Multicore OCaml: March 2020 update - <AUTHOR> https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/multicore-ocaml-march-2020-update/5406 <comment><AUTHOR> I've been hacking on the OCaml multicore GC recently and am happy to answer questions anyone has.

<comment><USER2> When is it expected to be released?

<comment><AUTHOR> (Speaking personally and not for OCaml Labs who are driving most of the multicore work at the moment)

You can use multicore right now: [https://github.com/ocaml-multicore/ocaml- multicore](https://github.com/ocaml-multicore/ocaml-multicore) though it's currently at an older version of OCaml, 4.06.1.

There's work currently going on to rebase on to OCaml trunk, show-stopping bugs aside there should be a more up to date version of multicore in the next couple of months - then the focus will be on upstreaming.

Hard to give a reasonable timeframe for release because that's going to depend a lot on how things get upstream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm very excited about this because it means ReasonML will be able to take advantage of multi cores for server apps :)

<comment><USER4> WHat do you mean by reasonml for server apps? If you mean running js(output of bucklescript) then no it will likely not benefit node users.

<comment><USER5> You can compile to native and use the whole OCaml ecosystem over there (in stead of the NPM ecosystem when doing client-side or Node-based-server-side) to write your apps.

For instance this fast OCaml http server: [https://github.com/inhabitedtype/httpaf](https://github.com/inhabitedtype/httpaf)

And you can even share types between client and server :)

<comment><USER4> What's the point of using a different syntax if you are going to be interacting,reading,fixing code in ocaml syntax?

<comment><USER5> Lower barrier to entry. Facebook is not pushing its own next JavaScript.

They lost the Flow-TypeScript battle. And they learned, they wanted even more typesafety I guess.

Since TypeScript also compiles to JS, bringing "something a little less like JS, but a lot more safe" to the table seemed a better idea that pushing "unfamiliar syntax, but heay, it compiles to JS"

<comment><USER6> Flow and ReasonML are started by completely different people/teams inside the company. From what I heard, Facebook the organization does not care that much about OSS, and software devs have to work really hard to convince to spend company time to maintain an OSS software.

If there is any battle, I predict will probably be between Flow and Reason inside the Facebook org because of competing solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22443428](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22443428)</comment>


The Intermediate Class - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/02/the-intermediate-class/ <comment><USER2> It's the literary equivalent of a soap opera?

Newspapers can pivot to literary soaps!

</comment><comment><USER3> Since I started learning languages in high school, I've always had great respect for those who teach language, especially their native one. It can't be easy listening to people butcher something that comes naturally to you, and for such low pay. It gets even more interesting and difficult if, like in this story, your class is composed of individuals with nothing else in common besides learning the language.

I used to think I could be an English teacher to speakers of other languages, but I don't think I have the patience. I'll stick to being a language learner for as long as I can afford it.

</comment><comment><USER4> A little context about why I should read this would be nice. The story doesn't immediately draw you in, and after the first few paragraphs I don't see how this is related to hackernews.

<comment><USER5> It's a nice story and I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I can't really provide much insight into why this belongs here any more than any other arbitrary well-written short story. Maybe because he's studying computer science and his mom thinks languages are a waste of time?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Maybe because he's studying computer science and his mom thinks languages > are a waste of time?

Very close. I feel that studying regular computer languages is not as exciting and challenging as studying a real spoken language.

I was encouraged to post this by the article about "Learning French" from earlier today ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17682100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17682100)). In the article, it cites an analogy to those Internet ads promising language acquisition in X days or even X months as akin to those that promote the magical X day diet.

I felt that this particular fiction piece was a beautiful representation of the stumbling/halting/humbling/unsteady progression up the intermediate mountain slope of language acquisition, as one progresses from being able to talk solely in the present to describe events in the past and ideas and concepts.

To be able to express yourself in a non-native language, even if done imperfectly and garbled-ly, is a win if the other person is able to get the gist of what you are saying. Eventually, you will be able to have those deep conversations and little stories about your life (good and bad) that you already do among friends in your native language. I'm not there yet (in Spanish), and I've come a long way in 3 years.

<comment><USER5> Lovely explanation. It got the votes to hit the front page so it clearly resonated with some folks. Cheers!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MySQL 8.0.0 milestone release - <AUTHOR> http://mysqlserverteam.com/the-mysql-8-0-0-milestone-release-is-available/ <comment><USER2> Product Manager for the MySQL Server here. Happy to answer questions!

<comment><USER3> With the shift to utf8mb4, are indexes / keys still stored as the maximum possible length (ie length *4 bytes)? and is the maximum key length still ~750 bytes?

I asked some of my developers to look into converting to utf8mb4 from utf8 in one of our legacy codebases, but we hit a problem with indexed fields that were defined as varchar(255).

<comment><USER2> This was fixed by a defaults change in MySQL 5.7.

You can actually make 5.5+ support larger key lengths, but it requires:

* Table created with ROW_FORMAT=DYNAMIC

* innodb_file_per_table ON

* innodb_large_prefix ON

* innodb_file_format set to Barracuda

Yes it's a pain. We've been working a lot harder on defaults since 5.6+ Here's a list of what we are looking at changing in 8.0:

[http://mysqlserverteam.com/planning-the-defaults-for- mysql-5...](http://mysqlserverteam.com/planning-the-defaults-for-mysql-5-8/)

[http://mysqlhighavailability.com/mysql-replication- defaults-...](http://mysqlhighavailability.com/mysql-replication-defaults- after-5-7/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd love to have transactional DDL so that if a migration fails I don't get left with half-migrated tables...

<comment><USER5> The basis for that is in 8.0, the InnoDB data dictionary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The latest stable release of MySQL is 5.7, no? Why the jump to 8.0?

<comment><USER2> 6.0 was a canceled release. 7.x. is used by Cluster. 8.0 makes it easy to follow as "it just drops the 5".

<comment><USER7> For a moment I thought we were talking about PHP :)

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what it is, but it seems everyone struggles with 6.0. Perl made it, but it took a while :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Overcoming Catastrophic Forgetting in Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> http://rylanschaeffer.github.io/content/research/overcoming_catastrophic_forgetting/main.html <comment><USER2> Great, understood a lot more than I had from the DeepMinds paper alone. Thought the mathematics was slightly beyond me, I got the gist of it still. Although this was talking about reinforcement learning in Atari, I was wondering if its works for other domain as well? supervised, unsupervised etc. If it does and say you have sparse data for task B but rich data for task A. Is this saying training first on A than transfer learning B makes it perform better on B? (As I type it, it's sounding like semi-supervised but it's not what I am trying to ask. :P) P.S: Pictures helped.

<comment><USER3> It would probably depend on how closely related the tasks are.

For instance, there's been a few papers talking about "transfer learning" where a network is trained on video data for the equivalent of tens of thousands of hours, and then used to control a robot (where the robot's inputs are partly from video). The pre-lesrned weights help significantly, as you'd imagine.

In another sense, it's often useful to use a pretrained network as the input to your model (so you'd run the images through another network that outputs a simplified representation of the images, and then run a second model on that). That's currently quite useful; I could see something like that being super useful here. Train on one task with lots of data, and then switch to something similar with less data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Overcoming catastrophic forgetting is a genuine step toward strong AI.

<comment><USER5> Is anyone trying to combine networks? Ie two camera feeds, audio feeds, some ability to interact with surroundings (like hands or wheels)? I have a hunch having something to interact with and sense is necessary for consciousness.

<comment><USER6> Stephen Hawking doesn't have consciousness?

<comment><USER7> Stephen Hawking interacts with his surroundings

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mathjax appears to be broken if you use https everywhere or just visit with https[0]. Just a note to RSchaeffer. Nice article.

[0] [https://rylanschaeffer.github.io/content/research/overcoming...](https://rylanschaeffer.github.io/content/research/overcoming_catastrophic_forgetting/main.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> How does this compare, intuitively, to "short-term -> long-term memory transfer", where learned skills are stored in a subset of the neural network, and non-core details are forgotten?

</comment><comment><USER9> Someone should consider hiring this young man.</comment>


In Video, Uber CEO Argues with Driver Over Falling Fares - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-02-28/in-video-uber-ceo-argues-with-driver-over-falling-fares <comment><USER2> This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but I actually thought the driver was exceedingly rude. He clearly took advantage of Kalanick being in the public eye, and thus a "target". Filming him without acknowledging it was totally immoral, it should reduce any fair person's bayesian priors as to the credibility of the driver.

I'm no fan of Kalanick, but I thought he comported himself reasonably, taking the time to explain things from his perspective. He could have just said: "sorry no time". Instead he shook the driver's hand, tried to explain the logic of his moving down the luxury scale.

The fact that the footage of him with two women wasn't cut out is frankly disgusting and a total invasion of his privacy. He didn't do anything wrong except flirt a bit. How tawdry of Bloomberg to show that material.

