be completely relocatable, but at a cost of space and a more complex assembler.

<comment><USER8> The 6502 can only do small +128/-127 bytes relative jumps so that would be pretty complex indeed.

<comment><USER9> Typically you'd patch the relocatable routine before inserting it at the desired memory location, simply overwriting the location-dependent instructions like jsr and absolute jmp with new operands. This isn't very complex, especially if the relocator doesn't need to be position independent itself.

There are some factors that can simplify relocation: only allow relocation to page boundaries (i.e. $xx00 addresses) and possibly keeping the routines shorter than a page.

For example, here's a single page, page boundary constrained relocator for a routine with two patch points:

        ; x = page
        relocate_routine
            stx rel_sta+2

            ; patch
            stx patch1+2
            stx patch2+2

            ldy #0
        copy
            lda routine_template,y
        rel_sta:
            sta $0000,y
            iny
            bne copy
            rts

        ; some routine assembled for any origin $xx00
        routine_template
            bne continue
        patch1
            jmp done
        continue
            ...
        patch2
            jsr print
            ...
        done
            rts
        print
            ...
            rts

<comment><USER8> If the relocator is not position independent then the solution is not completely relocateble. I don't even know how you would get access to the program counter without trashing some memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > the 6502 is a simple 16 bits processor

I don't think ability to address 64k means the CPU is 16 bit. The 6502 is a very 8 bit processor AFAIK. The main registers are 8 bit, most operations work on 8 bit registers.

<comment><USER11> I think it's best to go with the "external data bus size", which is 8-bit on the processors typically known as "8-bit processors" (6502, Z80, i8080, 6809 etc...). Those processors can read one 8-bit byte in one memory access. For instance, even though the Z80 has 16-bit registers, can load 16-bit values from memory (and even has some 16-bit arithmetic operations), a 16-bit memory access takes 2 separate memory accesses through the 8-bit data bus.

By that definition the 68000 and 8086 are 16-bit processor (which makes sense), however the stripped down variants 68008 and 8088 would be considered 8-bit processors... and this is where this simple model breaks down ;)

<comment><USER12> "bitness" is defined by the natural data size of common operations.

The Z80 is 8-bit as most of its internal operations work over this data size and its registered are 8-bit. It can perform some 16-bit operations over two registers, but this is less natural to the design (based upon the 8-bit 8080).

The 8088 is 16-bit as its registers are naturally 16-bit even though there are also ways to address them as 8-bit halved. While the distinction between registers that are 8-bit but can be paired (Z80) or 16-bit but can be halved (8086/8088) may seem arbitrary on its own but looking into the instructions available and how they perform makes which side a chip sits on more obvious.

How much can be read at once is not the right differentiator, as it is essentially an interface issue. The internals of the 8088 are the same as those of an 8086, apart from those at the interface which break the 16-bit requests into 8-bit ones, they just have to wait longer for the signal that data has arrived/left.

Another common one that can confuse is the 80386SX: these are 32 bit chips (essentially the same design as the original 80386, latterly referred to as 80386DX) with a 16-bit data bus (so 32-bit requests are split as seen with 16-bit ones with the 8088) and a 24-bit address bus (limiting them to 16Mb physical memory like 80286 chips). These limited bus sizes allowed them to be used on motherboard designs originally intended for older 80286 units.

Other confusions come from specialist instructions: floating point operations using larger (40- & 80-bit) special purpose registers, SIMD instructions (such as those in the MMX set, introduced on 32-bit Pentium lines, operated over 64-bit collections of smaller values), etc.

Sometimes it works the other way around: the original Pentium lines (up to the Pentium 4) were 32-bit chips even though they had a 64-bit data bus (this made loading data into the L1 cache faster, rather than marking the chip out as 64-bit overall) and some 64-bit instructions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5917888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5917888)

</comment><comment><USER14> While nice, it doesn't go very far, yet.

It'd have been more interesting to link it once more complete.

<comment><USER15> I lost interest. I don't think i will ever finish it :P!

<comment><USER14> Damn. What a tease.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I had so much fun playing this in college on a Mac Plus in our little computer room (closet)!

</comment><comment><USER17> (2013)

<comment><USER15> Boy, this makes me feel old.

<comment><USER18> You were also expecting 1989 as the year? :)</comment></comment></comment>


WebDriver Automation tool & Exceptions - <AUTHOR>

How to handle ElementNotVisibleException , StaleElementReferenceException ?<p>Element are present in the DOM. but, randomly WebDriver throwing these exceptions. How to solve this type of situation ? Is there any problem with WebDriver ? <comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to catch the exception and again doing the same work (clicking on some element) if it throws the exception.</comment>


Keto diet works best in small doses, researchers find - <AUTHOR> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-01-keto-diet-small-doses.html <comment><USER2> >When mice continue to eat the high-fat, low-carb diet beyond one week, Dixit said, they consume more fat than they can burn, and develop diabetes and obesity.

It is my understanding and experience that eating high fat is to assist with the body entering Ketosis. After the body enters Ketosis the fat you ingest is scaled back so your body can burn the fat storage you carry.Basically it's low carb life style eliminating most fat you consume since the idea is to burn your body fat.

This doesn't seem like a good study since they just kept pumping fat into the mice even after they were in Ketosis without reducing it so they could lose body fat. No wonder they got obese and developed chronic illness.

<comment><USER3> > _This doesn 't seem like a good study since they just kept pumping fat into > the mice even after they were in Ketosis without reducing it so they could > lose body fat._

Still very useful as that's what many people on keto do even after the initial period - because fatty foods are tastier and easier to gorge on that lean protein and veggies.

<comment><USER2> It would have been beneficial if the study __followed the rules pertaining to a Keto Diet __instead of labeling it as dangerous after one week. They would have found it to be actually quite healthy.

Done properly, you can remain in Ketosis for an incredible long time.

<comment><USER4> I mean, that's a whole different study.

Given the need to prioritize 2 studies, one which studies the actual diet which the majority of Keto followers tend to actually follow, and another which the promoters of Keto use for marketing Keto, but very few actually follow, they prioritized the former.

I would have probably made the same decision they did, but even if they had prioritized the latter, the point is that they chose to conduct 1 study and not the other is not a knock on the study they actually conducted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the paper[0]

> _Standard vivarium chow (Harlan 2018S; 58% of calories from carbohydrate, > 24% of calories from protein, 18% of calories from fat, 3.1 kcal g−1) and KD > (Research diets D12369B; 0.1% of calories from carbohydrate, 10.4% of > calories from protein, 89.5% of calories from fat, 6.76 kcal g−1) were both > provided ad libitum_

Why do the KD group was given more than twice the kcal amount that the normal group?

[0] -- page 10 - [https://sci-hub.tw/10.1038/s42255-019-0160-6](https://sci- hub.tw/10.1038/s42255-019-0160-6)

</comment><comment><USER6> In mice... [https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice](https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice)

<comment><USER7> Indeed ... by the same logic they could conclude that eating any non-trivial amount of carbs is harmful because it's deadly to cats.</comment></comment>


Driverless cars are stuck in a jam - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/10/10/driverless-cars-are-stuck-in-a-jam <comment><USER2> If we expect driverless cars to be further delayed and we continue building our cities to encourage micromobility (bikes, electric scooters, segregated lanes, car free streets, etc.) then at which point does the value of the driverless car become moot because we no longer drive?

Does this sound unlikely? Consider European cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam which have encouraged cycling over the last two decades and all the other cities, like London and New York, that are embarking on ambitious transformations to create friendlier streets for people.

If you don't need to drive why would you buy a driverless car? Also, why would I prefer a driverless taxi if an electric car with a human driver costs no more?

Note that I'm only asking about city travel, not intercity transportation.

<comment><USER3> But why do we even need to cluster in massive cities, when today's technologies allow for remote work for pretty much any non physical type of work? Accountants, developers, designers, architects, customer support, and so on can all be done remotely. That would reduce both the need to drive and to cram people in overcrowded public transport options.

