How Uber Used Secret "Greyball" Tool to Deceive Authorities Worldwide - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-program-evade-authorities.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> It took me about 8 paragraphs in to figure out what Greyball is, so to save you the time: Uber used various data sources to identify which people are likely government officials who are trying to collect incriminating data on them, and then blocks them from the service so they can't be caught in sting operations.

But there's a lot in the article that doesn't make sense:

>Other techniques included looking at the user's credit card information and whether that card was tied directly to an institution like a police credit union.

I couldn't find a good source, but it doesn't seem like that's something a CC merchant would have access to. Do they really get to see that?[2]

Also, how were they able to do it so accurately _without_ disrupting their service? Most city employees and police aren't going to be involved in sting operations against car services, so their customer support will have to deal with a _torrent_ of very confused government employees [1] who keep getting mysterious rejections when they try to use they app, and which support can't give a truthful answer on.

Plus, this seemed to require _significant_ on-the-ground intel and human intervention:

>If those clues were not enough to confirm a user's identity, Uber employees would search social media profiles and other available information online. Once a user was identified as law enforcement, Uber Greyballed him or her, tagging the user with a small piece of code that read Greyball followed by a string of numbers.

So, I'm surprised it worked at all.

[1] identified by the fact of that person having more-than-usual activity inside something recognized as a government building

[2] EDIT: Okay, I get it -- you can look up banks from the CC number. Can we not have further comments just to point this out?

<comment><USER3> Maybe not a popular opinion but I find this entire thing pure genius.

>I couldn't find a good source, but it doesn't seem like that's something a CC merchant would have access to. Do they really get to see that?

The first 6 digits of a credit card can identify the issuing bank (BIN number - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_card_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_card_number)). If you ask your merchant they can readily provide you and up to date list.

This plus public payroll records (such as [http://transparentcalifornia.com/](http://transparentcalifornia.com/)) probably took them quite far.

<comment><USER4> I agree. It's genius in a Lex Luthor kind of way. If I understood the full scope of the application, I like to think i'd decline to work on that. It's easy to imagine engineers working on small parts of the system, and never really connecting the dots that the whole point is to evade law enforcement.

There's a big difference between keeping secrets for market advantage and to evade the law. In the first case, I want to tell people because i'm building cool stuff, but i can't, at least not until the product is ready. In the latter case, i'd be at least embarrassed, if not ashamed of the tools.

But I agree, it's slick. It's easy to be an armchair quarterback when it's not my career at stake. With millions or billions of dollars on the line, my ethics might erode much faster than i want to admit. In that case, I'd hope evil jfoutz (or ethically devoid jfoutz) would build such a sophisticated tool.

<comment><USER5> _It 's easy to imagine engineers working on small parts of the system, and never really connecting the dots that the whole point is to evade law enforcement._

I would volunteer to work on that project _because_ its whole point is to evade law enforcement. A lot of us (hackers/technologists) take a pretty dim view of arbitrary State regulations and "laws" and are quite happy to work to evade them. Most people who fit the techno-libertarian or cypherpunk mentality would probably feel the same way.

<comment><USER6> How far does your scofflaw streak go? Is this different from adding law enforcement blocking controls to any illegal tech product? Should everyone get to decide what laws to follow?

I think you are describing anarcho-capitalism, not libertarianism.

<comment><USER7> Yes, everyone should decide what laws to follow. Ask rosa parks or any poor soul unfortunate enough to be a citizen of nazi Germany.

<comment><USER8> The civil rights movement was in no way about the abolition of the rule of law. Hitler's promise of greatness actually did seduce a ton of the economically and socially devastated German population. Hitler was a known outlaw. Even if you can't yet think your premise through to the end, _at least_ consider the consistency and truth of your own words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How diabolical!

In a world where privacy has been traded away for convenience, it's poetic justice where a startup uses data mining techniques to subvert the government. This is the same government that would have no issues to use the same techniques to spy on its own people for its own motives.

I'm neither on Uber nor the government's side in this case, just simply making an observation. The lack of data privacy seems to be a double-edged sword for users and government/law enforcement alike.

<comment><USER10> My perspective is the opposite. In a world where large multinationals have the power to evade the law in a deliberate and systematic way like this, it's easy for governments to claim they need the same kind of power. Things like this are exactly what bureaucrats point to when they make their arguments for a surveillance state.

I don't like the US government much, but I like it a lot better than the average multinational. When it comes down to it, we don't have more than our choice of devils.

<comment><USER11> _I don 't like the US government much, but I like it a lot better than the average multinational. When it comes down to it, we don't have more than our choice of devils._

If I don't like Uber, I can... stop using Uber. What can I do if I don't like the service a state provides - can I opt out and stop paying? No, my only option is to flee - which the state will often try and prevent you doing anyway.