What is wrong with newspapers nowadays? It seems the press decides someone's "fair game" and they just engage in the most blatant character assassination.

<comment><USER3> > Filming him without acknowledging it was totally immoral,

To me this is a very classist oppinion. Normal people are filmed as they take the bus, ride the subway, go on the elevator, walk through the graveyard (seriously), go shopping, so why should a rich person who can afford a cab be granted an exclusive right to privacy which the rest of us don't have? If we promote this case due to the expectation of privacy that only serves to create this devide between rich and poor in which only the rich can afford privacy rather than a precident in which everyone deserves it.

<comment><USER4> "Normal people are filmed as they take the bus, ride the subway, go on the elevator, walk through the graveyard (seriously), go shopping, so why should a rich person who can afford a cab be granted an exclusive right to privacy which the rest of us don't have?"

What are you talking about? Normal, non-rich people totally have the same expectation of privacy when they take a cab. Would YOU be ok if your cab driver films you without any knowledge? A taxi/uber/lyft is a rented private car, it is not the same as public transportation.

<comment><USER5> _Would YOU be ok if your cab driver films you without any knowledge?_

Most taxis I've been in the past, oh, let's say 15 years, have had interior/passenger cams.

<comment><USER6> usually they have signs that say so. It's illegal to not notify your passenger that they are being filmed. It's possible that this driver had signs (but no way to know from just the video).

<comment><USER7> Are you sure this is the case in all states? My understanding is that some states are 1-party consent, tho IANAL.

Edit: This seems to back up my understanding that most states are 1-party consent. [http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and- co...](http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and- conversations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To me this illustrates one of the biggest problems we have in america which is the crazy firewall between rich and poor. Kamel wanted to have a serious discussion with Kalanick about how his decisions as CEO were affecting Kamel's life and Kalanick gets upset about this. That's your job! At least it should be. If you can't even handle light criticism from the people you employ, you shouldn't be at the top.

<comment><USER9> > If you can't even handle light criticism from the people you employ, you > shouldn't be at the top.

I ask this in all seriousness: what qualities make for a good leader assuming the ideals of capitalism? I understand many people here will say they would prefer to work for a moral leader who can handle criticism and adapt to make sure his employees are taken care of, but do those leaders perform better at growing companies quickly? I guess what I'm asking is for data - are assholes more likely to be successful CEOs? Or maybe they're better at the early stages when growing a company, or perhaps they're better at the later stages when a company needs to deal with regulations, or maybe they're always the worst. What data is there for this apart from anecdotes?

<comment><USER10> Turning that question around, what sort of a leader do you want to work for? Or folks usually like to work for? This whole idea of growing a company as the only (or most important) thing that matters is something that should die. We want people who we genuinely respect and imitate as our leaders. We want to build products that are genuinely useful and bring about a positive change in the society.

<comment><USER9> Yes, that's a personal decision in deciding where to work. But it's easy to come up with specific examples of CEOs that are assholes who grow gigantic companies. I was just using this specific example with Kalanick to raise the question. Perhaps a better example is Steve Jobs, someone who had something of a cult following but from what I've heard was an all around terrible person. If these people truly weren't tolerated, they wouldn't get to the top in the first place.

<comment><USER11> right. i think the point is, we should tolerate them less, so that they get to the top less.

<comment><USER9> I'm not asking what we should do from a moral perspective, which is highly subjective. I'm asking for data. Has anyone done an analysis on the traits of successful CEOs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I believe the driver was itching for a confrontation (he stopped Kalanick as he was getting out of the car to start the conversation).

It was only after being berated for a minute or two and interrupted that Kalanick's composure started to crack. Before then, I don't think anything Kalanick could have said would have mollified this driver. He had an axe and he was going to grind it. Kalanick could have handled it better, but he didn't totally melt down either.

And I think the guy is pretty terrible in general.

<comment><USER8> Where else should he grind it? Kalanick is the CEO. He made a decision which affects this mans livelihood. Kalanick certainly gets paid enough to face up to people like this. And if he wants to stop facing up to it, maybe he can do something about their pay.

<comment><USER13> > He made a decision which affects this mans livelihood.

You don't get to challenge everyone in your life who makes decisions that directly or indirectly affect you.

<comment><USER14> It's not like he had a right to challenge him, he had an opportunity, which he took.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Travis is right on a technicality they did not lower Uber Black prices much if any. What they did instead was coerced Uber Black drivers to take Uber X request. Yes drivers can reject Uber X request, but if you reject a certain amount of Uber rides, they kick you off their system. Probably why the driver is complaining about going bankrupt, you need a luxury car to drive Uber Black, but if you're stuck picking Uber X fares you'll lose money.

<comment><USER16> > reject Uber rides ... kick off the system

I believe it simply sets you to inactive temporarily, because you're obviously not picking up rides and you're slowing down the rider matching process.

<comment><USER17> Which is absolutely wrong. They're deciding, as a contractor, to not take jobs which are not worth their time. As a contractor, they're supposed to be able to do that without punishment. If Uber is doing this, it is a punishment.

<comment><USER16> > punishment

There's some balance between punishment and keeping the rider experience pleasant. I don't want to wait 10 minutes to get matched because of nearby lurking Uber Black cars passing on my Uber X request.

If a driver ignores several requests in a row, they're clearly taking a break. It's a feature, not a punishment.

<comment><USER18> > don't want to wait 10 minutes to get matched because of nearby lurking Uber > Black cars passing on my Uber X request.

Uber has a solution in place to deal with this, and it's surge pricing.

<comment><USER16> I wonder if surge is activated by a lack of drivers or a lack of drivers who accept rides. My initial thought was that it was based on the number of active drivers, so making a driver inactive would take the pricing higher for the remaining drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This seems like a slam piece following the #DeleteUber bandwagon.

1). The title doesn't match the contents. Instead of reporting on the specifics of the fare changes, Newcomer rehashes the more prominent Uber scandals and some short commentary on TK's "short temper."

2). A _very_ short paragraph (around 1/20th the article) breifly elaborates on the fares:

> _And the gig has gotten harder for longtime drivers. In 2012, Uber Black > cost riders $4.90 per mile and $1.25 per minute in San Francisco, according > to an old version of Uber 's website. Today, Uber charges $3.75 per mile and > $0.65 per minute. Black car drivers get paid less and their business faces > far more competition from other Uber services._

3). The video transcription selectively takes out parts and fudges others:

> _" Kalanick begins to lose his temper."_

> _Omitting the civil conversation preceding "But people are not trusting you > anymore"_

The following is just my personal anecdote: I have an immigrant in my family who's just like the driver. He's not interested in "fighting over a good idea, which sometimes means admitting that his isn't the best one," but looking to assert his ideas onto anyone who takes his argument-bait.

Additionally, it's plain rude to engage in this sort of thing with a stranger.

<comment><USER20> > _I have an immigrant in my family who 's just like the driver. He's not > interested in "fighting over a good idea_

You may want to rephrase that, because it sounds an awful lot like you're attributing "stubbornness" to the fact that this guy's an immigrant.

> _Additionally, it 's plain rude to engage in this sort of thing with a > stranger._

He's not a stranger. He's the boss.

<comment><USER19> > _You may want to rephrase that, because it sounds an awful lot like you 're > attributing "stubbornness" to the fact that this guy's an immigrant._

I am. This sort of behavior is common among older people from the country my family member -- _and I_ \-- emigrated from.

> _He 's not a stranger. He's the boss._

That's a bit of an exaggeration. Travis isn't directly overseeing this specific driver's operations (ignoring the whole "Uber is a contractor not an employer").

<comment><USER14> Travis is the CEO that is responsible for the flow of money into the driver's paycheck.

<comment><USER19> So is Jamie Dimon if I'm a janitor at JPMorgan Chase.

But he isn't my boss.

<comment><USER21> Interesting. I would say he's not be your immediate supervisor, but he's definitely your boss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Honestly, as much as I don't like Kalanick and would love a reason to dislike him even more, to some degree I have to side with him on this situation.

The footage with the girls, while incredibly awkward, is nothing more than a flirtatious conversation. Now, fair enough that the driver realises he has the CEO of Uber in his car and wants to talk about his situation as a driver, and I give props to Kalanick for actually taking the time to listen and explain.

Did the ending clip not paint Kalanick in the best light? Sure, but keep in mind that in this situation he is a guy in his private life who has been blindsided and accused of ruining this guys life, with, what it seems like from other posts here, lies.

If telling the guy he needs to take responsibility for his own choices instead of looking to blame someone else is the worst thing that Kalanick could say to anyone, then there really isn't a story here from my point of view.

Also, Bloomberg should really take a good hard look at themselves for posting that video without cutting out the conversation with the women. Posting that section of the video is the kind of disgusting shit that TMZ and other gossip rags would pull.