<comment><USER4> Because cities make a lot of things much better and easier.

There are definately downsides, but they can be solved. We have systems to collect and clean waste so that is no longer a problem. When cars can be mostly eliminated and the ones that are left will be autonomus, that's the traffic and air pollution problem mostly solved.

Then we can also have more of untouched land for wildlife and our general pleasure.

<comment><USER5> >Then we can also have more of untouched land for wildlife and our general pleasure.

I live in a rural area in Ohio. Any eligible land that isn't being tilled already gets converted to farm land. Plots are getting consolidated, treelines are getting leveled and burned to gain another couple acres of arable land.

I think if we all move to cities there will be some natural parks but most of it will be converted to ag and industry. If you get a couple million acres of privately held land, who knows what's happening in there.

<comment><USER4> True, that's another problem to solve. How to reduce each person's nutritional footprint while improving their nutritional intake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Self-driving got taken over by the "fake it til you make it" crowd. Uber, Cruise (go find Cruise's original demo video and marketing claims), Tesla, etc. Only Google/Waymo approached it as a hard problem, and only Waymo has something that's deployed, even in a limited way, without a "safety driver".

Somebody will probably make it work, but it may come from some boring old company like Ford or Continental or Fujitsu. A background in webcrap has negative value in this area, as it does in avionics.

<comment><USER7> Einride got driverless trucks running on a public road:

[https://insideevs.com/news/350293/autonomous-einride-t- pod-p...](https://insideevs.com/news/350293/autonomous-einride-t-pod-public- road/)

<comment><USER6> _" a short distance on a public road within an industrial area – between a warehouse and a terminal – where traffic speeds are typically low"._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article misses an important point. It's not only a problem of technology, it's also a problem of risk acceptance. While we accept to be killed by our own mistakes at the wheel, society (we) will not accept that a machine makes the same, even if the failure rate is on average /better/. This is the fundamental issue Elon Musk has. The driverless bar for safety is way higher than very clever driver assistance or even rocket science.

<comment><USER9> I don't understand why so many otherwise smart people fell for FSD hype. I'm not talking about the many con artists - I'm talking about the tech-savvy people who genuinely bought into FSD hype.

How is it not obvious that FSD most likely requires artificial general intelligence and is, thus, probably somewhere between "many decades away" and "humans will never achieve it"?

<comment><USER10> Doesn't seem obvious to me. FSD using affordable sensors seems like an unsolved problem, and I haven't heard a convincing proof that it is or isn't solvable.

Did high accuracy OCR without AGI seem possible before it was developed?

<comment><USER11> Yes, because it was clear from the beginning that it would be just a pattern matching exercise. No reasoning necessary, no actual, deep understanding of the written text.

It was always known that pattern matching would be what ML algorithms would be great at - since the 60s or do. Reasoning about and "understanding" things - well, not so much. Some people hoped that this behavior would at some point just "emerge". But they basically resorted to this because they did not see any promising path to these goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand why there is so much focus on automobiles instead of just about everything else. In every other instance - airplanes, boats, long-haul trucking - the problem in significantly less complex to solve.

The only tangible reason I see for such disproportionate focus is some sense of false futurism; aka, driver-less cars have become the 'flying cars' of our times.

<comment><USER13> Large aircraft _are_ basically self-driving these days. Pilots can choose to do almost nothing at all from takoff to landing. However, the failure modes are all mostly catastrophic so pilots remain under the assumption that they can slightly increase the survivability rate when the automation fails. Modern drone systems are also have elements of this kind of automation and can fly complex flight paths and station keep and land and so on more or less on their own.

Some large boat systems have are also similarly "self-driving" and can navigate to way points and along various lanes without too much intervention. They need pilots and tugs for the small-nav stuff like canals and ports and so on, there's simply too many permutations of "things that can be hit and sunk" to rely on the automation. Smaller boats can also buy commercial "autonav" systems that link the engine, steering and such to GPS. However, the marine environment is hellish on equipment.

Trucking is being seriously looked at, with active test runs, but like big ships needs local pilots for the end-points and local nav. Again too many things in flux and too many things to hit.

Cars exist basically continuously at the terminal ends of the trucking problem and are trying to solve the local pilot problem. Humans, with our highly adaptive sensory-response systems can do it to various levels of skill, but even we have lots and lots of failure modes even without impairment.

<comment><USER14> Long-haul trucking would be a great use-case. Even if you need humans for local pilot guidance, you can queue them up to a "cell phone lot" and courier the last-mile drivers in between shifts of going back & forth. It would also mean drivers would be based more locally to points of loading, rather than having to be constantly on the road away from home.

<comment><USER15> Long-haul is more than just driving. Will smart trucks be able to put chains on and pull them off when necessary? Handle unloading of items of weighing process proves problematic? Call for pick up of items removed during weighing? Handle snow? Handle loss of sensors? Handle run away down hill on a steep incline. None of these are insurmountable, but all are well out of the current horizon. Heck, just refueling is hard.

<comment><USER16> Most of those can be solved by changes to the truck or delivering spot local drivers. For weighing the trucks could run different trailers with load cells to weigh itself to ensure they're under the weight limit for their route. For snow there are automatic chain systems used on buses today those might be adaptable. Run away ramps are usually marked so a combination of good mapping data for route planning and finding run offs and vision/driving they'll have anyways.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's easy to make polarized judgements, like "AI driving can only follow lanes or drive on wide broad sunny streets". I recently watched a lecture where a guy from Waymo talked and demoed some situations, check out the 3 seconds or so in the timestamp in this video which made me re-evaluate that pessimism a bit:

[https://youtu.be/Q0nGo2-y0xY?t=865](https://youtu.be/Q0nGo2-y0xY?t=865)

Sure it's still nowhere near the general understanding necessary for completely autonomous driving but still much more impressive than simple lane- following.

<comment><USER18> That clip is far from convincing. Sure, the video showed an AI making the correct decision in a single complex circumstance. But that is assuming you have a correctly-modelled situation with accurate sensors. Even if you could guarantee that the AI could make the correct decision every single time, millions of times per year, you have the problem of potentially inaccurate and/or failing sensors which give the AI an incomplete model.

This is why airplane auto-pilots disengage when they detect failing sensors, giving humans enough time to take over. Unfortunately in the case of cars, there is not enough time to hand over to a human.

<comment><USER19> It isn't hard to have redundant sensors so that you can drive for a bit on less than all of them. If there is a failure you drive to a mechanic and get the senor fixed before there is a second sensor failure.

The odds of a dual sensor failure is low enough to still be substantially better than humans. Assuming of course that the dual sensor failure is dual unrelated failures. That means care in the wiring of power systems, fail safe modes, over design such that failure can't happen, and other engineering tricks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The most pertinent point here being that although collecting lots of self driving car data is easy, the tail and unexpected events that you care about are surprisingly rare. And many of these events can also be entirely new (never seen before). Current AI SOTA techniques simply require too much data and cannot reason well enough to solve this.

Leaving Musk aside, amongst those who are serious about self driving cars, e.g. Waymo, there is still a clear emerging picture that current AI techniques are too weak to get there right now. The limitations of current sensors and compute hardware are not helping either. Going the other way and eliminating LIDAR isn't going to help.

<comment><USER21> I agree that ditching Lidar by Musk is the wrong move. From what I have read most if not all the self driving accidents that Tesla have been involved in could have been avoided if a Lidar type sensor was involoved. With tech available trying to use the same limits as human vision is stupid.

<comment><USER22> I agree with Musk and George Hotz that lidar is never going to get there. That's because in Michigan the terrain that lidar has mastered changes drastically every time it snows. For those of us in snowy climates limiting us to self-driving to seven months a year isn't going to cut it.

