Burglar targeting startups in San Francisco - <AUTHOR>

He stole two laptops from us this morning in SOMA and looks to be part of a crime ring involved in other burglaries according to the police. Stay on the lookout and contact me (firstname.lastname@example.com) if you recognize him from other burglaries. $2,500 reward for conclusive information.
His MO is to be extremely well dressed and knock on the door first, and pry the door open with a screwdriver before opening the latch with a metal card.
http://makeagif.com/i/jZ8Ibg <comment><USER2> In the early days of Quantcast we had a couple robberies in our second SOMA office. Fortunately most people had taken their laptops home but we lost a few things.

The police were apologetic, said that even if we had proof and knew who it was the DA wouldn't press charges (this was 5 years ago, different DA, but I doubt the caseload has changed). The officer said to basically consider stuff in our office to be as secure as stuff left visible in a car when parked.

We asked the officer how the robber got in. His eyes lit up, he finally felt useful. He took a quick look around and in two minutes showed us how the robber had gotten in. We fixed that, and never had another breakin.

A useful lesson in how the police can actually help.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you share any more details?

Where in SoMa your office is located? Rough intersection should be ok.

What time did the robberies happen?

What ethnicity is he?

<comment><AUTHOR> 8am Tuesday near South Park. Black male age 35-45. Burglaries were at 8am on Tuesday morning.</comment></comment>


Did WakeMate fold? - <AUTHOR>

Our WakeMate just stopped working, and their website doesn't seem to be responding either. The only thing I can find on the web is someone saying that their mailing lists are inactive and that mail to their office is being returned to sender. Does anyone know what's going on? <comment><USER2> From 12 hours ago: "Hi everyone! Think we had a data overload! Hit a snag in going back online due to the holidays. Hoping tomorrow, will update everyone then!"

<comment><AUTHOR> Funny, Google doesn't index twitter? Good to know though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not according to their Twitter feed. <https://twitter.com/#!/wakemate>

Not a customer though, so I don't know for sure.

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey guys, website just went down temporarily. Think we had a data overload. Should be back up tonight, will continue sending out further updates via twitter!</comment>


Telegram probably isn't as secure as ISIS thinks - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/encryption-app-telegram-probably-isnt-as-secure-for-terrorists-as-isis-thinks <comment><AUTHOR> If you wondering why cryptographers haven't claimed the $300,000 prize offered by Telegram, this is a good start:

[http://thoughtcrime.org/blog/telegram-crypto- challenge/](http://thoughtcrime.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/)

I don't think you should use Telegram.

<comment><USER2> What should I use for casual, daily chatting with friends that runs on Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, Windows Phone, web, and allows group messaging and message history search?

<comment><USER3> I keep seeing these dire warnings whenever Telegram is mentioned, and I don't understand the hate. Is it some super secure platform? Probably not, but people needing a provably NSA-resistant chat client is such a tiny percentage of the people interested in regular chatting. None of the warnings I see have the nuance of "don't use it if you think it'll keep you safe from the government, but otherwise it's a pretty nice service to use" nor do they list the chat services that they feel are more secure.

Compared to the alternatives of Skype, WhatsApp, SMS, Hangouts, iMessage, etc it's a good chat service, with a relatively lightweight native client on multiple platforms, actual working sync, and good recovery when used on poor Internet connection.

<comment><USER4> > I keep seeing these dire warnings whenever Telegram is mentioned, and I > don't understand the hate.

The hate stems from two main sources:

1\. They're claiming to be secure in a very flamboyant (even _arrogant_ ) manner by challenging the world's cryptographers to break their protocol, but the contest is structured to be unwinnable regardless of how shitty their crypto actually is.

2\. Telegram spends less time improving their crypto (which is full of WTFs) and instead markets themselves to people who aren't technical enough to figure out how shitty it really is.

Seriously, avoid Telegram. If you want Signal to work on more platforms, send a check to Open Whisper Systems and help them build up their team to cover more area.

<comment><USER5> Terrorists are secure whatever they do.

The 4 or 5 people in the nsa that actually do any work don't stand a chance against several hundred million baby breeders with ak47s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It really bothers me that VICE Motherboard (I've not read much from their other sections), who markets themselves as a controversial, alternative news source, distinguishes themselves by publishing more reasonable and better researched articles.

I've never gotten the impression from any other reporting (Wired, CNN) on this issue that they so much as skimmed Moxie Marlinspike, Michael Green, or anyone else's criticisms of Telegram.

</comment><comment><USER7> How can one even remotely think that an app like Telegram _can_ be secure, as long we know the very platforms it's running on are hackable (there are more than enough 0days on the market)?! Yeah, maybe it's expensive and a bit friendly-fire-ish to target platform holes on a large scale, but still...

My bet is that the real bad guys always use face2face when possible, and voice/video with codewords and visual cues when there's no other choice... and maybe an encripted sdcard carried by hand/mail when they really need to cary large volumes. They can't be stupid enough to use anything else for such high risk stuff!

 _I 'd guess that the only people actually depending on good consumer-lever crypto are whistleblowers, anti-goverment protesters and individuals and companies that truly value their privacy for one reason or another! Are these the people we want to hurt here?!_

<comment><USER8> Glad at least one person mentions it albeit near the bottom of the comments. I've been telling them that since before the Snowden leaks. Nice summary of required assurance activities and areas where issues pop up:

[http://pastebin.com/y3PufJ0V](http://pastebin.com/y3PufJ0V)

The one exception is Ottela's Tinfoil Chat. It needs a robust, low-level implementation instead of Python. Yet, he cleverly dodged much of the TCB problem by creatively applying what he learned from others plus input we gave him on Schneier's blog for high assurance security & general improvements. So, you can build on and use that* but the rest depend on what top-tier and organized crime can buy attacks for. Ridiculous....

* Again, without Python and with TCB enhancements. OpenBSD at the least for its lower 0-days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The most disappointing thing about Telegram is that they are completely unwilling to accept any kind of criticism or use any outside suggestions for improving their crypto. Kind of goes against the whole "open source" thing they're doing there.