<comment><USER23> _> Sure, but keep in mind that in this situation he is a guy in his private life who has been blindsided and accused of ruining this guys life, with, what it seems like from other posts here, lies._

Oh come on, he's the CEO of Uber and he took an Uber. Probably every single Uber driver in the country if not the world knows who he is. If he doesn't have an expectation of being recognized and asked about the business he should hire non-Uber private cars. This isn't someone tracking him down on the street and sticking a mic in his face. It's completely fair game.

<comment><USER24> > Oh come on, he's the CEO of Uber and he took an Uber.

And if he took a Lyft, a private limo, or drove himself, that would be even worse publicity. Right now no matter what he does he'll get people sniping at him, just like on this board. It's a herd mentality where you pick on perceived weakness, and it's always ugly.

> Probably every single Uber driver in the country if not the world knows who > he is.

Does every single McDonald's worker in the world know what the CEO looks like?

<comment><USER23> _> And if he took a Lyft, a private limo, or drove himself, that would be even worse publicity. Right now no matter what he does he'll get people sniping at him, just like on this board. It's a herd mentality where you pick on perceived weakness, and it's always ugly._

I'm not saying he shouldn't take Ubers. I'm responding to the comment "he is a guy in his private life who has been blindsided". He should have every expectation that any driver he gets might ask him about the business, even harshly. It's completely fair game. It's his job to deal with it without losing his cool.

 _> Does every single McDonald's worker in the world know what the CEO looks like?_

The cult of personality around Kalanick is huge, and he is making daily decisions in a volatile industry that directly affect the lives of tens if not hundreds of thousands of drivers. They are very likely to be following his every move in the news. In any case it doesn't matter how many drivers recognize him, all I'm saying is that he should have no expectation of privacy if he takes an Uber. Drivers are very likely to recognize him and should have every right to ask him tough questions.

<comment><USER24> > He should have every expectation that any driver he gets might ask him about > the business,

I don't think he's in the public eye that way. The courts take a very specific view on who is or is not in the public eye. Also, he did engage with the driver until the driver got belligerent. Should he have just brushed off the driver with "I don't talk business during off hours?" The driver was not letting this go.

> The cult of personality around Kalanick is huge

Citation needed. I couldn't pick him out of a lineup, and I use uber daily, just like I couldn't pick the CEO of ATT out of a lineup.

Basically, the driver was behaving unprofessionally. If you were a limo driver or a waiter at a nicer restaurant, you get fired if you acknowledge the customer's status or fame at all. That sort of thing is not done and horribly intrusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I hope that at the end of all this, we as a society realize that we need to actually enforce, as well as update the rules we set regarding employment. We're effectively subsidizing companies that find loopholes, or simply ignore laws.

\- Contractor-not-a-contractor employment merely pushes costs and risks on to the worker. We all end up paying for the worker's social safety net, and costs of doing business (Such as insurance premiums, for example).

\- Not Uber-specific, but technically-not-full-time employment that just barely allows employers to bypass benefits owed to full-time employees needs to be fixed. See Walmart and how they help employees sign up for government benefits as part of their on boarding in some areas.

In the end, somebody is paying for these costs. Why shouldn't it be the companies doing business?

Interesting how it ends with "Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own actions"

<comment><USER26> We all _should_ pay for the worker's social safety net. That shouldn't be dependant on a worker's employer, or even employment status. In the US, tying health insurance to employers was one of the worst public policy mistakes we ever made.

<comment><USER27> Not only is it tied to employers, it's subsidized! If a company gives you $1 in salary you pay taxes on that dollar. If it gives you $1 of health insurance it's tax free. It's madness.

<comment><USER28> It's tied to employers _because_ it's subsidized if you get it that way. That's the whole tie.

<comment><USER27> The subsidy is important, but being in a risk pool is also very important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Watching as someone who already doesn't like Kalanick due to recent news, but at first, I didn't really take sides. The driver engaged first, and his tone was a little more tensive than Kalanick's. Moreover, Kalanick's argument seems sensible[0] regarding why he might have had to lower rates.

However, once Kalanick's retort essentially becomes "you're not taking personal responsibility and blaming others (ie., me)" he loses me. It's a fair discussion up till that point and each party's argument is reasonable (even if the tone isn't polite). What does Kalanick know about the driver's situation that he can say that?

When taken along with current news regarding Uber's culture, this doesn't look very good for Uber and Kalanick as a person.

[0] I'm not judging it based on its merits because I am not in the know regarding the numbers of the issue.

<comment><USER30> I don't consider it a fair discussion when the driver falsely insists the fair is $2.75/mile, when it is $3.75/mile and continues to pound the theme when Kalanick had already given his explanation. What is the driver expecting? For Uber to go back and raise fairs on Uber Black?

<comment><USER31> 1) He didn't "insist" it was $2.75. He mentioned the figure once. 2) When he quoted the figure, he said "and it's now what, $2.75?" clearly implying that he's not entirely sure about the current rate.

<comment><USER30> It seems like the driver should know these basic facts before he engages on the matter.

<comment><USER32> What does it matter if he knows the exact amounts? The point (one, of many) stands that the pay was lowered.

<comment><USER30> So, it matters that it was lowered but actual amounts are inconsequential? I reject that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> A bit of a tangential point: last week there was a post here about Facebook "changing the rules" and a significant number of small businesses disappearing as a result. Whether or not Uber's black car reimbursement really did change, it strikes me that drivers probably made business decisions (e.g. car purchases) based on Uber's initial reimbursement and are now seeing the rules change and grossing far fewer profits than expected (and prices still have a ways to go).

One can argue that these small business owners / contractors should have had the foresight not to do business on someone else's platform, but this strikes me as a bit Malthusian. Going through bankruptcy is no small price to pay for this lesson. Hopefully the next Facebook or Uber will have to promise some degree of stability (the same way I am very wary of working with SaaS startups), but I'm not optimistic - there's a fool born every minute.

<comment><USER30> The problem with this is that it ignores the economic realities that went into the decision of Uber to lower fairs and assumes that their demand would have remained the same with or without doing it. Drivers would have not been happy with higher fairs if they couldn't, well...get a fair because of lowered demand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How is this video not illegal, especially in California?

And sure rates went down, but it's still 3X the price of UberX. It didn't go down precipitously. From $4.90/1.25 to 3.75/0.65 won't cause someone to lose $97k and probably he got more activity overall. I agree with the CEO that this guy sounds like he's blaming Uber for his problems, when there are plenty of UberBlack drivers making hand over fist otherwise the drivers wouldn't be there. My wife's last UberX driver said he was making $3k/week.

<comment><USER35> > How is this video not illegal, especially in California?

You agree to surveillance when you enter the car. Just like a taxi, a bus, a train or a trolley.

You actually don't have an "expectation of privacy" in these spaces either. So a drone cam or telephoto lens is okay too. That's where state law is interesting.

California is actually surprisingly permissive for photographers and videographers.

<comment><USER12> Unless Uber has that in its terms of service, that may be open to interpretation. Even if an Uber is considered a public space, that's not the sole determining factor in two-party consent cases.

[http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-recording- law](http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/california-recording-law)

<comment><USER35> Not sure why you're being downvoted. Your read is absolutely right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "You know what? You know what? Some people don't like to take responsibility for their own shit. They blame every single thing in their life on somebody else". Less than a minute after having blamed the lowering of prices on his competitor(s). That delicious irony.

<comment><USER36> taking action is different from just blaming and talking

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> That's funny Kalanick still thinks he's beaten Lyft. The TNC lot at LAX tells a much different story.

I've been working it for Lyft since December. The lot has about 170 spaces. Lyft and Uber can each queue up 100 vehicles so some would have to park on streets.

Before #deleteuber, I would come in with 90+ drivers ahead of me. I'd have to wait an hour. I would watch Uber drivers arrive after me and leave before me. And the lot was always full while the airport had arriving passenger traffic.

Since #deleteuber, it's much different. LAX seems to be in Prime Time much of the time. But here's the weird thing, the lot is like half empty. There's like 20 cars in the lot that fly only the Uber branding (and plenty flying both logos on their Uber-leased Priuses). I haven't waited more than 10 minutes to get dispatched, except at like 2AM when the passenger air traffic tapers off. On most of my LAX dispatches in the last week, I couldn't even reach a parking space and park before getting dispatched. And this arriving with sometimes as low as 50 drivers ahead of me, and typically 80 or more.

The most incredible time, I arrived at LAX. It was Prime Time in the airport. The app told me the queue was full and to leave. I drove slowly down Jenny Street, the app flipped to 98 ahead of me. I entered the lot, followed the traffic jam of Lyft drivers trying to get to the designated parking area. It took like three minutes. I was dispatched as I entered the parking area. I took the short cut through the fence to exit the lot and picked up my fare.