<comment><USER23> Lidar has no problem with snow, only when its _snowing_. However, if visibility is reduced, a pure visual approach is going to be even worse.

Musk made a mistake, and he's spending billions to prove that he never made it.

snow makes HD maps somewhat less useful, as the terrain changes shape. But then, you need a map that evolves. Sadly for musky, the only company that can do that using purely visual data is Scape Technologies. Not even lyft can do that.

<comment><USER24> >Lidar has no problem with snow, only when its _snowing_. However, if visibility is reduced, a pure visual approach is going to be even worse.

Good thing Teslas have radar...which penetrates falling snow.

>Musk made a mistake, and he's spending billions to prove that he never made it.

People drive fairly well with only visual sensors (eyes). That is proof of concept. Lidar seems like overkill.

<comment><USER25> That radar is utterly worthless for this sort of application, it has awful angular resolution. It can't tell the difference between a building next to the street and a truck parked in the middle of the street.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The "easiest" (read: least difficult) to automate would be long-haul, between cities. But, we have an "automated" system for that, it's called railroads, where one driver can steer dozens or hundreds of cars.

The hardest to automate is in-city driving, where the environment is much more complicated to parse, and there are many more kinds of fellow-users (pedestrians, bicyclists, etc.). So, naturally, that's where they went first, because it's not about what makes engineering sense, it's about what gets the "dumb money" to invest.

<comment><USER27> Perhaps a city is more complicated because of the environmental hazards you mention, but I'd imagine it's easier to outfit a city with self-driving friendly sensors or lanes than those long-haul routes. In the article, it says this is how China is approaching the problem.

I personally believe a society with autonomous cars and regular cars sharing normal roads is a pipe dream in both a technical and political sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Just to ask, haven't there been several reports of LTE/5G protocols being compromised, making the worst-case scenario one script-kiddie away from major disruptions?

Why would they even contemplate building on a compromised foundation or worse yet, accelerating a roll-out? Since most of the tech from last century was built on trust models/trusted environments, waiting for a clean rewrite sounds like a better plan .

I personally hope we see them build new 21st century cities and dedicated autonomous highways to grow driverless technology, instead of trying to overlay it on the existing horse and buggy infrastructure with time-period correct code/models.

The world doesn't need any more digital diarrhea on its plate.

</comment><comment><USER29> Tesla is already selling "Full Self-Driving Capability" for $6000.

Excerpts:

 _Coming later this year:

Recognize and respond to traffic lights and stop signs. Automatic driving on city streets._

Fine print includes this:

 _The activation and use of these features are dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions._

[https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#autopilot](https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#autopilot)

<comment><USER30> They've been selling it for years, I think since 2016. They've delivered it so far to nobody.

<comment><USER29> But they just delivered "Smart Summon" feature where the car drives itself to you in a parking lot. The rollout of this feature has been glitchy. But it gives them a lot of data which they will learn from and improve. Once they fix all the bugs in Smart Summon they will have made a major step forward. Self- driving safely in a parking lot is very hard--there may be kids walking about randomly, other cars moving in unpredictable ways, and so on. In fact, my guess is that self-driving in a parking lot is harder than self-driving in city streets, because there are more rules, more room and more predictability in city streets.

I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla delivers city-street self-driving in a year or two.

<comment><USER31> That reminds me of the canard I haven't seen in quite some time: "Tesla is going to win the self-driving race because they've got the most data!" Has this died because people have started to finally understand that the logic doesn't actually hold, or is it because Musk/Tesla have stopped promising that full self-driving is actually imminent?

<comment><USER29> It hasn't died, the logic holds, and Tesla is still promising self-driving is actually imminent.

In addition to the most data, Tesla also has the best self-driving computing hardware you can buy today. (See autonomy day [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucp0TTmvqOE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucp0TTmvqOE) ) They also have top software people. I think Tesla may very well release full self-driving in the next couple of years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Tesla claims that autopilot is involved in one accident for every 4.34 million miles driven. Seems like a useful number, of course the media reports that the average is 1 accident per 500,000 miles.

So 9 times safer... right?

Question is how many accidents do similar people (read that as rich enough to buy a $50k+ car) in similar conditions (highways) with similar cars (newish luxury cars) without autopilot?

No fair counting drunks, meth heads, crappy cars, or snow storms (where auto pilot wouldn't work anyways).

<comment><USER18> I think that is an incredibly misleading statistic. For it to be comparable to human driving, autopilot needs to be turned on all the time, no exceptions. I think most people only turn on autopilot under ideal road conditions, so you would need to compare the human driver accident rate under perfect highway road conditions.

<comment><USER32> Well that's not realistic... yet.

But it would be interesting to see how safe people are without autopilot in similar close to ideal conditions with a close to ideal car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21218694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21218694)

Previous discussion.

</comment><comment><USER34> So, do we, as modern people, consciously accept that in order to get faster to our destination some people must necessarily lose their lives because of the technology we use to transport us?

Given that our transport technology is not completely safe, we must accept that some people will die using it. Even a very low chance of lethal accidents means that some lethal accidents _must_ happen. Some people _will_ lose their lives. So in order for most of us to get to our destination by plane or car or train, etc, some people must never reach theirs.

Does the general public appreciate this or is it just the case that people get into their cars or board planes, etc, thinking "nah, it won't happen to me"?

<comment><USER35> > Does the general public appreciate this or is it just the case that people > get into their cars or board planes, etc, thinking "nah, it won't happen to > me"?

I think the average person recognizes the risk tradeoff. Though I suspect a lot more people worry about planes than worry about cars, even though planes are statistically safer. Guessing that is probably due to a combination of speed, gravity, and lack of direct control over the plane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I don't get why we can't create a "full self driving suitable zone", with standarized road paint, signs, beacons, traffic lights which broadcast their state on a suitable standar, and maybe a car to car communication mesh.

Start small with something like the mortantown prt, even in segregated lanes, and grow from there.

I can't see a way to have full self driving capabilities, without helping the vehicles with some context information.

<comment><USER19> The problem is paint fades, beacon lights burn out (or the power fails). You can detect and fix those problems, but there is still the time between the issue and when it is fixed that the system needs to work. I've driven in cities after heavy snowfall took out all the power and you couldn't see any lane markings - we slowed down and used extra space (4 lane road, but everybody was driving between lanes making it effectively a 2 lane road), but those who needed to get around could - we even got through intersections despite the stoplight being out.

That is the self driving car needs to handle cases where the infrastructure around it is dead before it can react to infrastructure helping it out. This is needed in any case to ensure "terrorist" situations are not too harmful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I remember 2014 being a year full of these incredible claims of fully autonomous vehicles in the near future. One article in particular I remember, about some large car company expecting 80% of cars on the road to be autonomous by 2018.

I remember this vividly because I was house hunting at the time and became truly conflicted what location to buy. Should I choose a smaller more much more expensive house nearer to the city center, or a nicer drastically cheaper house further away? If I'll be essentially chauffeured to work in a few years, why not go for the bigger cheaper house. I eventually chose the more expensive house nearby.

Since then, the small yet constant worry that Autonomous cars are going to show me what a mistake I've made has disappeared, in parallel with any noticeable progress of autonomous vehicles hitting the roads.

Thank god I didn't choose that house in the boonies.

</comment><comment><USER38> See also an article on Chinese vs. Western thinking on autonomous vehicles [https://www.economist.com/business/2019/10/12/chinese- firms-...](https://www.economist.com/business/2019/10/12/chinese-firms-are- taking-a-different-route-to-driverless-cars) in last week's Economist, and a recent example of an edge case taking non road based autonomous vehicles off one campus [https://thespoon.tech/starships-robots-pulled-from- universit...](https://thespoon.tech/starships-robots-pulled-from-university- of-pittsburgh-after-accessibility-incident/)

<comment><USER39> Heathrow has driverless pods:

[https://londonist.com/2014/09/a-ride-on-heathrows-self- drivi...](https://londonist.com/2014/09/a-ride-on-heathrows-self-driving-pods)

I'm not sure how you could introduce that into a modern mixed traffic environment though. Imagine the howls from all the incumbents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The solution is pretty simple. We need to design electric highways that have a self driving lane. In the self driving lane there is guidance in the road that assist self driving cars. Since the cars are self driving they can coast in 80km/h sharing the lane with trucks. Add electric supply and rails to lessen the tire friction and we are a long way to reduce carbon emissions from transportation.