Also the fact that it doesn't even have end-to-end encryption by default means it shouldn't even be in the same class as "secure messengers". It's better suited in the Skype/Hangouts class of apps.

</comment><comment><USER10> The thing is that as a random user, you might want to keep the content of your message secret for various reason (like ad profiling for example).

Once you are more or less identified as a terrorist, from the point of view of an intelligence organization, they might be sad to not get the content of the messages, but is they can have the graph of your contact, they'll be more than happy (and find the weakest link in there).

Incidentally I have also checked that the Telegram and Signal app are requesting a Location permission on Android. I don't know if it is sent to some sort of central server, but this does seem not safe if youe life depends on it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Misleading title. This has nothing to do with privacy and encryption. Just to quote a couple of recent Pavel Durov's tweets: "To media covering us this week: Telegram channels are public broadcasts. They are the opposite of private chats. Please don't mix the two."... "Our policy is simple: privacy is paramount. Public channels, however, have nothing to do with privacy. ISIS public channels will be blocked."

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's why Telegram is important: it is the only communication service with mass worldwide adoption that isn't backed by a corporation, venture capitalists, or a government.

Everything else—including the company's cocky and downright insulting attitude—doesn't matter nearly as much. I actually think a lot of what they say gets lost in translation.

We recently integrated with Telegram (without their knowledge, support, or blessing, of course—because Telegram), which sent me on a little research journey. Results are here: [https://sameroom.io/blog/announcing-support-for- telegram/](https://sameroom.io/blog/announcing-support-for-telegram/)

<comment><USER8> You mean its security or impressions from a pro looking at its code matter less than who backed it? I think not. Its design, implementation, and evidence they're correct matter more than who backs it. It has to measure up before those things are even an issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Confirming ISIS uses your app probably isn't the best way to secure future investors. ;)

<comment><USER14> A number of intelligence services with growing budgets would be happy to invest in such an app.

<comment><USER15> No idea about credibility of the sources used, but I stumbled over this: [http://revolution-news.com/us-government-funds-favorite- nsa-...](http://revolution-news.com/us-government-funds-favorite-nsa-proof- apps/)

 _edit: atm. 111 points and I love that. Wish pg could fix my karma, I really like even numbers and I feel that the karma crave is addictive.._

btw. I agree with you. It's clever and the tools intelligence services have created for these purposes are fascinating

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If the headline is true then that is excellent.

But I think Pavel Durov should make a system that gives up terrorists' communications if it detects indicators eg words that will lead to planning a violent attack. And without informing everyone about it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nicely implemented chat services are in demand, or so it seems. They might be sold into the billions and monetized with ads, and I guess the negative spin comes from purely business origin, though disguised as concerns of crypto professionals.

BTW, if Telegram crypto was that much insecure why members of the so-called "security community" haven't yet compromised the Telegram chat for real (regardless of any contests and petty rules) and proven they had been right?

I don't rule out this as impossible - I just think that without such proof it's all just a kind of stupid whining.

</comment><comment><USER17> All of the metadata problems he complaind about also apply to Signal.</comment>


Show HN: Transcrypt Python to JavaScript compiler w. ES6 modules, alpha release - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/QQuick/Transcrypt/releases/tag/ES6_modules_early_experience <comment><AUTHOR> This is an early experience release. Official release will be in July. For production use v3.6.101. [http://www.transcrypt.org](http://www.transcrypt.org)</comment>


Deploying a Pylons App On DotCloud In Under Sixty Seconds - <AUTHOR> http://rgarcia.github.com/2011/04/28/deploying-a-pylons-app-on-dotcloud.html

<comment><USER2> Nice writeup. It's great to see Pylons deployments becoming as simple as Rails.. I have high hopes for DotCloud.</comment>


A Collection of Useful .gitignore Templates - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/github/gitignore <comment><USER2> I'm of the opinion that artifacts of IDEs an OSes should not be part of a projects .gitignore. After all, different people could be using different environments for development and I really don't see the need for a projects .gitignore to contain the subset of all possible artifacts.

Use .git/info/exclude or a repository independent personal .gitignore for this.

The projects file is for files created by running the code or maybe some unavoidable build artifacts happening in all cases (.o files for example)

I really hate commits with messages like "updating .gitignore for Joe's new IDE"

</comment><comment><USER3> Some projects like Git itself refuse to add editor droppings like _~ and #_ to .gitignore. They consider the .gitignore file to be _only_ for things that the build system produces, e.g. *.o and binaries.

If you want to ignore things that your editor adds you should add it in .git/info/excludes, not .gitignore.

<comment><USER4> I put text editor stuff in my global .gitignore

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you are using Django/Python, it might be useful to add *.pyc to your gitignore. These are compiled python files.

Also, if you're developing on a Mac, it would also be useful to add .DS_Store. It's an invisible file, and it just stores some properties of that directory,

<comment><USER6> I believe these are already covered:

      https://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/Python.gitignore

      https://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/Global/OSX.gitignore

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I only looked at the Django gitignore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like a lot of these should have leading slashes so they only match the root directory and not any file with that name.

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone got a good Clojure one?

<comment><USER9> The one created by Leiningen is pretty good.

        .cake
        pom.xml
        *.jar
        *.war
        lib
        classes
        build

<comment><USER10> It's interesting that the Java one doesn't list *.jar.

<comment><USER11> Probably because sometimes you want to check libraries into your project. For custom jars, I'd immagine you'd want to specify their paths exactly, or something like (bin|build)/*.jar

<comment><USER12> Can't you exclude all jars by default and add whatever libs you do want to check in? I don't know too much about git, but that is how I would do it in Mercurial. (In Mercurial, if you specify an explicit filename, it overrides .hgignore.)