But here is the clearest indication to me that Lyft completely owns LAX now. I arrived, parked, ran to the porta potty and took a leak. 3 Uber drivers were hanging out near that end of the lot, talking to each other. I got my dispatch while walking to my car. I picked someone up, took them to Marina Del Ray, came back, got dispatched again and those same 3 drivers were still killing time talking to each other.

<comment><USER18> Lyft is always cheaper out of LAX for some reason. It's always some small amount, like 25-30c on a $45 fare, but quite consistent. My rides _to_ LAX are usually a mishmash of providers, but rides out of LAX, when optimized for price, tend to be exclusively Lyft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Typical and unfortunate outcome: there is a serious problem with a company's policies. Suddenly everything slightly controversial coming from that company is newsworthy. In doing so, the original well-founded and important criticism is diluted. This is just a more refined form of clickbait.

</comment><comment><USER39> Travis and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Quarter for PR

<comment><USER40> Maybe they are flushing out the bad stories that are out there?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> How can a driver lose $97000?

Not asking in support/opposition of uber. Genuinely curious about what are some ways drivers could get into so much trouble?

<comment><USER42> He probably took out a loan to buy a nice car/limo to do Uber Black work. Since the rates dropped, he probably can't make the monthly payments, let alone maintenance and gas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Unfortunately, that driver is about to find out what "two party consent" for recordings means.

<comment><USER44> Does that apply to being recorded in a public location (and would the driver's cab count)?

Also, for all we know there could be a sign in the black car that says, " _Smile you 're on candid camera!_".

<comment><USER45> Inside of a private car with the windows up isn't public.

I don't know whether California is a two-party consent state, and the specifics of what that requires are different state to state anyway.

<comment><USER44> > Inside of a private car with the windows up isn't public.

If it was your car and someone got in and recorded you, then I'd say that's more clear cut. But if you get into someone else's car do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy?

<comment><USER46> Since you're technically hiring that person and their car to provide you a service, they have to disclose up-front if you're being recorded. In addition, just because you were being recorded doesn't mean the driver has the right to publicize the video. That requires additional consent unless it's a matter of public record.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is a terrible jab at Uber. I expected Bloomberg for higher journalistic standard than this.

1\. What does "two female friends" have to do with driver's argument with Kalanick? Should've cut that out. I read it as slimy ad hominem to reinforce bias on Uber's culture. Uber might have some culture problem, but it is completely unrelated with driver's issue.

2\. Does driver's argument have any basis? The piece merely draws attention to Kalanick and driver's tension - is Bloomberg now a TMZ for business world?

I'm very disappointed in Bloomberg.

</comment><comment><USER48> No one seems to be discussing this, but is Travis personally responsible for the loss of the drivers 97k? The driver sure thinks he is. Perhaps he played some roll in it. But the driver certainly made the decision to take out that loan. And I guess the driver had enough sense at the time to understand the risks involved with credit when he took out the loan. Well then you might say it's not the most compassionate thing to say to someone who clearly is suffering from financial loss. But I think it only seems like a mean thing to say because it's true. And it's really these truths that people don't want to accept about themselves. That they themselves are responsible for their own suffering.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've been reading through these comments and find it quite interesting because both the driver and Kalanick are correct, but as is usual in these confrontations, they weren't communicating properly with each other.

On Kalanick's side, he is entirely correct that Uber has to compete in a very competitive market and most of that competition is in price. If Uber didn't compete on price, they would sign their own death warrant.

On the driver's side, he took a risk in going for an Uber black car and he probably wasn't fully aware of that risk. He seems justified in feeling upset at how exposed he is to market forces that are outside of his control.

Given that, perhaps Uber should better inform drivers of that risk and offer some way that drivers can buffer themselves from that risk. For example, Uber could offer drivers some sort of insurance against rate changes. This would incentivize Uber to be more careful about rate changes since they would pay a penalty if the delta is too big and it would stabilize the rate for drivers -- there are a lot of variables to play with here to make the outcome mutually beneficial.

</comment><comment><USER50> If DeleteUber succeeds, that's then end of the American dream as we know it.

Starting a tech business with better ideas, and working harder and smarter than the Old Boys with Money (and taxi medallions) is the one of the last ways anyone, like a Zuckerberg, can climb the ladder, without selling out their own hacker spirit as we call it. The fact that the CEO would sit and dish strategy in a frank manner is something I find commendable, and seems to part of this guy's nature.

But if Uber goes down in flames for this petty PR play after burning through billions in VC money to acquire the market share they are rapidly losing, no young founder, heck no man or woman who hasn't trained in corporate lawyer dark arts is going to be allowed to run these innovative startups who need huge amounts of capital to be sunk initially for a long term payout.

Welcome to the world of "cool program! the grownups will take it from here kiddo."

</comment><comment><USER51> disclosure: I dont like Uber since 2010. I have always felt Uber has used the wrong means to achieve its success, and because of that I dislike Travis. (most of my HN comments about Uber are either neutral or negative). I feel bad for all those drivers who bit the Uber bait and bought expensive cars, with an expensive / sub prime loan. But it is the similar entitled attitude that lead people to hate the cab/taxi drivers/fleets.

With that said, I still think, in this video, the driver was on the wrong side and Travis was not. In fact, Travis starts replying in a fairly equanimous way, and loses it only after the driver starts blaming Travis for everything. If the driver has such a problem with Uber, he should not be driving for it!

</comment><comment><USER42> But was the driver right? Did uber black fares drop?

<comment><USER52> I think what the driver is arguing is that Uber changed its business model from black car only to including UberX and UberPool which drove the price of a trip down and less people using black car. I think this is perfectly reasonable, it's just maybe the way Travis responded was not very nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Perhaps they need to hire Sally Yates or John Ashcroft to get to the bottom of this now?

</comment><comment><USER54> This is why we need a distributed p2p ridesharing system, like [http://libretaxi.org/](http://libretaxi.org/)

<comment><USER55> How does Libre Taxi uniquely identify a driver for ratings and kicking them off the system if they are too bad?

<comment><USER54> I doesn't yet, but you make a good point that it desperately needs a reputation system. There are a few feature requests to this effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Seems like bad reporting: trying to make a mountain out of molehill. It's the opinion of one driver who happened to get his boss on tape, and had a pretty productive discussion wherein the driver pushed and became rude, more so than Travis. The article painted an inaccurate picture of what happened - it's entirely a non-issue imo.

</comment><comment><USER57> The article says that the Uber _customer price_ went down for Black ($4.90 to $3.75 etc) but does anyone have any evidence that the amount paid to drivers has gone down (given there's a large disconnect between Uber customer prices and what is paid to drivers).

</comment><comment><USER58> In this day and age of the NSA, let them record it and put it all over the internet. I have a dash cam myself, but not for inside the car, although it does record the audio inside, (which can pick up some outside audio).

</comment><comment><USER59> 1\. Add more chars 2\. Acquire medium or add their on blogging container. [https://medium.com/@hungrycharles/3-things-twitter-can-do- to...](https://medium.com/@hungrycharles/3-things-twitter-can-do-to-make-it- the-most-popular-social-network-c62d0d7695e6#.t87svr6m6)

<comment><USER60> Wrong topic? Perhaps you meant to post it here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13746549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13746549) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Does Travis have the temperament to lead this company to a public offering? Given how much baggage he has and how responsible he is for Uber's current sexist culture, I hope investors give keeping Travis on some thinking. Responsibility for a terrible culture that shields sexist management starts at the top.

</comment><comment><USER62> Why is healthcare coverage relevant

</comment><comment><USER63> That's some serious manspreading he's got going on there.

<comment><USER64> The middle seat typically does this due to the axle running down the center

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Just because someone happens to work for Walmart /Uber/whoever, I don't see why it means that employer suddenly becomes responsible for meeting any particular set of needs that person might have._

You would have been the "awful" kind of slaver back in the day.

<comment><USER65> Did you really just attack someone the way this comment sounds like you did? That's dismaying. If I've read it correctly, it's the kind of attack we ban accounts for, so please don't do that here.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13758241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13758241) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER5> I thought it was apt. The only problem is that I myself imply that there's a such thing as a "good" slaver, but to assert that an employer is justified by their existence and corporate strategy to reduce their employees to chum is comparably distasteful.

GP's point at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13757973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13757973), where they illustrate a few externalized costs, which also seem reasonable to criticize, received pushback that companies don't have to do nothin' for their employees but reap the profits, which is a bad position to take, IMO.

People use the term "un-American" too much these days, but the person I was responding to went way beyond that into anti-civilization.

There is no way that the person I was replying to could possibly be a slaver, so I wasn't attacking them personally. I was connecting their position to that of slavers who would just as soon let their slaves die in the fields from overwork, dehydration, or any number of other things that "shouldn't be the boss' responsibility."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why is this guy allowed to continue leading a company again?

</comment><comment><USER66> I smell an expert PR move!

</comment><comment><USER67> I always ask the drivers how they like Uber, whether they have considered Lyft (most use both), etc.