For city centers cars should for now assist the driver but not self drive as the system are not yet safe enough todo so. From machine learning we know that image analysis has probabilities associated with them. Probably might not be safe enough in cities.

<comment><USER41> > The solution is pretty simple. We need to design electric highways that have > a self driving lane.

So, build train lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> There is an anecdote I half remember, that I would like to find the original source of, because it's illustrative when explaining the issues. It goes something like:

In the 70s/80s a research group was working on a CAD system. After adding all sorts of features, the professor assigned a task to one of his students to make it respond to voice commands. The professor expected this to take only a few months.

It is difficult, even for experts, to have a good intuitive idea of where a good ML implementation is going to be easy or hard. You can be making good progress and then hit the "diminishing returns" part of the curve unexpectedly.

<comment><USER31> The classic AI anecdote is that the problem of object recognition in images was assigned as a summer project in 1966. It was still considered an open research problem 40 years later.

<comment><USER42> Ah, thank you. With a bit of further googling, I found this delightful document:

[http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/idocs/AIM-100.pdf](http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/idocs/AIM-100.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Self driving cars only make sense to me as a replacement for taxi services.

That is, you don't own and don't maintain the car and you don't care where the car is. You call it when you need it and it drives away when you don't.

I can't see this realized until we avoid the uphill battle of not running over pedestrians and deciding which one to spare in case you cannot avoid running one over. One way to avoid this battle that I see is completely outlawing pedestrians on the road.

Then you have cyclists and similar. What do we do about those ?

Considering the above I don't think driverless cars solve a problem that we have.

<comment><USER19> Self driving cars mean I can daydream instead of staring at the road. I daydream anyway: I know it isn't safe but I can't help it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Woh, An article that correctly identify machine learning as a sub-field of AI.

</comment><comment><USER45> I asked this question before and received no answers, so I'll ask again: Is there a source that details the specific issues that self-driving cars could face, and potential methods of solving them?

<comment><USER46> [https://blog.piekniewski.info/2016/11/28/more-thoughts-on- se...](https://blog.piekniewski.info/2016/11/28/more-thoughts-on-self-driving- car/)

Is pretty good. For a more recent take he has also written some blogs on the short comings of AI in general which has some self driving car content.

[https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/05/28/ai-winter-is- well-o...](https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/05/28/ai-winter-is-well-on-its- way/)

[https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/10/29/ai-winter- update/](https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/10/29/ai-winter-update/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm a little confused by the delivery only cars like Nuro. Logistically how would the package be delivered once it arrives at my apartment...? Would I have to be home and physically grab my package from the vehicle? If there's a human assistant who needs to drop off my package to my doorstep then is there really any cost savings over a regular driver?

<comment><USER48> Yes, you'd have to be home to take things out of the vehicle. It's more the pizza/grocery delivery model than the "we left your Amazon package on the porch" one.

<comment><USER47> That seems pretty inconvenient. I'd predict a ton of missed deliveries. Even with Amazon/Whole Foods delivery they ring but will just drop it off at my door.

<comment><USER48> I'd expect them to be very clear about needing to be home, letting you pick a specific time, and a fee for a missed window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I don't remember the source, but a few years ago I saw the results of a poll about self driving cars. The question was: "How much more would you pay for a car that could drive itself?" In the US, 50% of the responses said $0. It is not a feature that the market wants. That's why we don't have self driving cars.

<comment><USER50> People don't always know what they want. Before Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone how many people knew they wanted a smart phone?

<comment><USER35> Anybody who had a palm pilot with a cellular radio strapped to the back :).

<comment><USER50> Touché! I do think Apple owes PalmOS a lot! I wish other platform vendors such as Microsoft had also copied from PalmOS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The AI part of autonomous driving could have easily been handled by creating a network of roads (that is, converting existing roads) that has the appropriate markings and that is easy navigable by machines.

But that requires cooperation between governments and/with the private sector, and in 2019, God forbid that.

<comment><USER52> That's called trains.

<comment><USER2> And isn't it interesting that even though we've had driverless trains for decades many of them still require a driver?

In London the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) is fully automatic. In Tokyo the trains are computer controlled but a driver takes over outside of peak hours, apparently for practice.

So perhaps we'll never get past a self-driving car requiring a human operator at least pretending to pay attention (so no real change there, then).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> We just invested an ag robotics company started by senior engineers from some of the top driverless car companies because they felt that they were never going to actually get a driverless car to market. We welcome the influx of talent.

</comment><comment><USER54> Does Waymo even use the kind of machine learning with neural networks that's currently en vogue?

</comment><comment><USER55> why is this foam of words called an article . And why is this on the first page of HN .

</comment><comment><USER56> How does one get past the registration/paywall?

<comment><USER57> archive.is has it - but honestly there's not really any content. Several paragraphs to say it's harder and will take longer than some people promised, because "edge cases".

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I'm interpreting this paywalled article title literally, so I'm assuming driverless still can't solve the traffic jam?

A solution to this could be far less complex than using AI or sensors (installed per car) to steer the user automatically. Consider curing congestion by connecting most car's existing cruise control to a city-wide traffic light network:

Metal strip sensors are embedded into the first couple dozen feet of road at the beginning of an intersection, and this length is determined by the local DoT according to expected throughput (sometimes there are 3 or more sensors to count how many cars are queued up). This is because over the past several decades, classical traffic control created the enforceable expectation that vehicles come to a complete halt at the color red.

There is generally a pattern constant throughout all cities: primary arteries take priority until the left turn sensor is activated on the street parallel to the oncoming street, but the perpendicular street sensor activation takes priority before this. These are usually lower speed neighborhood or shopping outlet access capillaries emptying out into the higher speed artery stream.

Think about the feeling of seeing a dozen cars and heavy trucks going 40 mph and suddenly having to stop for a yellow light because only one car has activated the perpendicular sensor. That's a lot of wasted kinetic energy for just one car to cross, but timers and sensors guarantee static waiting times for the single car - something that a 2 way stop cannot guarantee.

Noticing that a car has activated the sensor is how I manage to catch most lights green - knowledge of the programmed sequence and line of sight of each of the 8 sensor sections means letting gravity slow me down at just the right time.

When a red light has been modified to interface with the approaching vehicles smart phone GPS and cruise control - "herds" of traveling cars can have their speed set in order to accommodate cars from lower speed capillaries without ever coming to a complete stop.

Here in Reno, a walk up one of the hills surrounding the city at night can lend a birds eye insight into the "herding" concept (large sections of the city can be seen without obstruction, headlights make crowd dynamics clearly visible). Speed limits and fear of enforcement generally means vehicles will cluster up. This pack traveling at their known speed (especially when giving consensual control to what we can call "Herd Cruising") can get through green lights while reducing wait times for perpendicular traffic utilizing the original sensor system. This same traffic could bypass the light similarly if the system already knows about an approaching bulk of participating "Herd Cruising" vehicles, although capillaries would mean cars entering the road and less likely to have time to herd together.

This could increase fuel economy, decrease waiting/idling time, save brake pads, and reduce emissions.

</comment><comment><USER59> Maybe we should focus on finding a way to ... clone our brain inside of mechanical box. I know plenty of ethical considerations there, but a human with all the life skills of a human would be a perfect AI and not need the normal learning that focus ML brings w/ it. Imagine if they just clone a driving instructor's brain, and placed copies of that inside the cars...