<comment><USER13> You can, you just need to use ``git add -f`` otherwise you get an error.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


6502 emulator in Minecraft runs Forth - <AUTHOR> http://gamegenus.blogspot.com/2012/04/6502-emulator-in-minecraft-runs-forth.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> You should watch the video at the bottom, it shows you how to set up the tech in the game. Up to 255 I/O blocks, monitors, and disk drives are addressable on one ribbon cable bus. You can save your programs to floppies, and trade floppies with other players by copying files from a folder on your host computer.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a 6502 emulator written in Java and embedded in Minecraft. It's neat, but not as impressive as a 6502 built using the in-game logic gates, which is what the title implies.</comment>


/web/null eats your HTTP - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jondot/webnull

<comment><USER2> I'm sure it's a useful tool, but if it keeps stats, then it's definitely not analogous to /dev/null!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> @tome, sure but stats are very useful as a practical tool. @charliesome, one use case of this, is to deploy it (lets say on ec2), on lets say webnull.myhost.com, and point any webservice / client you wish to its http visible domain. You gain a handy tool that fakes http reliably, readily- deployed for any experiment.

<comment><USER3> Why not hit the little 'reply' link?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I usually use example.com for this.

... I should probably stop spamming them.

<comment><USER5> Example.com is an IANA domain, reserved for testing and documentation purposes. So, you're not spamming them.

<http://www.iana.org/domains/example/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks handy, although I usually just use netcat in a loop for this.</comment>


SynapseLife Taking eBay Exit (i.e. SynapseLife Taking Exit On eBay) - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/23/synapselife-taking-ebay-exit/ <comment><AUTHOR> All I have to say is that is one awful name.</comment>


Ask HN: Has this open math problem received attention from computer scientists? - <AUTHOR>

Define a covering to be a set of residue classes a (mod m) such that all the integers are covered.
Example: 0 (mod 2), 0 (mod 3), 1 (mod 4), 5 (mod 6), 7 (mod 12) is a covering, because every integer belongs to one of these five residue classes.
Here are two famous open problems, due to Paul Erdos and John Selfridge.
(1) For each integer N, does there exist a covering where the moduli are all distinct integers at least N?
(2) Does there exist a covering where the moduli are all distinct odd integers (excluding 1)?
I just listened to a math seminar talk on the subject. Apparently most work on the subject involves a lot of brute force and consideration of special cases, see e.g. [1].
To me, this seems like more of a CS problem than a math problem. My colleagues didn't really believe me, but my optimism wasn't deterred. That said, I only have a little CS background. I wonder if there exist algorithmic approaches to the problem, using perhaps advanced techniques from AI such as neural nets.
Do any HN readers know of any work done on this problem from an algorithmic perspective, or know enough to express optimism or pessimism with any authority?
Thanks to all.
[1] http://www.wiskundemeisjes.nl/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/sdarticle.pdf <comment><USER2> So looking at the first question, you do a computer search, or use some sort of neural net to find a covering for every integer up to N.

What about N+1? Or N+2? You've done finitely many cases, and there are infinitely many left to do.

So you do another 10^12 cases.

There are still infinitely many left.

How are you going to use a computer to prove that for _every_ N there is a covering?

The second question, maybe you can find a solution using a machine, but the problem is _hard._ I personally doubt you can find a solution without genuine new insights, even if eventually a solution is found by a computer using a program written by someone who understands those insights.

The proof of the four color theorem was, in the end, just a big computer search, but the insights mattered.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your replies.

First of all, it would already be interesting to find a covering with all integers > 100\. Obviously, as you point out, a computer program cannot be expected to prove this for every N.

However, it is not clear that the answer to either of my questions should be yes. It seems it should be possible (?) to come up with an impossibility proof by computer.

Certainly new insights are required as you say, and nobody expects a brute force search to work. I am wondering whether the important insights might come from people with serious CS background.</comment></comment>


A Magnet Laboratory (1959) Educational Film - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkxntFEGQ9k <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this. I haven't seen it since my high school physics class fifty years ago, but as soon as I saw the title here in HN I recalled some memorable details that set it apart from other instructional films of the day --- which I won't mention, because I don't want to spoil it for first-time viewers.</comment>


Tech Bubble? Maybe, Maybe Not - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/gv-notes/tech-bubble-maybe-maybe-not-b83d6a2dbc9f?source=tw-lo_a2367a8a812c-1429177726064

<comment><AUTHOR> Bill shares a look at the data before pressing the panic button</comment>


San Diego's Bird Scooter Hoarding Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottresearch.com/blog/san-diegos-bird-scooter-hoarding-problem-with-screencaptures <comment><USER2> I think the incentive structure needs to change to discourage hoarding. Currently, the payout always increases as you hold onto a scooter. What I think solves the problem is:

* An small bonus for nabbing the scooter while it still has a bit of charge left (<10%). Essentially a quick turnaround bonus. For the sake of argument, lets say $1 bonus + $4 base to match the original minimum if it's back on the street within 24h and never lost power.

* $4 if the scooter lost power, but is still returned within 48h.

* +$1 for every day it's missing after 48h up to $10 total.

* -$1 for every person that visits it's last known location after 2h and reports that they couldn't find it, down to $2 minimum. This is to encourage users to quickly attach the nabbed bird to power and "claim" them as soon as they pick them up instead of throwing it into their garage for a week then claiming them.

* The scooter gets set to $20 "lost scooter" bounty after a month, which can only be claimed once a month per user.

If the chargers want to play games, make it a game.

<comment><USER3> Make it simpler. First this is theft, they should assign some folks to track and report this to police. Let that be known and people might start being more honest.

Second you could just add something to the terms and conditions which allows them to cancel people's rewards in these obvious cases. "Oh you happened to have 20 scooters at your address for two days and then suddenly charged and returned them. We're cancelling your account." Assign someone again to find these obvious examples of people hoarding scooters then cancel their accounts or whatever is appropriate.

As this poster shows, the man power involved shouldn't be all that much. Browsing on a map. Etc.

<comment><USER4> Involving the police and another type of "Bird worker" is not simple, it complicates things.

I think the parent post has the right idea -- use the existing situation (consumers and producers) and gamify it in such a way that reduces hoarding.

That said, maybe there's a simpler way yet to do that.