The only group of highly disgruntled drivers are the ones who lived in the overpriced period of black cars that existed before Uber came into the market.

The driver probably spent $97K on a luxury car expecting to be able to make the prevailing black car driver wage at the time.

Uber did a great service to consumers by democratizing driving services, and now money flows to so many other people and does tremendous benefit to society.

I'm glad Travis stood up for himself. Maybe if that driver had been more rational and less inclined to gripe about other people's successes causing his life to be miserable, _he_ might have started Uber. He likely had a big advantage over Travis in terms of familiarity with the industry and would have made fewer mistakes early on.

</comment><comment><USER68> 1\. Uber should really put up a policy against drivers using cockpit cameras to record passengers. Most of them do it without any consent. I usually give them 1 star if someone uses cockpit camera.

2\. I have been a big Supporter of Travis Kalanick since last 2-3 years, just for the fact that he's willing to take harsh steps to win. This ultimately helps Uber. Uber's Drivers are not its employees, it doesn't want them to treat them like employees. As more drivers enter the market, supply starts increasing faster than demand and therefore prices must decrease. Since Driving is low barrier profession, its relatively easy to replace them and accumulate them with Uber's model. In this conversation Kalanick is seemingly busy with friends, therefore much less interested in discussing details of his decisions.

<comment><USER69> > I usually give them 1 star if someone uses cockpit camera.

Why would you do that? These drivers are just "taking harsh steps" to ensure their safety and the safety of their property. I thought you were all for that.

Edit: also why should Uber be allowed to dictate what equipment its "not employees" can and can't use in their own car?

<comment><USER68> Drivers are contractors, so Uber can dictate the "terms" for contracts it is part of. Drivers are in a contract with Uber.

Uber should be trying to protect its costumers from privacy violations, so it should take steps to ensure drivers are not using anything that would hurt costumers physically or by any other way. I understand the some of the recent privacy issues in Uber have come from its employees and not from drivers, so It should also be trying to get rid of destructive employees as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Clapbutton.com – A medium like clap button for any blog - <AUTHOR> https://clapbutton.com <comment><USER2> Nice unbundling, similar to what Facebook did for the likes. That said, the pricing is insane. I came in expecting an open source product, or a one time fee at most. There's very little that justifies a continued service.</comment>


Ask HN: please review my project - Landslide on the web - <AUTHOR>

Recently I used Landslide (https://github.com/adamzap/landslide) to create a presentation for a talk I gave. I thought it was really neat, but having to install it was an obvious barrier for a lot of users. So I decided to put it on the web. The result is LetSlide: http://letslide.com.
Please let me know what you think, which features of Landslide you would like to see made available and if and how you would use such a thing.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Letitslide: <http://letslide.com> Landslide: <https://github.com/adamzap/landslide>

This looks like a good resource, cool!

My problem (and this is probably due to landslide) is that you can't easily navigate through the slides with a mouse or trackpad. You can scroll but it's very hard to accurately land on the slide you want. Prev/Next links would be nice!

<comment><AUTHOR> Landslide does have some themes that come with it, but more can be created. One of the features I am contemplating doing is to add the ability to modify themes, host your own, choose pre-existing ones, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This looks nice. One hint: add a link to a finished presentation on the front page, or you'll get lots of people (like me) who click "save" just to see what the result looks like.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow this is is good. Can I embed images by providing links? Or videos?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can embed images. They will get transformed into data URLs. The final product is a single stand-alone HTML file. The only caveat is that the image has to already be on the web somewhere. Haven't tried videos yet. Might be better off with just a link to YouTube for those.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: good startup ideas? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone - here are couple of ideas I would really love feedback on. I'm in a situation where I could bootstrap something, but I'm working on my own and need some confidence on what I'm working on is worthwhile.
1. API Anything - site that lets you create a rest api for any public website (using some behind the scenes headless brower automation). There are loads of companies with in-house web apps that need to talk to each other, right? Initially provide read only api + search.
2. Browser based js web platform - kindof like a cross between a wiki and heroku. The pages can be written to execute javascript on both client and server side, allowing the creation of proper web apps.
The apps would be deployable to appenginejs, and downloadable as an appenginejs project to avoid people worrying about writing code for a new platform.
3. ShowMyCharts - A site which automatically extracts charts and data from excel documents (and other data sources) that live in a particular dropbox folder, allowing people to share reporting information easily.
4. AutoDba - An app which installs on a SQL Server and monitors query performance, suggesting or creating missing indexes etc. <comment><USER2> #1 - <http://gnip.com/> ?

#2 - I don't get it.

#3 - Interesting idea, interesting idea to build functionality on top of Dropbox. Didn't know that was technically feasible.

#4 - This space is way crowded, to say the least.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> sort of the opposite of qnip - the sites it covers all have apis already. the idea is that you could take an existing site without an api and create one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would personally use #1 to make my startup's API (I'm assuming that would be possible) if it were available. I want to focus on the core of our technology and would be happy to "outsource" the API if it were done well.

I'm not sure how ShowMyCharts would work... most of the analysts that I have seen who use Charts have very complex charting needs and are already very comfortable with Excel and it's capabilities. Not sure who the target market is.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is they can write their charts in excel, but have them rendered on a public (or secure) website automatically, allowing them to be embedded in web pages and documents without having to provide the raw data.

+1 for the api thing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> #1 is a great idea. We took a lot of time to build out our API. A product that helps my company be more efficient is a company that I would most definitely try!

Good luck, keep me updated with your progress

</comment><comment><USER5> #4 is a pretty well-populated market; you're going to need to be able to do something special there, if you want to distinguish yourself.

</comment><comment><USER6> #2 great idea ;-)</comment>


Ask HN: What Digital Asset Management Solution Do You Use in Your Organization? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Cumulus?</comment>


The Growing Ponzi Scheme In Venture Capital  - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-growing-ponzi-scheme-in-venture-capital-2011-5

<comment><USER2> This post highlights a deep issue in the industry: Many times in today's climate, investors are more incented by short term returns than building long- term value. Ideally, investors would help companies grow, prosper and reach their potential. Unfortunately, many times their goal is to quickly flip the company for quick returns, sometimes through another round of financing, other times through a quick acquisition that ends up stifling long-term growth.

Very refreshing, honest article.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very eye-opening. If you're involved in a startup, this is definitely worth a read.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Happy to discuss this article with anyone who is interested.</comment>


Why Instagram Is Terrible for Photographers, and Why You Should Use It - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/05/why-instagram-is-terrible-for-photographers-and-why-you-should-use-it/

<comment><USER2> Some artists are realizing that they can expand their online presence by using other apps to create digital art while publishing into Instagram's ecosystem.

I'm never going to print out a 612 x 612 image to hang on my wall. I will contact an artist to ask for a higher resolution image to purchase and display.</comment>


Australian Billionaire Andrew Forrest's high-tech plan to extinguish bushfires - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/andrew-forrests-high-tech-plan-to-extinguish-bushfires-within-an-hour-is-as-challenging-as-it-sounds-146194 <comment><AUTHOR> A description of the plan is available as a PDF at :

[https://cdn.minderoo.org/content/uploads/2020/09/14223039/MF...](https://cdn.minderoo.org/content/uploads/2020/09/14223039/MFFFR- Blueprint-V1-200915.pdf)

The TLDR is to use satellites, IoT, ML, drones and aerial fire suppression.</comment>


Neural Jump SDEs (Jump Diffusions) and Neural PDEs - <AUTHOR> http://www.stochasticlifestyle.com/neural-jump-sdes-jump-diffusions-and-neural-pdes/ <comment><USER2> As someone with only a vague understanding of what neural _DEs are, could someone comment or point me to an article about what they might be useful for? I think I get why they're interesting but I was curious if there are any obvious applications them that do things more conventional methods don't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Neural ODEs approximate ResNet. Neural SDEs approximate Gaussian nets. Nueral Jump SDEs then approximate it by allowing layers to have discontinuous randomness, like a Poisson variable. This might be useful for guessing classifications more directly than doing regression within the net.

On the other end, jump diffusions are a common financial model. Regime shifts are sudden, and cause the economy to rapidly go from one state to another, and adding jumps to an SDE model gives this behavior.

PDEs are a way to approximate functionals which evolve over time. In many applications they have a nonlinear term for how local interactions occur. This generalizes that nonlinear to be a learnable neural network.

The applications of these are left open, since we don't really know yet. This is just showing that the software can now handle these types of models, which are more general forms of differential equations than what were "neural'd before", and so the applications may come from people who work with these models in the non-neural sense but want to add more functional estimation / identification.

<comment><USER3> One thing I find kind of strange about this development is that the code for doing these kind of optimizations has been around for a long time and been in serious use in industry ("Neural" PDEs (i.e. applying adjoint sensitivity analysis) are routinely used in Gas / Oil exploration) and the same is true for Jump SDEs and volatility calibration / pricing of financial assets. I guess everything old is new again, when a new set of people discovers (really) old tools.