<comment><USER60> Imagine being given immortality but you have to work a day job as a car and you don't get time off ever.

<comment><USER59> I know..but you could have time off... I mean you're not driving 24/7...maybe when not needed for transport you live in VR space.

<comment><USER60> You could also be turned off and reset. Why waste the power? Who will know? Is it even a crime to kill a simulated person?

<comment><USER59> Yes. If you buy into the belief that we're living in a simulation. It's a crime if we murder, therefore it's a crime to murder a simulated person.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Infinity Is Launching Flexible Alternative to Trello - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/infinitypm/is-infinity-better-than-trello-3b8ef7437022 <comment><USER2> Trello UX is outdated, but still the simpliest tool to use.

If Infinity solves flexibility and stay simple to use it can be a big shot.</comment>


Startup Crawl: Your Chance To Meet A Dozen San Francisco Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/13/startup-crawl-your-chance-to-meet-a-dozen-san-francisco-startups/

<comment><USER2> I clicked on the "sign-up" button without an e-mail address and still got at "you're in the crawl!" message.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll break out the beer pong table.</comment>


Major Divides in Programming - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@fagnerbrack/3-major-divides-in-programming-b07aa10a0d93 <comment><USER2> What's with the strikethroughs on all of the hypertext? Stop trying to reinvent underline. Just use underline.

<comment><AUTHOR> Strikethrough? Where did you see strikethrough in the text? It should be underline, maybe a bug in Medium? Which device/browser are you using?

<comment><USER2> iPhone.</comment></comment></comment>


Mind-Bending Study Suggests Time Did Actually Exist Before the Big Bang - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/mind-bending-study-suggests-time-did-actually-exist-before-the-big-bang <comment><USER2> Note that this is not an experimental study, it's just a new theory that is competing against all the theories that try to explain what happened at the very begin of the big bang. Until there is some experimental evidence (or an overwhelming theoretical evidence) this is not confirmed.</comment>


Deciding between TwiML and VoiceXML when building telephony apps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twilio.com/2009/07/deciding-between-twilio-with-twiml-and-voicexml.html

<comment><USER2> Not any more apparently - the content is gone from their blog, link results in (literally) nothing being returned.</comment>


Chart of Y Combinator companies' hosting decisions, 2011 edition - <AUTHOR> http://jpf.github.com/domain-profiler/ycombinator.html?2011 <comment><USER2> Mind blown that:

-Some ~40% (stupid pie chart) don't have an SSL cert, but almost all have login/registration page (4 out of 4 that I randomly picked had a login/registration page)

-So many people use GoDaddy as a registrar (they were horrible before SOPA)

-That startups use AWS despite its poor cost/performance

<comment><USER3> what's horrible about GoDaddy? I used them for domain registration and DNS hosting, and everything went smoothly. The only annoying part, is how they try to sell additional goodies along the domain registration.

the front page ladies weren't too much of disturbance either :)

<comment><AUTHOR> This topic comes up every time I run this report.

The reasons why people don't like GoDaddy are covered in both of the previous discussions on this report. Well worth reading!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2080469> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=746386>

<comment><USER4> The older reports are broken, for me at least. They show the same stats as this year's report.

<comment><AUTHOR> Older reports are in the git commit history on the GitHub project for domain- profiler.

<comment><USER4> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting stats; any chance to get data about the rest of the stack (web server, db, framework, etc)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm always looking for clever ways to determine that information :)

Have you seen underthesite.com?

<comment><USER6> And <http://trends.builtwith.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would be really interested to see what programming stack what all the Y Combinator companies use.

<comment><USER8> I second that. There are so many possible combinations these days

<comment><USER9> <http://stackparts.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is the data collection methodology described somewhere? I'm questioning the accuracy given an error on our data (GoDaddy is not our registrar, namecheap is).

It's also a bit suspect that namecheap is not listed as anyone's registrar after so many fled GoDaddy for namecheap a few weeks back.

<comment><USER10> OK -- the data is definitely out of date for at least one company (ours, custora). I wonder how common this is? Perhaps the cache was not cleared before generating the output?

I forked the repo, ran it on custora.com, and eNom was (correctly) listed as the registrar.

I'm re-running the full ycombinator list now, and will update when finished.

<comment><USER10> The results are in, and there isn't a very dramatic difference.

Looks like 8 companies have switched away from GoDaddy since the data was collected.

I've issued a pull request to jf for the updated stats.

<comment><AUTHOR> Merged, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are PaaS providers like Heroku appearing as "Amazon" in the web host column? Would be interesting to see this broken down further if that's the case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I'm working on updating domain-profiler to better detect PaaS providers like Heroku, GAE, and Azure.

In the meantime, you can see who's using Heroku by looking for domains that have an SSL certificate with a certificate type of "*.heroku.com"

<comment><USER12> That's only if they are using the free wildcard ssl addon. If they have their own cert and domain name (most do) then they won't show up like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, good point. I don't know how I missed that. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do you have the 2009 or 2010 editions available anywhere ?

Would be good to compare to see trends.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/jpf/domain- profiler/commits/master/ycombi...](https://github.com/jpf/domain- profiler/commits/master/ycombinator.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> To everyone amazed by the various suboptimal decisions that startups make, think of it this way: the easiest, most straightforward solution is always the best one until it's more costly than some alternative.

I'd rather have my team working on product than researching domain registrars or hosts, since the odds of your registrar having a meaningful impact on your company's success are very low. Thus "just grab a big box on Rackspace" or "Namecheap is fine, just get it done".

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you mention this because that was the basically the motivation for me to build this tool in the first place. I was selecting a DNS host for the startup I was at and was wondering: "what DNS host do all my friends use?". I found myself doing a lot of dig commands, so I wrote what became domain- profiler.

I don't think you should spend a lot of time selecting hosting, but I do think you should put in a little bit of research into what you pick. It really sucks when your website is unavailable for an hour due to issues with your DNS provider - especially when your TTL's are set to an hour.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, absolutely. Making people better aware of best practices so they don't have to think about it is a great mission!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The profiler doesn't seem to take HTTP redirects into consideration, incorrectly reporting the web host and SSL details for Vidyard, though I'm sure for a few others too.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're correct, currently the "Web Host" is determined solely by what shows up in the A records for the domain.

I've been working on updating the profile to determine the host based on where the HTML is ultimately served from, along with some pretty substantial changes in host detection heuristics. These are non-trivial changes. I was hoping to have them done in time for this report, but tradition dictated that I produce this report now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have a feeling that the Godaddy portions of those charts are getting much lower by the minute.

<comment><AUTHOR> I generated a report specifically to show YC startups that were using GoDaddy: [https://raw.github.com/jpf/domain- profiler/master/ycombinato...](https://raw.github.com/jpf/domain- profiler/master/ycombinator-companies-using-godaddy)

The exodus away from GoDaddy stopped as soon as they reversed their support of SOPA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> FWIW, draftmix.com was a product of Blue Frog Gaming, Inc. We are a YC funded company. We don't run draftmix anymore, but we are still very much alive. Our main products do still use Softlayer, but we've got some stuff on Amazon too.

</comment><comment><USER18> I really thought more would be using CloudFlare.

</comment><comment><USER19> can we see the very latest for registrars? So we know if the Godaddy migrate cry really worked.

<comment><USER20> That's already the very latest. "Generated by Joel on 2012-01-17 using his domain-profiler software"

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very interesting -- Im surprised of the large use of GoDaddy SSL and Domain products.

</comment><comment><USER22> reddit uses AWS

</comment><comment><USER23> how about microsoft's azure? Any stats on that?

<comment><AUTHOR> sadtrombone.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> (We're not YC funded, but we did get into Startup Chile. Just wanted to share some options for people.)

Here's the choices our startup has made:

EMAIL: After much investigation, we decided to host our email in Iceland. This is due to the strong privacy laws in Iceland, and wanting a hosted solution outside the USA (and which had technical support, unlike google)

We chose: <http://1984hosting.com/> Pretty happy with them, though occasionally their site will give us a response in icelandic when trying to admin stuff, keeps things exciting! (they're helpful though and do support via email in english.)