<comment><USER5> 1) Identify hoarders with machine learning.

2) "We believe you are hoarding, and this is why: . . . "

3) Terminate charging account of hoarders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe this is all common knowledge; I live in NYC so we don't have Birds yet, so I'm a little ignorant here.

From what I can tell, each scooter that is low on batteries is given a bounty (somewhere between $5 to $20) based on how hard it is to find. I assume that the "hardness" is computed based on how many chargers fail to find the scooter, but there may be something more sophisticated at work. To charge a scooter, a charger finds one, checks it out in the charger app, and then takes it home and charges it, and returns it to its "Bird's Nest" (clever) in the morning, at which point you get paid.

The scooters have GPS trackers to prevent theft.

So what these hoarders are doing is stealing the scooters -- rather than checking them out through the charger app, they're just grabbing them and tossing them in their van, and then keeping them in their home, where other chargers will fail to find them, thus increasing their bounty, until they "discover" the scooters, claim them through the app, charge them, and return them to their nest.

Have I understood this correctly? Given that they are removing the scooter without claiming it through the app (either as a rider or a charger) that means that they are stealing them, which means all Bird has to do is provide the police with the address of the hoarder and that's the end of it.

<comment><USER7> This is simple to fix:

Allow a charger-app to trigger a loud horn sound continuously. Make taking these painful to keep.

And then post a way to report illegally impounded scooters, either with address or license plate of where they're kept.

<comment><USER8> Just mute your phone, problem solved.

<comment><USER9> I think the idea was for the horn to be in the scooter. I would assume that there's no mute button on a scooter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The scooter business it's proving to be a real life experiment of the many fucked up factors and forces that influence an urban modern society: vandalism, hoarding scooters for profit, tension between governments, companies and users, blatant violation of traffic rules, etc...

As you scale something like this the problems become more evident and harder to manage. These businesses looked pretty solid when they had small fleets, but now that they are scaling it's pretty easy to see the cracks.

Watching how this unfolds in the next two to three years is going to be a hell of a ride (no pun intended)

<comment><USER11> I came to believe that these negative forces are all around us. They are constantly at play. As the landscape changes, they adapt to the new realities, but are mostly invisible.

When a big company comes is with a sudden alteration to the "environment", these negative forces respond, with a force that is congruous to the speed at which the original change happened.

If a change in society happens quickly, it is very visible. All the reactions also happen quickly and are also very visible.

If the change happens slowly, the reactions also follow gradually and slowly, and everything seems less drastic and less noticeable.

<comment><USER12> If you put hundreds of vehicles on the streets that cost $500 each you need to seriously think about people taking advantage of you, even if it amounts to stealing. You must not make it too easy and intriguing.

"Gelegenheit macht Diebe" \- "Opportunity makes the thief"

<comment><USER13> Especially if your headquarters is across the ocean you just dumped theses things all over a foreign city with permission.

<comment><USER14> with -> without?

<comment><USER15> If the flood of bikeshare companies in Dallas are any indication, it's "with".

The Dallas City Council passed a law allowing dockless bikeshare, and suddenly about six Chinese companies all dumped hundreds—if not thousands—of bikes _each_ in Dallas, causing every kind of externality you can imagine. Dallas opened the door a crack, and the companies stampeded through hard enough to break the frame.

<comment><USER16> Upvote for the metaphor I'm going to steal one of these days. Credit to the Dallas council for at least the appearance of progress, debit for not thinking through the externalities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This reminds me of the anecdote where some city tried to deal with their rat problem by offering a reward for every dead rat turned in. Instead, people started breeding rats so they could have more to turn in for reward money, and the rat population actually increased.

Or something like that. I might be mis-remembering some details.

<comment><USER18> There is actually a term for this in economics. It's called the "Lucas critique", and effectively states that any metric will be gamed eventually. It's slightly more subtle and is actually a critique about macroeconomic policymaking -- that people's actions are not structural and that making a new policy will affect how people act as they try to (ab)use the new policy -- but that's the basic gist.

EDIT: To clarify -- I'm not an economist, it's just something I read about in my spare time. I'm sure that the Lucas critique was pre-dated by other ideas (it's far too obvious to be entirely novel), and that there's a much deeper analysis that I wasn't aware of.

<comment><USER19> IMO the deeper history in Lucas Critique is the Problem of Induction.

"XYZ has always worked in the past" doesn't work. Imagine doing machine learning on this problem that Bird has. It could easily suggest that you should up the fees to get more scooter finders, rather than that you need to change the incentives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There have been many great pricing models posed in this thread to dis- incentivize gaming, but I'm a little surprised no one has mentioned the simple "make bird hunting a full time job with benefits."

Just like uber before them, bird threatens to upend some reasonably decent jobs in cities with bike share programs- assuming the bike share programs don't learn from taxi drivers and adapt.

So much of the reason these things work- and that the companies themselves become massively valuable is the externalization of costs. That doesn't have to be a given.

<comment><USER21> I think Lime does that? In any case Bird should be inspecting their scooters frequently for safety reasons so really would just make sense to hire teams of people with vans or trucks to pick them up every night.

<comment><USER22> Razor scooters/eBikes do that in San Diego, and I know Jump bikes also have a team of people in San Francisco (as it was mandated by the city).

In SD, the Razor Scooters are much nicer and doesn't seem to have as many problems with their equipment than the Bird scooters do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The solution is super simple. Stop paying in direct payout and start paying in riding credits. I sometimes used Bird from the train station to my home in the evening. I would happily charge it in my home during the night and release it in the morning for Bird credits. But it seems that at this stage since the scooter companies raised so much money, they just have no problem to ignore it and pay directly or just throw more scooters into the pool.

<comment><USER24> Wouldn't you then get to a situation where x gets a bird, takes it home, charges it, uses it the next day, essentially creating a rental model where each scooter is used by one person a day?

Presumably the nature of the beast is that these start off the day next to transport hubs and then spread out from there. It isn't then worth it for some one to go out of their way to take it back to that transport hub.