Still I would like to thank for making these examples available aswell as for your work on DiffEq.jl

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a difference from what was done before though. While we are using adjoint sensitivity analysis of the old, we have things setup so that the internal vjp (vector-Jacobian product) is using reverse-mode AD that is compatible with the neural network framework to do that calculation in O(1) instead of O(n) f-calls. We have a PR setup that will make it do source-to- source AD on that part as well. So this scaling is distinctly different in terms of scalability from the traditional numerical codes like that found in Sundials. We are not the first to do this, CASADI has been doing this for a bit of time, but we can now demonstrate that we can throw arbitrary Flux.jl neural network frameworks in there and reverse-mode will specialize this, and specialize the whole thing.

And yes, parameter estimation in jump SDEs has been around, but using full solver reverse-mode AD on high order GPU-accelerated adaptive solvers has not been around, and we're talking about many orders of magnitude speedups here when you put these all together.

But yes, in terms of the math, the jump is very small here. But last week at a conference I got some questions about whether an existing tool can actually allow you to just define a PDE or jump diffusion with neural networks in there and take an adjoint that is both efficient in the differential equation and the neural network. I was saying yes, but given the previous DiffEqFlux.jl it would require someone to understand the capabilities of the AD/adjoint system, know all of the differential equations that can be solved through the package, and realize they can write a code to do it. I wanted to make it explicit by sharing code: yes, we do neural jump diffusions and nerual PDEs. It's not something hypothesized in the future, it's something that our package is already doing today with all of the goodies you expect from the ODE support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you for this.

I remember my first reaction to the Neural ODEs paper was to tell my professor that they forgot to mention the parabolic PDEs case (through SDEs).</comment>


Useful Free Small Icons For Web Development Projects - <AUTHOR> http://www.designyourway.net/blog/resources/useful-free-small-icons-for-web-development-projects/ Small icons are a necessity for web development projects, due to the fact that they're simple, efficient and they don't overcrowd the design. Varying from sizes of 16x16px to 48x48px, they shouldn't miss from your icons collection. Bookmark and consider them for your next projects cause they're free to download. <comment><USER2> Not a bad collection. Another good resource I use: <http://www.iconfinder.com/>

Smashing Mag also posts good stuff from time to time.</comment>


Dutch judge rules all ISPs have to block TPB, same week netneutrality law passes - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnos.nl%2Fartikel%2F371662-pirate-bay-geweerd-bij-alle-providers.html&act=url

<comment><AUTHOR> Quick OMG-google-translate-sucks-translation:

A judge has ruled downloading site The Pirate Bay will have to be blocked by providers KPN, UPC, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort.

The providers don't want to block the website, according to Tele2 it's pointless. The block can easily be avoided by more skilled computer users.

The Brein Foundation sued the providers in April. After an earlier law suit, providers Ziggo and XS4ALL were forced to block TPB. In England five British ISPs were also recently told by a judge to make the website inaccessible.

The Brein Foundation defends the rights of authors. Internet users can download music, movies and software through links on The Pirate Bay. The files that are offered often contain copyrighted material.

Downloading files isn't illegal in the Netherlands, but offering copyrighted files is.</comment>


Facebook bug let websites read 'likes' and interests from a user's profile - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/13/facebook-bug-website-leak-likes-interests-profile/ <comment><USER2> Source, with actual details: [https://www.imperva.com/blog/facebook-privacy- bug/](https://www.imperva.com/blog/facebook-privacy-bug/)</comment>


HN Christmas colors: #CC4B4B #BE2828 #005A00 - <AUTHOR> http://news.ycombinator.com Merry Christmas HN and all Hs <comment><USER2> Funny, when I first saw it I wasn't sure if my monitor was screwed up, whether someone had defaced HN or if some Chrome plugin was misbehaving. Though I eventually figured it out with the alternating red/green submission colors and HNSearching for "Christmas CSS". I also found out that you could change your topcolor and immediately set it to #000000 so people would stop pestering me when they saw I was reading a hacker website.

<comment><USER3> "I also found out that you could change your topcolor and immediately set it to #000000 so people would stop pestering me when they saw I was reading a hacker website."

Thank you!!

<comment><USER4> What does that mean?

<comment><USER5> Once you reach a certain karma threshold, you gain the ability to change the colour of the orange bar at the top of HN pages. The setting is labelled 'topcolor'.

<comment><USER6> Off topic, but why the heck does this require karma?

<comment><USER7> The required karma threshold is not much (500 if I remember), so it may be a way to say "thanks and keep going" to people who start investing some time to participate to HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, I'm slow. I assumed the red and green was a new feature that showed whether a story had recently risen (green) or fallen (red) on the front page — so you could better keep track of trends. I didn't notice they were consistently alternating.

<comment><USER9> I thought that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Excellent. Thanks!</comment>


The Decaf Pouch: A Little Pouch That Decaffeinates Any Cup of Coffee - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/decafino/the-decaf-pouch-a-bold-new-way-to-decaf <comment><USER2> Is that a bag of montmorillonite?[1] Is this to see how much coffee hipsters will pay for dirt?

[1] - [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09168451.2017.13...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09168451.2017.1340087) "Caffeine adsorption of montmorillonite in coffee extracts"

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have any firsthand knowledge, but it was created by a group of chemical engineering graduates who have been prototyping it for 2-3 years:

Interviews: [https://www.coffeeloversradio.com/clr-e117-decaf-coffee- has-...](https://www.coffeeloversradio.com/clr-e117-decaf-coffee-has-never- tasted-this-good/), [https://seattlecoffeescene.com/decaf-coffee-get-really- inter...](https://seattlecoffeescene.com/decaf-coffee-get-really-interesting- tasty-seattles-decafino/) (2017)

Tweets from one of their advisors, a UW Chemical Engineering professor: [https://twitter.com/lilopozzo/status/874342896798846976](https://twitter.com/lilopozzo/status/874342896798846976), [https://twitter.com/lilopozzo/status/1102031606233980928](https://twitter.com/lilopozzo/status/1102031606233980928)

<comment><USER2> From the kickstarter page under "How Does it Work?":

> _" The Decaf Pouch is full of beads that are made of a natural mineral that > attracts and binds caffeine. Through a physical process called adsorption, > the caffeine molecules stick to the beads."_

Yeah. Read my linked paper. The kickstarter photo certainly looks a lot like the primary component in most cat litter. Bentonite/montmorillonite is amazing stuff, but it's not amazing enough to buy in tiny pouches at a premium instead of by the kilo.</comment></comment></comment>


Chinese court rejects Apple lawsuit over iPad name - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/06/us-apple-china-idUSTRE7B52EB20111206?irpc=932

<comment><USER2> One, quite important, fact is missing in this article. That is, that Apple bought the trademark in 2009 from IP Application which is Proview's child company. So this ruling was actually about validity of that sale.

</comment><comment><USER3> The firm has trademarked the name since 2000 and Apple is suing to get the name?</comment>


SSH: Use Password or Public-Private Keys? - <AUTHOR> http://lwn.net/Articles/369703/ <comment><USER3> I use one key everywhere, but the private key lives on two places only: a usb drive on my keychain and on a backup floppy. When I sit down at a system, I load the key into the agent and then unmount the usb drive. It seems that the only way the private key could be compromised is if someone breaks into the agent when I'm on the machine or if someone spoofs the connection to the agent (which, if I understand correctly, won't give them the key, only the ability to use the key while the agent is running).

If the usb drive is lost/stolen, there should be no information that reveals which systems it works on. The key also has a very long passphrase, since I only type it once per day, so that should at least make brute force attacks against the key difficult.

This seems like a pretty secure solution to me. What other weaknesses can you think of?

<comment><USER4> _(which, if I understand correctly, won't give them the key, only the ability to use the key while the agent is running)_

By design, talking to to the ssh-agent should not give you the decrypted key. However, in reality, anybody that could write to the ssh-agent socket could also ptrace() the agent and find the key in its memory. That would of course require becoming the user you are running ssh-agent as, but that's typically not very difficult.

 _What other weaknesses can you think of?_

A key logger.

Basically, if you don't trust the system you decrypt your key on, all bets are off.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, talking to the agent _on the same system_ , I agree. But I think the risk of compromising the agent are a lot higher through the forwarded connection (which I use to log into highly populated systems). And I meant that through the _connection_ you shouldn't be able to get the key.

The key logger is a good point, but I basically only log in from my laptop, office computer or home computer. Only if one of those three are compromised, as opposed to one of the innumerable machines I log in to, should that be a risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Speaking from experience, while keys are more useful, and more secure if universally used properly - I've seen keys bite firms where it hurts much more often than passwords - because people at some level leave an unprotected key laying around, and that key ends up with root level access to a huge array of servers. The argument is made, in the article, that if people won't password protect their keys they are equally likely to email their password - but this doesn't ring true - it's more logical and straightforward for people to understand a password that needs to be kept secure than a keyfile, which is more abstract and they may not understand.