HOSTING: We're planning to go fully dedicated with Hetzner: [http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver- pr...](http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver- produktmatrix-special)

Since our product will require a fair number of nodes and significant processing, the price and performance advantage of Hetzner vs. something like Amazon is very dramatic. (I haven't used Hetzner yet, but from my investigations they get positive remarks)

DOMAINS: For years all of our domains have been handled thru Moniker. If you're going to go with a US registrar, don't use Go Daddy or any other consumer registrar. Moniker is set up for domain portfolios and they have very strong security policies and no BS.

I'd prefer to have this part of our business be offshore, however, given the propensity in recent years for US judges to rule domains be handed over without just cause. However, I've not found a good international Registrar.

<comment><USER25> Gandi.net is a great international registrar. They are based in Paris, France, and took a public stance against SOPA. They are also the EFF's registrar and have a great web interface. Their slogan is "no bullshit™"

I have no affiliation with them, aside from being a very satisfied customer.

<comment><USER26> They don't seem to have any two-factor authentication, which is a big deal- breaker to me - compared to Name.com. They don't reply to inquiries about it on Twitter, too.</comment></comment></comment>


'Das Nest" - Embassy Espionage: The NSA's Secret Spy Hub in Berlin  - <AUTHOR> http://spon.de/ad39t

<comment><AUTHOR> If I were Obama I would be concerned about the image and the title ("DAS NEST"") of the article in "Der Spiegel" \- see image on linked site. "Das nest" is most likely chosen as a not so suttle reminder about another nest called "eagles nest". As another article wrote, USA is loosing the moral standpoint - this is not war against terror, it's spying on what used to be allied friends.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm going to be laughing my ass off when it's reveiled that the embassy in The Hague is also a listening post. It's a ridiulously fortified building with a near direct line of sight to the prime minister's private offices along the Hofvijver. We were all so gullible...</comment>


The Exponent IPO [audio] - <AUTHOR> https://exponent.fm/episode-173-the-exponent-ipo/ <comment><USER2> WeWork is a perfect example of how Wall Street, and finance as a whole, fails to understand why the Silicon Valley / Bay Area is successful.

A tech company isn't just a tech company because you call it one, and want to have a higher valuation or P/E ratio. You have to actually have the technology to back it up.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just love the podcast. The report between the two hosts is amazing. And the insights are great -- I often say to myself: "Hmm, I never thought about it that way!"</comment>


Windows Mobile 7 release delayed - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10048061-56.html

<comment><USER2> "Microsoft is not expected to have a major update to its core operating system ahead of Windows Mobile 7. However, other improvements are expected to debut sooner, most notably an improved browser that brings the rendering engine of Internet Explorer 6 onto Windows Mobile. That update, still expected this year"

The IE6 rendering engine returns? Nooooo!</comment>


A Paper Record Player - <AUTHOR> http://kellianderson.com/blog/2011/04/a-paper-record-player/

<comment><USER2> This is extremely cool.

And I had no idea that was possible. They never show the actual needle in this article, but here's a video of playing a vinyl by holding a sewing needle: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LpMmt4V14g>

</comment><comment><USER3> Kelli is one of the most talented designers I have ever had the pleasure of working with.

</comment><comment><USER4> Uhhh what? That was awesome! I wonder what the cost of just one of those is.</comment>


Firefox gets patch for critical zeroday that's being actively exploited - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/firefox-gets-patch-for-critical-zeroday-thats-being-actively-exploited/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21995055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21995055)

Particularly interesting is this tweet which suggests there might be an accompanying unpatched vulnerability in IE: [https://twitter.com/campuscodi/status/1215020566656299011](https://twitter.com/campuscodi/status/1215020566656299011)

</comment><comment><USER3> > The patch came a day after version 72 fixed 11 other vulnerabilities, six of > which were rated high.

Oh dear. We also had a previous zero-day fixed around 7 months ago. But again, there are more critical bugs vs moderate ones here. It goes to show the sheer complexity of developing open-source browsers.

The problem is starting to look far more complicated than just swapping in languages, since there is a lot to think about in a browser.

</comment><comment><USER4> A few hours ago, Firefox interrupted me in the middle of a busy browsing session and urged me to update. That was unusual. Most of the time Firefox updates quietly when I restart the browser, but people these days don't restart their browsers as often as they did before. I often go several days without restarting. I guess the vulnerability was urgent enough to warrant a mid-day interruption this time.

<comment><USER5> as far as I can tell the only time firefox urges you to update is security updates and if you are more than a version behind stable

<comment><USER6> I can confirm the surprising update notification, telling me to upgrade developer edition from 72.0b11 (64-bit) to 73.0b2.

And FF tells me, it cannot update automatically, i would have to download the new version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While a zero day is interesting news, I think a more interesting point is that the bug was reported by Qihoo 360. The company has a bit of a storied history when it comes to security: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qihoo_360](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qihoo_360)

<comment><USER8> "In 2012, a whistleblower reported a hidden backdoor in 360 Secure Browser."

"In January 2020, a Reddit user reported Qihoo's presence in Samsung mobile phones as a pre-installed storage cleaner in the device settings, from where it sends data packages to Chinese servers."

Definitely not a company one would expect to report vulnerabilities. Also odd that they would be find Firefox issues given their browser uses IE and Chrome renderers.

<comment><USER9> Why should anybody find reporting a zero day suspicious? Independently of the history of the older business practices of the reporter, it can't be anything than a positive act.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know what version introduced the problem?

<comment><USER11> Seems to be fixed by this commit

[https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla- release/rev/8a2adb09...](https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla- release/rev/8a2adb09dd1028af83524adea36c5b2797a1c1bd)

Date introduced seems Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:41:58 +0100 (2012-02-02) but I may be wrong

<comment><USER10> Wow thanks!

Good grief that's a long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No details on the exploit...

Generally those exploit only work in particular scenarios...

</comment><comment><USER13> Mozilla advisory is here: [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/security/advisories/mfsa2020-0...](https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/security/advisories/mfsa2020-03/)

A little frustrating that they don't list a fixed version for Firefox Developer Edition: 73.0b2 just came out so I guess hopefully it's okay?

<comment><USER14> Yes. This is fixed in all branches. Developer Edition is Firefox beta with a different skin. The commits at [https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla- beta/](https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/) will show you that 73.0b2 has the same commit as mention elsewhere in the thread.

<comment><USER13> Thanks :)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Capture Google Meet CC and turn it in into Google Doc - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tactiq-for-google-meet/fggkaccpbmombhnjkjokndojfgagejfb <comment><AUTHOR> Extension is saving CC into your Google Doc as a meeting notes plus you're receiving the highlights and key points</comment>


California Businesses Leave the State by the Thousands - sahin-boydas https://www.hoover.org/research/california-businesses-leave-state-thousands <comment><AUTHOR> I'm always curious in these things how they will cherry pick the data to achieve their narrative.

In 2018 California had 954,000 businesses[1] according to the Census bureau. If we take the "13,000 have left between 2009 and 2016" (why stop there?) that would represent nearly 1.4%. However the Hoover Institute doesn't actually tell you if they were "small business" or "regular businesses".

That can be important because there are nearly 4 million small businesses in the state[2] and a departure is a departure, small, medium, or large. If use 3.9 million as the total number of businesses that is just .3%.

Every year people argue "California taxes too much, businesses are leaving in droves" but that isn't supported by actual business license data nor employment data. Over the last 10 years California consistently has the largest economy of all 50 states.

Nobody likes taxes, and I personally don't like misleading articles.

[1] [https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/CA](https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/CA)

[2] [https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-...](https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small- Business-Profiles-CA.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Yeah and doesn't California have Silicon Valley and Hollywood? Wake me up when Google and Universal leave California.