If you are travelling against the prevailing traffic what you say would work, but not for the majority.

As I understand it the bikes it London (and probably else where) vary the charges depending on where you're going. So if you're taking a bike back to where it needs to be, the charge is less. If you're taking it out to the edge of a zone where it will need to be collected by an employee, you pay more.

<comment><USER25> Could this be solved by saying you stop getting credit after X days using the same scooter?

<comment><USER26> Seems that just requires switching scooters every X-1 days. Ride up to one; stop your ride; start a new ride. Net cost $1 and you start a new cheap rental.

<comment><USER25> Well, yes. And then you've increased the transaction costs of such a pattern of usage, thereby discouraging it, whilst also encouraging regular rotation of scooters throughout the customer base even when people stick with it. I think that probably goes some way towards solving the problem of 1-1 hoarding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I live in Pacific Beach in San Diego (to the left of that first map in the post).

Every morning on my drive to work, I pass a few pickup trucks with 10/20/30+ scooters in the back. Seems like folks have created a full time business out of charging these things, so I'm not surprised it's challenging for a "casual" charger to make a couple bucks with them.

That being said, I was very bearish on the idea of Birds until it clicked to me how brilliant the charging program is. They're essentially paying people to protect these things in their homes overnight, and nicely place them in optimized locations every morning. Other competitors down here (especially bikes) who just left their units out all day and night quickly lost them all to homeless people and vandals chucking them into the ocean. But Birds are cleanly lined up on every corner every morning.

Very clever.

<comment><USER28> I rode my first Bird in Pacific Beach last week. They don't exist where I live. I just assumed that those trucks were contracted by the company somehow. I didn't know this whole charging economy existed.

I also saw a few drunken (or angry) [or both] people smash up a few of them as they walked down the street. I'd like to know how many they lose in this way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> A better incentive would be to give chargers a tiny cut of all the riding fees for the next charge. Make it so the scooter have to be below 50% battery OR not ridden for a day in order to be eligible to move. That would incentivize the chargers to get the scooters back on the street ASAP.

If there's still hoarding, offer riders (not chargers!) some bounty for reporting hoarding.

As other posters have said it's a game-design problem to align incentives so that you get the outcomes you want.

<comment><USER30> Then the charging cost would grow with profit and would no longer be considered an overhead cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I feel like the obvious solution is to pay chargers based on how much of their charge was used the following day after releasing the scooter into the wild.

<comment><USER32> I don't agree that it's obvious, but I like the idea. Chargers would then be investing in the scooter's use the next day but with joules instead of cash.

/joules will be the currency of the future!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Eventually every scooter will be stolen, GPS disabled and board replaced. They are commodity Xiaomi scooters, retailing for hundreds of dollars. They can be stolen and rebirthed for <$50. Scooter rental was a terrible idea, and the assets of the companies will be redistributed to masses.

<comment><USER34> The same can be said for bikes and bike locks.

I don't think enough people steal for it to prevent all bicycling. Perhaps there is still benefit.

<comment><USER35> It certainly prevents many people from leaving unattended bicycles out after dark or using them during this time. Not just after midnight or something.

If you do anything except daytime ride, you're liable to get messed with in some cities. People largely just accept thieves in their society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Seems like a way around this is to not pay for scooters that never moved. They're all GPS tracked anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe after hitting $20 the price goes down for charging after that. Or never letting the charging fee get beyond $8........

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's practically an article of faith on here that these scooter companies are providing a valuable public service and deserve to succeed, but I have yet to see a single halfway decent argument for why that's the case.

From where I'm sitting the whole thing seems like a bad joke. The people hoarding scooters are probably just waiting until the company inevitably folds, with the (likely correct) assumption that an already overstretched municipal police force isn't going to be bothered to help a (fiscally and ethically) bankrupt company track down hundreds or thousands of lost scooters across town.

The correct response by cities to the issue of the startups dumping scooters on public sidewalks is to send them to the municipal recycling plant for scrapping.

<comment><USER38> Cheap, quick transport on an electric vehicle. More convenient and comfortable than public transport. What makes you not consider that valuable?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> One possible solution is to look at the place where the scooter was charged. Next, look at the place it has spent waiting to be charged. If the distance is less than 100 feet, don't give a payout. This can also be gamed, but more elaborate rules can be implemented. Ultimately, it will not be worth a hassle to game the system on a wide scale. A sort of equilibrium will be achieved. Cat and mouse it is.

<comment><USER39> What if people were paid based on how many users your charged scooters had? That would incentivize you to also place the scooter in a prime location each day, optimizing for events, day of week, and competition

<comment><USER40> I think this would negatively impact users in low traffic areas.

<comment><USER41> Supply and demand. If the high-traffic areas are oversupplied, the best strategy is to find an underserved low-traffic market. For example, dentists in rural areas make more money than dentists in cities (on average), because most dentists prefer to live in the city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> lmao.

So many of these dumb problems would be solved if they worked with cities and created a docked system, but no I guess that's too boring and not ~disruptive~ enough.

<comment><USER43> Docked systems have been tried and consumers do not prefer them.

<comment><USER44> It works really well in Paris and where I live as well.

<comment><USER45> Actually the system in Paris barely works anymore.

<comment><USER46> Nope, it took some time but it now works correctly. I use it daily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> > Over the next few weeks I drove more in gas then I would find scooters.

So much for the environment eh!

</comment><comment><USER48> It sure if it's related but I learned from my brother in law's girlfriend that her little brother had been hoarding scooters because they had some app that could disable the tracking and let you ride for free.

I guess the fact that these show up on a map contradicts that.

<comment><USER49> So could it be an alternative client that uses straw-man accounts to cash in every time the hoarder charges a scooter, occasionally using some of the spoils to buy them a "free" ride? That would be fascinatingly twisted: make your accomplices think they are part in an entirely different kind of crime than they are. Even more twisted (but not as creative) if it's an inside job to get a larger slice of the VC pie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> That's exactly what they're doing. There is a dude on scooter talk who isn't shy about letting us know how he's exploiting the system. He intends to keep doing it until bird or lime shut him down.