So - does that mean I wouldn't recommend using keys? No - but if you are going to use them, you have to couple that with strict policies regarding usage and rotation.

I use keys for systems where I'm the sole administrator - because I know MY key management practices - but in group situations, we generally stick to passwords as the primary entry point (and then perhaps keys when it comes to accessing clusters of servers - but we tend to treat those clusters as a single functional machine, so keys make sense here)

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't key + passphrase be at least as secure as a password?

<comment><USER7> certainly, but you'll have to guarantee that no user has a keyfile without a password, which is harder than checking for weak passwords on your server...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even better: two factor authentication.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-factor_authentication>

Are there any examples of people using these to access a sshd? I know it's becoming common practice for access to VPN, etc. but it'd be nice to have this without the hassle of a VPN.

<comment><USER9> It used to be possible to require both password and pubkey authentication (which is a form of two-factor authentication). Unfortunately this was discontinued in newer versions of OpennSSH (I have no idea why).

<comment><USER10> Strange. You could still probably rig something with a jailshell that requires you to su.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I use key-based authentication with password-protected key. I don't (mostly) have to type the password, because OS X is smart enough to store it to keychain (if enabled). I also have FileVault enabled and my login password prompted when resuming from a sleep, so I think my private key is pretty well protected.

<comment><USER12> Are you saying that OS X remembers your SSH passwords?

<comment><USER13> No it remembers the password of the private key... On linux, you can get something similar with ssh-agent

<comment><USER14> I also use ssh-agent on Windows, through msysgit. I think putty also includes some utility that does the same thing.

<comment><USER15> Putty has Pageant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's the problem with brute-force attacks? Why can't a simple incorrect- password timeout prevent them?

<comment><USER17> There doesn't appear to be a way to prevent these attacks without locking out legitimate users, making DoS (denial-of-service attacks) trivial (thereby locking out legitimate users), or both. The fundamental problem is that the bad guys can open lots of connections.

Suppose you pause for 10s (after an incorrect password/before checking the password/...). This make it very easy to spawn so many sshd processes that you end up with a DoS (either the system stops spawning sshd processes, locking out everyone, or it is overwhelmed). If you solve this somehow, the bad guys can just open a ton of connections and just wait 10s - they'll need more connections, but they can still saturate the link with login attempts. Blocking IPs after too many connections doesn't help much against botnets; limiting the number of total connections locks out legitimate users; blocking all but specific address blocks locks out legitimate users (at home, or your sysadmin-on-a-holiday trying to fix your system in an internet cafe halfway across the globe.)

In short, anything you do seems to make it easy (easier) to lock out legitimate users. On the other hand, switching to private-key-only or private- key-and-one-time-password-only (or instituting a check on password quality) makes this attack infeasible.

<comment><USER16> Why doesn't opening a large number of connections to a server secured by private-key work as a DoS attack? Isn't the number of connections required to overload the system the same regardless of security method?

<comment><USER17> The number of connections is equal, but it is - at least in theory - <USER2> to set a lower timeout when using private keys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are a lot of open issues with ssh keys, especially in an internal environment with a lot of end users. Is is difficult to control the distribution of keys or force a key password policy.

1) Users will copy their .ssh directories to every server they have access to so that they don't have to type in passwords. To deal with this:

      a. You can limit where public keys are stored with the AuthorizedKeysFile directive in sshd_conf. Force all keys to be controlled by root and in a central location.

      b. Implement kerberos so that users don't need to use keys for single sign-on.

      c. only allow keys for functional ids (i.e. mysql), use IP filtering (from=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) on the public key to limit key access to a few administrative servers.

      d. If NFS homedirs are exported to the world, any attacker can mount them and read off the keys from .ssh directories.

Other folks have mentioned brute-force attacks against your ssh daemons on the public internet. If possible, you should think about using a VPN/two-factor authentication to get access to your network or internal gateway servers.

</comment><comment><USER19> My friends and I recently changed our server over from password to key-based, and a small unintended consequence came up: I could no longer SSH from my phone! I'm told that I can get my key on my phone somehow, but I've been too lazy to actually do it. Luckily I figured this out before it was important.

Then again, I'm not sure how important that actually is...

<comment><USER20> TouchTerm on iPhone supports SSH keys.

<comment><USER21> iSSH does as well.

What I did was put my key in Dropbox, load it from the Dropbox app, and copy- paste as needed. Then took the key out of my DRopbox when done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Use password-protected key pairs when you can, passwords where you can't.

And always check the key fingerprints.</comment>


Ask HN: Grad school in the Nordic - <AUTHOR>

I have decided location is important in my life. After searching, I am finding it hard to get reliable info as I have no contacts familiar with this area. Details that interest me: - Top schools/lists of schools for graduate interdisciplinary engineering programs, especially in AI, Media Arts, Game Design, HCI, CompSci, roughly in that order<p>- Cost of attending Masters vs PhD (is it like the US where a masters is really expensive?)<p>- Places to get consistent reviews/details/comparisons of schools.<p>I would really appreciate any HN members willing to show me the ropes of applying to grad school in the EU! <comment><USER2> I can only really speak from my own experience as a Master's student in Norway, but here goes:

\- There is generally no tuition fee at state universities and university colleges, though students do have to pay a small semester fee (about 180$ per annum in my case).

\- I can't really help you with reviews/details/comparisons, but a few schools off the top of my head are: University of Oslo [1], Norwegian University of Science and Technology [2], Østfold University College [3].

However, there are a few differences from US programs. For instance, there are no "master's en route" programs. Master's programs last for two years (concluded with a dissertation), and are a prerequisite for Ph.D. programs (which last for 3-4 years, depending on how you finance your research).

As for applying, I'm not entirely sure how you would go about doing this, as the process is streamlined through a special website for citizens. I would suggest checking the websites of the schools that most pique your interest, as the process may vary from institution to institution.

Good luck!

[1]: [http://www.uio.no/english/](http://www.uio.no/english/) [2]: [http://www.ntnu.edu](http://www.ntnu.edu) [3]: [http://www.hiof.no/eng/frontpage?lang=eng](http://www.hiof.no/eng/frontpage?lang=eng)</comment>


When the Cookie Meets the Blockchain [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.04748 <comment><USER2> Here's a write-up of the research [1] by the researchers.

[1] [https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/08/17/when-the-cookie- mee...](https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2017/08/17/when-the-cookie-meets-the- blockchain/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a nicely written paper. More fuel to fire for the bitcoin skeptic.</comment>


LogoThief - <AUTHOR> http://www.logothief.com/

<comment><USER2> I used to live with a designer who independently came up with many ideas that we ended up seeing show up over the years. He had come up with this video idea of people's thoughts bubbling over their heads, nothing special, and in the short term a Toronto Dominion bank commercial had the exact same thing. Many designers read/resource all the same sites, it's no wonder there are similar designs. I figure this explains some of the "less compelling" duplicates, perhaps it was just people thinking along the same lines?

<comment><USER3> I agree, but which designs on the subbed site are less compelling?

<comment><USER4> this one by a wide margin

[http://www.logothief.com/jose-cant-think-outside-the- square/](http://www.logothief.com/jose-cant-think-outside-the-square/)

also some of these are different enough to very easily be reached independently.

[http://www.logothief.com/the-great-international-coffee- cup-...](http://www.logothief.com/the-great-international-coffee-cup-rip-off/)

Even I designed a logo like that once for a coffee shop at my university.

<comment><USER5> A couple of the coffee cups might not be direct copies, but the majority of them clearly are. The proportions and shapes are all nearly identical.

If you described this logo to ten random web designers and asked them to draw what you described, you would end up with ten considerably different looking cups of coffee. With these logos, almost all of the coffee cups are the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I once hired a designer to create a logo and only months later discovered he had poached it from somewhere else. Not all of these companies are "logo thieves", some simply didn't know that the designer they paid to create something original had copied something.

</comment><comment><USER7> Honestly, I don't think this is stealing in more than just a technical sense. This is little different that a mashup or a cover of an older song. And some of the newer versions are a little better.

Not a big fan of the concept of "intellectual property." The site itself is kind of fun.

<comment><USER8> I think it is stealing and it is pretty bad. Intellectual property can be misused when it is used to capture something (whether an artistic expression or an invention) that is not very unique or inventive or creative and would have been easily used and discovered by many others had the original "inventor" or "artist" not created it. At that point, intellectual property becomes oppressive.

But this is not the case here. These are unique artistic expressions. True they are simple, but it is impossible to imagine someone creating the same thing without knowing the original. There is practically an unlimited number of ways one can convey a logo. Protecting the rights of one logo does not meaningfully limit the rights of others (if you ignore the "right" to get artistic work done for free).