<comment><USER3> What if they just stop investing and build elsewhere?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is such a misleading essay. AB 2088 (to tax net worth over $30 million at 0.4%) was a gut-and-replace two weeks before the end of the session which never even got a vote in committee.[1] It hardly reflects the will of the Assembly, much less a serious attempt to change California law.

The other parts of the essay do a bait-and-switch between noting that some businesses are leaving and implying that it's the over-regulated business environment —- but if you drill down it's really motivated by the state income tax. Which, yes, is high and can be significant especially on the sorts of people that are successful at running their own business, which is to say high earners.

And still, how many businesses did California lose in 2018 and 2019? Less than 800 total. So out of the 40 million people that live here, 0.001% chose to leave every year. Even if that's a net number (which the author doesn't clarify) it doesn't rise to the level of something policy makers should care about.

One would think economists writing at the Hoover Institute would be more rigorous about their facts and argument, and not just whine in print and get it published.

[1][https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.x...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB2088)

<comment><USER5> _And still, how many businesses did California lose in 2018 and 2019? Less than 800 total. So out of the 40 million people that live here, 0.001% chose to leave every year._

I assume a business would have more than 1 employee?

<comment><USER6> I would assume few businesses that move would convince a significant number of their employees to move.

In other words, I can't imagine very many businesses with lots of employees moving at all.

<comment><USER5> There have been a few very large companies who have moved their headquarters out of state. From what I can remember, McKesson (top 3 drug distributor), Schwab.

Of course they are headquarters, not the entire companies, so it's still only a few thousand.

Regardless, I don't think California is hurting for companies. At least not right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >The state also intends to make this [wealth tax] law follow you for up to a decade should you leave. Clever politicians? Maybe, but just how will they convince other states to cooperate once you relocate? Not to mention whether this future provision is constitutional.

Holy smokes, politicians are trying to extract a state wealth tax on individuals after they leave the state? Am I reading this correctly?

<comment><USER8> That's not totally crazy. You probably couldn't have earned that wealth in another state, so why shouldn't California take its cut?

<comment><USER9> Because they already did with the taxes that already exist?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Hoover Foundation isn't exactly unbiased. The thousands comes from the "2009 to 2016" period. No mention of how many businesses were created. Nor comps of other states.

I believe that lots of people wish they could move their business out of state. I also believe many don't because they actually like it here, it's access to a ton of well off customers with cash to burn, and while they grumble about the regulatory burden it also creates quite a nicer place to live. I'm sure the latter comment will get lots of attention as there's innumerable people who are sick of California. I'm looking at moving back after 6 years away.

<comment><USER8> > The Hoover Foundation isn't exactly unbiased.

What does that mean? They're a non-partisan think tank. They certainly have a free market point of view, but every source has a point of view.

<comment><USER11> Condoleeza Rice its director, John Yoo is a Visiting Fellow, Donald Rumsfeld, Ed Meese, and Henry Kissinger are Distinguished Visiting Fellows.

Non-partisan? Come on.

<comment><USER8> And what percentage of the New York Times editorial board is Democrats? I would still call the Times a non-partisan paper (albeit one with liberal leanings).

A somewhat old (2000) Hoover Institution article notes that 1/4 of its Fellows are Democrats. I would be shocked if 1/4 of the Times editorial Board was Republicans. Or really if even one person on the Times editorial Board was a Republican.

<comment><USER12> Not a single member of the NY Times editorial board ever worked in the White House (except as a reporter), worked as a full-time political operative, or the like. They're all career journalists and scholars. It's not remotely comparable to the Hoover Institution.

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/opinion/editorialbo...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/opinion/editorialboard.html)

<comment><USER13> The parent did say editorial board but I would suggest that a criticism of the NYTimes in the same spirit that actually warrants attention is its board of directors. Many if not all of them are wealthy lifelong democrats.

I'm not trying to move the goal posts on you, just pointing out what I think was the original intent of the comment that - that left or right you should always follow the money.

<comment><USER12> Not a single member of the NYT board of directors ever worked in the White House or worked as a full-time political operative either.

They're a mix of people from the journalism industry and people who had senior management roles in other kinds of businesses: some lawyers, some finance people, etc.

[https://www.nytco.com/board-of-directors/](https://www.nytco.com/board-of- directors/)

I certainly have problems with the NYT. It is generally pro-corporate and pro- establishment. It is under strong pressure to accept bullshit at face value, and often succumbs (e.g. in the run up to the Iraq War). It tends far too strongly towards nonsensical "bothsidesism"

There are also a lot of excellent journalists working there, and they do a lot of important work. So it's a mixed bag.

<comment><USER14> John W. Rogers, Jr. "was a leading campaigner for ... Bill Bradley's 2000 United States presidential campaign" and "served as a fundraising leader in Project Vote efforts led by former United States President Barack Obama". "He was part of the inner circle of the Barack Obama presidential campaign. He is a long-time Obama associate who serves as the co-chair of Obama's Illinois finance committee and who has been a major fundraiser for Democratic Party candidates. He served along with Bill Daley, Pat Ryan, Penny Pritzker and Julianna Smoot on Barack Obama 2009 presidential inauguration committee."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Rogers_Jr](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Rogers_Jr).

<comment><USER12> He's a rich finance guy who is a major campaign contributor and fundraiser. That's not the same as being a political operative, working in the White House, or the like.

For example, Brian McAndrews (also on the NYT board of directors) maxed out his campaign contributions to the RNC, Mitt Romney, GOP PACs, etc. But he also isn't a political operative.

<comment><USER14> Seems like a very fine distinction you are making. John W. Rogers, Jr. is on the board of the Barack Obama Foundation, and his wife did literally work in the White House.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You would think that with 9,000 relocations, this article would come in with stronger evidence than a posturing wealth tax with no path to approval (and essentially abandoned), and a San Diego business that happened to relocate to Austin after being acquired by an Austin-based business.

California has many issues between tax policy and regulation by mob approval, but this is a very weak argument.

<comment><USER3> Or taxes are already ridiculous and this is a sign of things to come. It's a huge red flag especially when Rob Bonta get's on TV to promote it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrEK5hgr3vY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrEK5hgr3vY)

<comment><USER15> For all the armchair California tax policy critics on this website, there are shockingly few people citing Prop 15 in the fall as a positive indicator of the state's future.

<comment><USER3> Add it to the pile

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a non-Californian I marvel at the constant stream of articles about what a hostile Soviet environment California is for private enterprise and yet over the past few decades it has been one of the greatest centers of innovation and wealth creation in global history. The rebuttable presumption when you here about some emerging world conquering company is that it is coming out of CA. Something right must be happening there!

</comment><comment><USER17> Unsurprising take from a Republican mouth piece.

The figure they give is 766 for 2018-2019, far from "thousands" (which comes from their figure of 13,000 between 2009-2016). The sources they cite don't even agree with these numbers. Everything after the first sentence is just an unsubstantiated rant.

Now I need to wash my brain.

<comment><USER18> Do you think you would be less critical if you agreed with it?

<comment><USER19> They're using a really common anti-tax argumentation tactic. Instead of establishing a causal link between the 966 business that left and the corporate tax rate by doing a study they've simply called 2 people and quoted them in the article about why they left. So what about the other 964 business owners? Why don't they call those people and ask them too? The fact is they have no idea why those people left, and they have no idea why the other 13,000 businesses left. And they say nothing about new businesses being created.

The rest of the article is some cherry-picked facts about how much it costs to start a business. But no explanation as to why that's unreasonable other than that it's more than any other US state.

The only article about "Regulations" is a Cato Institute ranking. The Cato Institute works tirelessly to eliminate anything that they see as impeding businesses. But some regulations are good. Just because California ranks highest in regulation doesn't mean anything. It's just a smoke screen to convince us there's a problem.