<comment><USER51> whats scooter talk?

<comment><USER50> [https://scootertalk.org/](https://scootertalk.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I don't see the problem. Since the scooters are up for grabs, you're allowed to take one and park it at home. Whether that looks like stealing or just making sure you have it available later when you need it is a gray area that requires interpretation on a case by case basis. That's probably why the police don't care.

If the scooters are indoors, that is good for the scooters, by the way.

<comment><USER53> I don't think it could be any more serious a matter than not abiding by the EULA.

<comment><USER52> Basically, the EULA should (and likely does) have some terms against that. That is to say, scooters that are fobbed out by their user should be left in such a way that their are accessible to other users. Identify the violators and charge them fines and/or terminate their accounts.

Keeping scooters in homes and garages can be allowed, provided the scooters are "on the clock": in the middle of a booking that is being paid for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Could you explain a little better on how this works?

<comment><USER55> Bird Chargers are people who charge Bird e-scooter for rewards. They take Birds with low battery from the streets, charge them, and release them the next morning to collect their rewards. Each Bird has a different reward for charging. The company's reward algorithm seems to give higher reward for Birds that have been abandoned for a longer time. So the Bird chargers can just take Birds, "abandon" them in their backyard, wait until their rewards reach maximum, finally they will charge them and release them to get max rewards.

Quite like farming, really.

<comment><USER56> It rather seems to me that Bird would know where the scooter was being charged, and where it was accumulating value in a fixed location. They can correlate this information

Bird really need to structure it better, and make it clear that such actions are fraudulent. The people involved need to lose their licence to charge and their user accounts and then they won't have any way to make money or use the scooters.

<comment><USER57> _It rather seems to me that Bird would know where the scooter was being charged, and where it was accumulating value in a fixed location. They can correlate this information_

Then people will use their grandma's backyard to "abandon" them and charge at their house.

<comment><USER58> Better than Grandma, you start a black market scooter trading network with like-minded folks.

<comment><USER56> From the companies perspective they have lots of data to analyze. I am not a statistician but I suspect that people who game the system in _any_ way that we can think of will show up at the top of the dataset. The two most important metrics are the highest total earners and the users with the highest average charging fee. They get subjected to extra scrutiny. Plot out where they were getting the scooters from, and who used the scooters last, then if it turns out they are being fraudulent just kick them out or modify the processes so that what they do doesn't work.

I suspect in the early days it doesn't really matter, since they will want fully charged scooters and a rumour you can make lots of money to incentivize people to join.

<comment><USER59> They also probably have a shortage of data scientists to do the analysis. The ones they have are probably working on projects that more directly affect the bottom line, rather than eliminating externalities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Why does the pay out have to increase? Have they tested what happens if it starts at $7 and never changes? I get the theory is to discover and incentivize less desirable scoot scoots, but I'm skeptical you actually need that.

</comment><comment><USER61> I've witnessed plenty of people nabbing scooters in rental trucks or vans during the morning in San Diego. Probably 10-30 stacked all over. It occurred to me how scooters not only are a mode of transportation, but now a resource that people rely on for extra cash.

Seems completely justified but oddly weird to me. I haven't witnessed it yet, but I wonder if there have been fights over territory/scooters.

</comment><comment><USER62> What is the time scale for increasing the bounty vs how long it takes to charge a scooter?

If we give the 'hoarders' the benefit of the doubt, could it be the bounty is increasing while they have a bunch of scooters queued up to charge? They grabbed 20 in their truck, and it takes 5 hours to charge 1, but they only have 2 outlets, but the bounty goes up every 12 hours, so they have a backlog?

<comment><USER2> They're supposed to scan the QR code the moment they grab them, which essentially marks the scooter as found and the rates are frozen. Then they can take their sweet time charging them.

What they're doing instead is grabbing them without scanning them, chirping be dammed, and holding onto them for a while so the bounty increases. Then they scan them as found and charge them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> This is, indeed, a very hard problem to solve. The only option I see is banning somehow by law/agreement, and taking legal actions to people who 'steal' them. But in that case they would just stack them outside the house...

You could ban people who charge bikes to use them (it is as weird as if an uber driver couldn't use uber as a passenger).

<comment><USER64> > a very hard problem to solve

Is it? Honest chargers who go out to the boonies to recover truly hard-to- recover scooters will pick up scooters which turn red from all over the place. Dishonest chargers who kidnap scooters will have scooters who all turned red suspiciously in one place (the charger's home).

Developing an algorithm to find the dishonest players should be relatively straightforward, and after dishonest players are found, they should be banned.

<comment><USER65>
      Dishonest chargers who kidnap scooters will have scooters
      who all turned red suspiciously in one place (the
      charger's home).

...until the dishonest chargers figure out they can easily block the GPS signal with a few cents of tinfoil when they grab the scooter off the street.

<comment><USER66> You can catch that too.

<comment><USER65> How will you robustly tell apart vandals from dishonest chargers, when the latter are incentivised to emulate the former?

<comment><USER67> Well you just ban them. You might catch some innocents but that's their right. If someone has a habit of turning in a whole bunch of scooters that didn't have GPS available for X days before, ban them. A legitimate charger should have a certain percentage of scooters where the GPS was available up until charging (1-2 day turn around I'm guessing, or there's some fundamental flaw with the charging system), so I'm sure there's an algorithm that can remove a majority of the abusers with minimal casualties.

You can never solve gaming the system entirely, the goal is just to make it harder than it's worth, and hopefully the abusers move to some other scheme.

<comment><USER65>
      If someone has a habit of turning in a whole
      bunch of scooters that didn't have GPS
      available for X days before, ban them.

You've just banned your best guy, Wader Wayne, the only guy in the city who was retrieving scooters that vandals had chucked in the river.

Now he's complaining on your employees' subreddit everyone said he was doing a great job and his numbers were really good, that no-one else should invest in equipment to do the same work, and that you've ruined Christmas for his family by cutting off their only source of income. The Guardian is going to interview him for their article on job insecurity in the gig economy.