In these cases we should allow the artist to have a right to their creation.

<comment><USER7> You've described the technical meaning of stealing very well. But I don't think it's ontologically possible for a person to own something like these logos. Such ownership is a legal fiction set up by legal traditions whose intellectual property protections have started to become more of a problem than a solution. Their remaining relevance it seems to me is to empower corporations such as IBM and Microsoft to extract rent (in the context of patents), and to give money to attorneys and politicians and lobbyists. It is hard for me to have much sympathy for the notion that such protections are in place in the present context primarily for artist making the logo (in the case of trademark, etc.) when there are so many other interests that hang just a little bit back in the background.

In most cases on the site the copies are undeniably in bad taste. But not something to be protected by law, in my opinion.

<comment><USER9> Well considering people charge a lot for logo design, and apparently it does take expertise and effort (remember the Yahoo logo debacle?), so shouldn't it be a crime that some logo designer charges a huge sum of money and just copy pastes some other designer's hard work as his own? How would you feel if someone is making money off of your hard work?

Btw I am not entirely sure if the original artist is pressing charges against the copies, but by law, you should have an option to.

I support you in the fight against patent trolls, but this is just out right theft :/

<comment><USER10> I don't mind people earning money off my hard work? I already did it, and was already paid for it. The only problem I see is that customers are being scammed into thinking they purchased a unique logo... there is contract law to resolve such problems.

<comment><USER9> Oh and you might not mind it, but some people might. The law should provide them protection. The choice to press charges or not should be Yours. There SHOULD be a choice.

Btw, since we are discussing copyrights as a whole, this reminds me of the oatmeal incident. Other sites just picking up his comics and using them to get traffic (and thus diverting traffic what would have been potentially his) is completely wrong. It is depriving him of his hard earned money via those visitors. Now shouldn't the Law help him get what is rightfully his?

I think i understand where you are coming from, these things should never hinder creative process. And you are right. But copyrights exist fundamentally to guard against plagiarism. Not to say "i thought of this first! you can't think of it now!", but yes, sadly in recent times IP has come to that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At what point does this go from plagiarism to creatively modifying another piece of art?

For example, epic nation's logo is clever in that by rotation, it changes the EZ logo to EN. Is that necessarily plagiarism? Isn't that more akin to a "remix"?

</comment><comment><USER12> While designers like myself often think of ourselves as the victims here, often the companies are victims as well. Many of them spent money, good money in some cases, to end up with a shady designer or agency ripping off work and selling it as their own. The client is not only left without a mark to represent their brand, having to start all over but they've lost the money they already spent and risk lawsuits for the infringement. This is another good reason to find a reputable designer you can trust. A local designer you've met face to face and know a real name and address will help tremendously as many shady "designers" like to hide behind the anonymity of the internet. This is also the reason why many crowd-sourced services and competitions have been caught with blatantly stolen logos for sale.

<comment><USER13> Is there any form of recourse if you discover that a designer you hired actually stole a logo?

<comment><USER14> Sue him?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While several of the examples posted are egregious, I also find several not all that compelling.

<comment><USER5> Really? I looked at all of them and only found one that wasn't an obvious copy. I've seen similar sites where lots of the accusations seemed sketchy, but these are all really blatant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> And it's not just limited to logos: [http://www.geekceo.com/static/images/zoto_zoho.png](http://www.geekceo.com/static/images/zoto_zoho.png)

</comment><comment><USER17> There's an old saying by one Mr Picasso that fits this nicely. It's often mistakenly attributed to one Mr Jobs an awful lot too...

<comment><USER18> "Good artists copy, great artists steal."

That one?

<comment><USER19> Which in itself is attributed to many - I first heard it via Stravinsky, but apparently it's not Picasso's either.

[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists- steal/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/)

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't be surprised it Picasso hadn't ever said it at all. Even if he had, Picasso created his own genre of art. Actions speak louder than words.

It really doesn't matter where the quote came from. Even when put into proper context (which has rarely happened in the past) the logic behind it is shaky.

Great artists do imitate, as students they copy the techniques and methods of those who came before them, in order to learn and master the skills they will need to make their own art. When they are ready, the truly great artists then proceed to create things that we've never seen before.

<comment><USER19> In the context of Music, which I understand better than the visual arts, imitation is what a young composer or musician will do. Once they develop their own voice, 'stealing' becomes a thing of great skill: remixing, as it were. In Stravinsky's case, he lifted content from Webern and made it new. Bartok did it with Shostakovich who did it in turn to Tchaikovsky and on and on and circularly.. one of the wonders of studying musical history is tracing the influences, and the mastery of those who took what came before them and made it new.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Art Has Been Created by AI. Will Collectors Want It? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-09/ai-art-from-mario-klingemann-memories-of-passersby-to-sell <comment><USER2> This could be some banal snapchat filters and automated photoshop transformations, but it could also be the dawn of new '-ism'.</comment>


Firefox is still slower than Chrome for web developers - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Aissn/status/1119236020845907970 <comment><USER2> > Fun fact: this is a known issue that was closed as WORKSFORME

That's a bit harsh since the original bug filer agreed that it was much faster for him before the big was closed.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Maybe this calls for a benchmark and a tracking website like arewefastyet for better measurability and awareness.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Neonto is a visual tool for creating native iOS and Android UIs - <AUTHOR> http://neonto.com/?showhn=1

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey all,

this is a Mac app that generates native iOS and Android code from a visual design. There's no runtime involved -- the output code uses native platform APIs as concisely as possible. You can view a tutorial video on the site to get a better idea (although the video doesn't cover nearly everything).

This is my longest side project ever... I was previously making a HTML5 animation app called Radi which was released as "Show HN" in 2010, almost exactly four years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2040844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2040844)

Neonto Studio Pro is essentially a pivot of the Radi codebase (created by a new team, not just myself). Instead of HTML5, it generates high-quality Objective-C and Java code. Instead of an abundance of animation tools, the UI has a set of generic mobile design tools and patterns.

One particular target for this product is content-centric mobile apps: photo books, music albums, video apps, or anything else that is built around content. But you can also use it for more generic "scaffolding" of native apps.

There's so much that a native app can do, and it's impossible to squeeze it all into a visual design tool... To address this problem, Neonto Studio has a rich plugin API that uses JavaScript. The idea is that many projects will use plugins for core functionality. Plugins can provide their own UIs inside Neonto Studio, and they write native iOS/Android code on export (so code generated by a plugin is indistinguishable in the generated code). You can find a couple of plugins in the "Getting Started" screen in the app, and more will be published on the blog.

Would love to hear what you think! If you're in the mood for reading, there's a thorough explanation of the underlying thinking behind this product on Neonto's blog: [http://blog.neonto.com/?p=44](http://blog.neonto.com/?p=44)

</comment><comment><USER2> Being a mac app makes it totally useless to me, would love to see it on Linux too or Windows, if it ever happens I will be happy to try it out, since it would make my life easier.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's no pricing on the site, what's the price after Beta?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure yet. The plan is that Neonto's business would be more about selling valuable add-ons (cloud services, plugins etc.) rather than the actual app itself.

So if that happens, the price of the app itself will be as low as possible.

<comment><USER3> Such a pricing is something that i like and would buy into!

Will there be any required subscription lock-in or crippling of essential features?

<comment><AUTHOR> The intention is definitely not to cripple anything in the base app, but rather sell useful add-ons for specific uses and special needs.

Since Neonto Studio generates real native code, we can't limit how you use, modify or publish the apps you make. So that's one thing that guarantees you're not locked in.

<comment><USER3> That's quite amazing and very rare!

Thanks for sharing the details, I'll be sure to try it out asap!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


'Hidden Figures' NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson to Release Autobiography - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/books/la-et-jc-katherine-johnson-autobiography-20181220-story.html <comment><USER2> Katherine Johnson is a badass. I need to watch Hidden Figures!

<comment><USER3> The movie is entertaining but misleading. If you have the time, check out the book the movie is based on.

<comment><USER4> > but misleading

I wondered about that when I was watching it. The Katherine Johnson character, in the movie, had a huge epiphany that "saved" the space program: use Newton's method to find roots of polynomials! I groaned out loud when I saw that - I'm sure that the actual NASA engineers were very definitely familiar with high- school calculus (in fact, that's probably what most of the human computers were doing most of the time). I'm sure that she actually did make contributions that were profound - so why not just show those? Most of the audience wouldn't have noticed the difference and you wouldn't have to make it look like she did the equivalent of coming into a stock trading company and saying "Have you considered buying low and selling high?"

<comment><USER5> I think this is why the movie spent so much time on the bathroom issue. Not only was it a stand-in for many other forms of discrimination, but it's something the audience could understand with just a high school level math education.

It's quite possible that the scriptwriters themselves didn't understand the math and tried to pick out the easiest example they could understand and translate on the screen.</comment></comment></comment></comment>