I'm left to conclude the author has no idea what they're talking about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> They do make one good point in this essay -- the $800 annual corporate fee is ridiculous. It's completely out of line with other states.

It's not high enough to get me to move, but still. At the very least it should be waived if your profits are less than $800.

<comment><USER21> Does it apply to Self Proprietor's or partnerships? How about LLC's? Or, is it just C and S Corps?

<comment><USER20> S and C corps, and LLCs, regardless of business activity, as well as limited partnerships, but not general partnerships or sole proprietors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One-sided drivel. "The bill would impose a tax of 0.4% of a state resident's worldwide net worth in excess of $30 million" becomes "tax wealth at 0.4%".

<comment><USER3> The US income tax was only supposed to be applied during war time for the wealthy. Now it applies to everyone.

If this does pass expect it to effect most people with some assets in the state in a decade.

<comment><USER22> So for huge numbers of people in California who really don't have significant net worth, 0.4% of very little is still...very little.

Income tax seems like an overall success to me. It's not a uniform rate; it's a progressive system. So if the net worth tax ends up being applied more universally and progressively, it seem like that vast majority of people not holding on to huge fortunes really have very little to worry about.

Here's the thing about California -- people living there have gotten net- worth-wealthy from real estate, and they have been able to capture huge increases without paying appropriate property taxes (because it's such a bear to attempt to increase property taxes). This has shifted paying for state services to use-based taxes, which are as far from progressive as you get (well, not as far as social security contributions, but not far off either).

What should probably happen: Figure out a revenue neutral approach that blends a net worth tax with a reduction in sales taxes. That puts money back in the pockets of people who most need it.

Interesting experiment: What would the social security tax rate be if you didn't cap the maximum income it applies to? It's currently around 15% (individual and employer contributions combined). I have a vague memory of calculating that it would be around 4%, if you eliminated the cap (maybe that is individual-only, can't remember).

In any case, social security is a poll tax, and the money flows straight into the general fund.

<comment><USER3> > Income tax seems like an overall success to me.

How would you quantify this?

> people living there have gotten net-worth-wealthy from real estate

1\. NIMBY's, excessive regulation, limits on building all drive costs up. 2\. Scared money from over seas looking for safe haven in gateway cities.

You're starting to see people flee CA in droves. Housing prices here will crash worse than the rest of the country. If the politicians don't reform laws and cut spending the state will turn into Detroit.

> This has shifted paying for state services to use-based taxes

Kicking fixed income grandma out of her house is immoral. People constantly moving due to property tax spikes is destabilizing.

CA's is not lacking in taxes. CA is spending way too much. Other states are doing fine collecting a fraction of what we do adjusted for any kind of metric you can think of.

> What would the social security tax rate be if you didn't cap the maximum > income it applies to?

You incur more liabilities. The contract is I pay more in, I get more out later. It's a safety net. We cap it so people have a minimum and don't die in destitution.

> What should probably happen: Figure out a revenue neutral approach that > blends a net worth tax with a reduction in sales taxes. That puts money back > in the pockets of people who most need it.

A wealth tax is opening a pandora box. Enjoy paying more accountants. You don't know how much something is worth until you sell it. Who get's to decide how much my paintings or my stock is worth? A politician? Why is it ok to tax someone on income they've already paid taxes every year for the rest of their lives. People will flee and no one will move here. Detroit.

> social security is a poll tax

No. A poll tax is something much much different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What does this mean (if anything) for engineer salaries 1) in CA and 2) elsewhere in the country?

edit: VMware Cuts Pay for Remote Workers Fleeing Silicon Valley [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-11/vmware- tw...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-11/vmware-twitter-cut- pay-for-remote-workers-fleeing-bay-area)

</comment><comment><USER24> Fifth largest economy in the world. We must be doing something right.

<comment><USER25> On a per capita basis, California's GDP is not remarkable and is significantly worse than some other States. Having a large economy is a function of having a large population, it doesn't imply an exceptionally _productive_ economy.

I'm a native Californian but I've never understood the odd "fifth largest economy!" flag waving given that it is a product of population size. The "doing something right" may not be the thing you are trying to imply.

<comment><USER26> > On a per capita basis, California's GDP is not remarkable, and is > significantly worse than some other States.

It's #5 among states, a little over 7% behind #1 Massachusetts, and over 20% ahead of the US as a whole, and over double #50 Mississippi.

> Having a large economy is a function of having a large population, it > doesn't imply an exceptionally productive economy.

California has both a large population and, on a per capita basis, an exceptionally productive economy among US states. It's true it's abstractly possible for the former to substitute for the latter in aggregate output measures, but that's not really the case for CA.

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/248063/per-capita-us- rea...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/248063/per-capita-us-real-gross- domestic-product-gdp-by-state/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I always find it amusing when a policy thinktank founded by Herbert Hoover wants to dispense advice on how to build a strong economy.

Welcome to California. While we have plenty of problems, fundamentally, if your company can't cut it here and decides to relocate to Texas, that's not an indictment of California. It's weak companies fleeing to a place where the government is more willing to subsidize their operations at the expense of their residents.

<comment><USER28> > It's weak companies fleeing to a place where the government is more willing > to subsidize their operations at the expense of their residents.

A major problem of large public sectors and large tax burdens is citizenry that thinks a government not taking more than it needs to operate is "subsidizing businesses at the expense of residents". Consider the alternative where representative governments intentionally take less at the behest of their citizens. Granted it's not always that way, but much more so than assuming the residents and business interests don't ever align and the government is always against the residents.

This especially doesn't apply in Texas where many of these relocations, while abatements exist, are often in relatively small/growing suburbs and are often encouraged by their residents. If anything, companies are moving from away state level impositions to more local ones where representation is often clearer and it's easier to leave/avoid if you disagree both as a citizen and a business.

<comment><USER27> I live in CA rather than Texas because I expect the state to take some of the wealth we create with the common infrastructure we've built like excellent public education etc and reinvest it in our communities.

That's why so many companies chose to be here and have their highest paid positions here too.

Other communities in other states are welcome to bend over backwards to enthusiastically attract our tablescraps and feel like it's a win to their communities to have them. But they don't get to expect to be taken seriously if they tell us to change how we run our state to be more like them.

<comment><USER3> > excellent public education

Looks like Texas has California beat on that metric: [https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public- scho...](https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/public-school- rankings-by-state)

One of the largest school districts, LA public schools, is notoriously bad.

Maybe, it's Texas throwing us scraps.

<comment><USER27> Pick your favorite ranking of world universities and let me know how many California universities you have to pass before you find a Texas institution on the list.

<comment><USER3> It's great that universities here are stellar. But the K-12 students are taking a hit. I feel bad for the vast majority of children going to school in this state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow, the absolute and obvious bias in that article, not to mention the comments. Is there a more neutral source, or at least a source that isn't so blatantly one-sided?

<comment><USER11> _" blatantly one-sided"_

Not really surprising.

This article is from the Hoover Institution[1], which has:

\- Condoleezza Rice as its director

\- John Yoo (torture apologist for the Bush Jr administration) as a Visiting Fellow

\- Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld as Distinguished Visiting Fellows

and which bought its Policy Review publication from The Heritage Foundation[2].

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

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

<comment><USER30> I mean a lot of these people also sit on different boards of many hip western US tech startups. I don't think most of these people are actively involved in partisan politics anymore.

<comment><USER11> But when they do opine on political, social, and economical issues you can be sure they're not going to be siding with _The Nation_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can't really be surprised that a place with high cost of living and a focus on helping people over businesses is going to have high taxes for both those people and those businesses.

While some businesses aren't tied the are and will leave, most of them are making money from people in that area and need to stay there. If enough of those businesses leave, I'm sure the government will start to cater to them again, balancing things out again.

</comment><comment><USER32> Government can be modeled as a stationary bandit. Unfortunately, California's may have over-extracted in recent years, and it only looks to get worse from here.</comment>