<comment><USER64> All of these parameters are tunable. You don't have to get rid of 90% of the dishonest catchers, if even 50-70% will make a big difference. Your argument would have more merit if the majority of unrecoverable scooters were due to vandalism, but the facts bear out that the vast majority are due to hoarding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Anyone well versed in game theory know an optimal solution to hedge against the problem of hoarding?

<comment><USER69> The hoarder finds some value in hoarding. In extreme cases of hoarding where you find the house is filled with items often the value comes from the hoarder not having to worry about inadequate supplies. A person who hoards food because of previous issues with having adequate food is sating their need for security.

This isn't an extreme case but the same reasons still exist, hoarding the scooters is providing value. Take efforts to reduce value. Like start letting the scooters talk to each other and you'll be able to find the cycle in the graph where the hoarded scooters only talk to each other until one pays outs handsomely and it joins the rest of the public scooters. Or make a scooter pay out less if it has been idle for an extended period of time even with low battery value. Or the opposite, make a scooter pay out more if it's getting higher than average use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Seems obvious the scooters need to be able to transit themselves to a charging station, like a rhoomba

</comment><comment><USER71> You might sum this up with "markets & incentives are hard"

</comment><comment><USER72> Very simple solution: just set additional reward for rescuing poor birds, it will create new jobs, whole new caste will arise: bird hunters. They will just roam cities with smartphone in hand, rifle (for safety!), maybe loyal dog and set free flocks of birds.

</comment><comment><USER73> They should just switch to a docked model.

<comment><USER74> The best part is being able to ride directly to your destination though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> > Company litters thousands of billboards all over streets and sidewalks, > creating city-wide eyesore / road hazard

> Citizens remove hazard from streets, profiting at company's expense

Isn't this the definition of poetic justice?

<comment><USER76> Only if you only view the scooters as a "hazard" and an "eyesore". An alternate interpretation (even if you're rightfully skeptical of for-profit venture-funded startups like these) is that the scooters are a fairly sustainable and scalable form of individual transit compared to cars, and a world where scooters (or similar devices) fulfill a useful last-mile role in public transit is one that's beneficial for society and civic infrastructure.

<comment><USER77> _is that the scooters are a fairly sustainable and scalable form of individual transit compared to cars, and a world where scooters (or similar devices) fulfill a useful last-mile role_

This argument only holds water if public transportation sucks in a city. If you can get to _wherever you want to go_ within a 200 metre radius of a city by public transport (which is the case in a lot of European cities to begin with) then this argument does not make any sense.

 _fulfill a useful last-mile role in public transit is one that 's beneficial for society and civic infrastructure._

That's at least debatable. If it's really part of public transport infrastructure then this should be coordinated with the cities. But the mindset seems more a : "We shit 500 of those things throughout a relatively small city and disrupt the holly bejeezus out of this town". As long as this attitude prevails I neither see this as a valid argument.

<comment><USER78> I live in Berlin, a city with relatively good public transport. Being able to go where ever you want to go using public transport doesn't mean that the connection is good. Often it's a lot faster to ride a bike than to take a bus from a train station to your ultimate destination. Scooters can reduce that inconvenience and thus increase the share of trips that are done without cars.

I don't really see how coordination with the city is better than just making the things available and seeing what happens. The city often has poor visibility into where people actually want to go and by which criteria they choose the mode of transport. And adding bureaucracy without clear benefits doesn't seem smart.

<comment><USER77> _I don 't really see how coordination with the city is better than just making the things available and seeing what happens._

It would, for example, avoid that you have 1'000 defunct OBikes in a relatively small city (~90km2) basically cluttering up everything, but being of so bad quality that they're borderline useless. Even if you're stupid enough to cough up the required deposit and download their dodgy app.

Same bikes which need to be removed not even a year later on the taxpayers dime.

It would help to not make entire town districts unafordable and unhabitable in some cities by the likes of AirBnB waltzing in for fun and profit.

I could come up with more examples, Uber being the most obvious.

I see a city as a rather complex organism, with a lot of competing factors and variables, which require careful balancing and calibration. There's a reason that cities prepare master plans about development for the next two decades.

If the burghers believe that change is required it's up to them to initiate such change. It should not be up to some venture capital fueled SV companies, which use public property for private gain, to make such decisions.

<comment><USER76> If a specific implementation of a bikeshare or scooter share program is borderline useless because the hardware is junk, that sounds like an implementation detail rather than the sort of philosophical argument you seem to be making.

I've been in cities where the bikeshare was borderline useless. I've also spent lots of time in NY, where its bikeshare is both at least as useful as the subway within Manhattan and legitimately the fastest way to get e.g. north or south within Brooklyn.

I'm currently based in Berlin, where I agree with the parent to your comment. Berlin's metro is generally great, but there are a large number of places I go to regularly that are ~10 minutes away by bike but ~30 minutes by public transit, purely because of the way the system is laid out.

If you're going to complain about bikes or scooters cluttering up sidewalks, perhaps the answer is they should have dedicated space on the streets (as with docked bikeshare programs like NY). I'd love to see studies about the effect on number of transportation trips that e.g. a dedicated scooter stand the size of a car parking space has on the flow of traffic as compared to letting that single parking space be usable by cars.

I totally get your point that this is something that should be handled at the civic planning level rather than at SV-funded startups. Copenhagen is probably the clearest example where the city government was able to make massive improvements to the way people move around their city, encouraging non-car transit. That doesn't change that bikes and scooters are arguably a more effective way to move individuals than cars (either private ownership or rideshare), and a shared system has transportation benefits that are unique from the benefits offered by traditional public transit.

<comment><USER77> Interesting reply. And I agree with a lot of your points. Starting from the premise that cars are not really a good mode of transportation to get around in a city.

It would be awesome to massively reduce private car use in cities and use the space gained for other modes of transportation and uses (bike, scooter, walking, leisurly get togethers of the neighborhood) and reclaim the space for actually useful things and efficient transportation.

One of my current issues with the scooters (apart from the philosophical objections, which you correctly point out) is that they zip around pavements with speeds, which are definitly uncomfortable (and depending on the riding style menacing) to the actual users of pavements, which are pedestrians. Being able to provide dedicated space for scooters would be a huge leap forward for their use.

I'm privileged enough to have Zurich's public transport system at my disposal, which literally gets you everywhere in 10 minute intervals and that this slightly skews my perspective (Tokyo is also pretty awesome, but I digress). But I do believe that such shifts in policy should be debated and planned and not just brute forced by some outsiders, whose main interest is profit and certainly not the best interest and well being of the citizenship they claim to serve.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ancestry.com Acquires 1000memories (YC S10) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.1000memories.com/170-ancestry-acquires-1000memories <comment><USER2> I'm waiting for Facebook to acquire Ancestry.com and incorporate it into their overall infrastructure.

My parents have used Ancestry.com quite a lot, and I realized that what's being built there is a historical, online family network. That is, as you dig into your family's past to find ancestors, you will find records of people that others have made or added to. That, of course, means you have found other people you're related to. Incorporating that into the current largest online social network just seems so obvious to me that I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.

<comment><USER3> Dear God, no! It would be like MyLife acquired Google (forget about the money) and poisoned Goog search with their crap! Hope there is not enough money is Zucks pocket to pull something like that!

<comment><USER4> Think about what it _could_ be, rather than what you _fear_ it might turn into.

<comment><USER5> Ancestry.com is for sale[1] and it is the largest social network in the world (granted, most profiles are inactive).

The potential is huge for an acquirer, however, it would be _relatively_ easy for another social network to allow members to create profiles for the deceased. In the future, many of today's social network connections might just function as 1st person genealogical records (provided the companies can sustain).

[1] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-22/ancestry-said-to- se...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-22/ancestry-said-to-seek-higher- buyout-bids-from-permira-and-tpg.html)

<comment><USER6> > most profiles are inactive

Beautiful euphemism for "died before the Internet was invented"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've always wondered what 1000memories business cards look like, because I'd totally love it if they were gravestones:

DAN WILLIAMS

BELOVED FOUNDER AND CTO

Okay, that was random, but congrats on the acquisition. Great fit.

<comment><USER8> Our product has evolved to become the 'new shoebox for your old photos'

Our business cards feature photos of us as kids, similar to our team page: <http://1000memories.com/team>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, congrats. This seems like a natural fit for 1000memories, and great terms for the customers. I hope it worked out well for the team and investors as well.

It would be great if you could post a little more about how the deal went down (in a hn-type blog post, not something aimed at your users) -- how long it took, who approached whom, what parts were good or difficult, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> For whatever it's worth, I was reunited with my sister via Ancestry.com!

I'm not affiliated with either the Mormon Church or Ancestry.com... in fact, my sister and I both canceled our Ancestry.com account before the trial period was up and we never paid a dime. That was our first sign of proof we were truly siblings.

<comment><USER11> That sounds like an interesting story. Would you mind sharing a few more details? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats! So when does the team move to Utah? It's not so bad, we don't bite.

I know many developers at Ancestry.com and I hear it's a great place to work. It sounds like you'll be able to continue to operate independently for while but it might be time to brush up on your C# as they are .Net based company. :)

<comment><USER8> We're working from the SF/SOMA office (pretty sweet), and continuing to work on the ShoeBox apps, our website, and related products as an independent team within the company. No .Net for us - Ruby, Javascript, Java, and Objective-C.

With our new digs and resources, we're looking for talented engineers (backend, frontend and mobile) and designers. Please email me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you're interested.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great team, great product, natural fit. Congrats to Ancestry and 1000Memories.

<comment><USER8> thanks, rich!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Congrats! Is it an acquihire?

<comment><USER8> No. ACOM is acquiring our product and users as well as our team, and we'll continue invest in making ShoeBox and our website better and better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is good news bravo.

</comment><comment><USER16> Congratulations to all

</comment><comment><USER17> Like all of ancestry's acquisitions, all this content that was gathered by various people will now be placed behind a pay wall that ancestry will assert ownership and control rights over.

<comment><USER8> Not true. Our products will continue to exist for free, and we'll actually be working on improving ACOM's sharing capabilities - i.e., bringing out its great content from behind the pay wall so the wider family network can view and appreciate it.

<comment><USER17> > Not true.

You have a signed contract that says so? If not, you can't promise that since you don't have that authority.

Ancestry has a long history of acquiring sites where people join in community to work together on genealogy, and then destroying those sites, removing them from competition. They are evil. I have no problem with them charging for access to data they have paid to scan, convert and put together, that's a great service to offer. But that's only part of their operations. A big other part is the acquisition of publicly available free genealogy resources where the hard work has been put together for free by the general public, and eliminating those sites so that every imaginable genealogy related search only goes to their pay sites. Their usability also sucks. They are predators that destroy genealogy, and they are thieves. Enjoy your ill gotten wealth my friend, I hope it is worth the eternity in hell that anyone associated with this criminal organization has surely earned for their despicable acts. Or hey why not just down vote inconvenient facts about a dangerous bad corporation that causes great damage into oblivion, relax in the hot tub and drink another marguerita while chuckling.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is a GitHub profile or a personal website more important as a portfolio? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> If you're about to apply for jobs and this isn't your first job, the most important thing you can do is grind interview problems. I haven't had any GitHub activity for the last year, don't have a personal site, and have had no problem getting job offers. At the end of the day, I've found that most interviewers will make a gut decision about you based entirely on your interview performance - the ones who factor in other things are rather rare.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not both?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I'd definitely say both! But, I feel that a lot of my most compelling work in on my GitHub (mostly OSS contributions), rather than on my website.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Collections Deep Equal - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/collections-deep-equal <comment><AUTHOR> A JavaScript & TypeScript package with collections like JavaScript's native Maps and Sets, but using value equality (deep-equal) instead of reference equality.</comment>