The state is a huge corporation, that will use force to change you for its services, whether they are good or not, or whether you use them or not. Your only option to avoid this involuntary charge s to flee - and the state reserves the right to employ violence to stop you doing even that.

It seems pretty clear to me which is more immoral.

<comment><USER12> You can vote, run for office, petition, volunteer, protest,etc to the local, state, and federal government to have policies that reflect your values. The only thing you can do with Uber is use it or not. Maybe you could write Uber a letter.

You have a say in government - that is its stated goal and purpose. Of the people for the people.

<comment><USER13> The 'say' you have in government is much smaller than the 'say' you have in using Uber. I can choose not to use Uber any time I please. I can not choose not to be pulled over for speeding, or opt out of murder laws temporarily.

The fact that you don't have a say in Uber's corporate decisions is irrelevant, because you can simply stop using it. You don't need a say. The fact that you can't opt out of government is why you're given a say, and what makes it infinitely more dangerous.

<comment><USER14> > The 'say' you have in government is much smaller than the 'say' you have in > using Uber. I can choose not to use Uber any time I please.

True.

I have effectively no choice in ISP, and no choice in power company. At what point do I get to vote on seats on my ISP's board, or my power company's?

<comment><USER15> Guess why you have no choice in ISP or power company? Because the _government_ deliberately regulates those markets to reduce competition, often to the monopoly level. But they don't give you any compensation for that, such as a say in how the companies are run.

This is the root cause of many problems in other markets too. High pharmaceutical prices? The government granted monopolies (patents) to those companies. Forced to use Windows? Microsoft has a government-granted monopoly (copyright) on Windows. Strange that limiting or revoking these state-granted monopoly rights is never considered as an option for remedying these problems.

More relevant to this article, the government has historically put drastic limits on the number of taxis that can operate in a city, to the point where the permits required to operate one were once worth over a million dollars apiece. The need to disrupt that system is why Uber developed a culture of law-breaking to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is incredibly awful, but not particularly surprising.

One of Paul Graham's most read essays is about the qualities that YC looks for in founders ([http://paulgraham.com/founders.html](http://paulgraham.com/founders.html)). In that essay, he specifically discusses 'Naughtiness' as a positive quality, and how it's one of the most important features of potential founders.

The problem is that being clever and hacking around a system for curiosity is governed by a very different set of incentives than being clever and hacking for profit. Feynmann's safecracking at Los Alomos was done to complain about an absurd system and to play pranks on his colleagues, not to enrich himself.

Being willing to break dumb rules to show how pointless they are is an excellent public service. Breaking rules that stand in the way of your profit is completely different, and it's important to call it out.

<comment><USER17> > Being willing to break dumb rules to show how pointless they are is an > excellent public service. Breaking rules that stand in the way of your > profit is completely different, and it's important to call it out.

Depends on whether you view this particular detail as part of providing a service people want (and thus want to pay for), or whether you view it as exclusively in the service of profit (whether it benefits people or not). Ignoring regulations so you can make money by hurting people would be evil. Ignoring regulations so you can help people by providing a service they want (whether you make money doing so or not) is entirely different, and far more reasonable. (It's still a dangerous road to go down, but not universally wrong.)

I've seen what the attempts at "local", "authorized" alternatives look like; they're almost all terrible, and even the ones that work half as well as Lyft or Uber suffer from being non-universal (you need a different service for each location). Look at the various places actually fixing their broken taxi regulations; would they have even considered doing so if the far better alternatives had asked nicely _before_ developing a huge base of interested customers who see how much better the alternative works?

As you said, "break dumb rules to show how pointless they are" can serve as the first step in fixing them.

(For the sake of clarity: Uber has done some truly and unambiguously awful things. This _particular_ story just doesn't seem like one of them.)

<comment><USER18> There's a system set up to determine what rules are necessary, and some VC- funded bro isn't in a position to second-guess them (beyond his power at the polling booth).

Your standard seems to be that a service should be legal if two or more people agree on a contract("providing a service people want and thus want to pay for").

But by that standard, there isn't a single regulation that is necessary. Sell a car without seatbelts? Sure – all fine if you can find people to buy it. Migraine treatment with low-dose cyanide? Some people will try it.

Regulations are attempts to (a) protect third parties from externalities or (b) to allow people to survive without doing an incredible amount of research into everything they consume. It's easy to dismiss them because we have no idea of all the things that aren't happening. But the fact that your money has been safe at banks for the last 70 years, or that deaths from fire, food-born illness or traffic accidents has been reduced dramatically – all that traces back primarily to government regulation.

<comment><USER17> > There's a system set up to determine what rules are necessary

See "regulatory capture", and all the other ways that system can be broken or exploited. Also see the long history of how regulations written for yesterday's technologies work badly on today's and completely prevent tomorrow's from being created.

I'm extremely skeptical that this particular issue could have been effectively fixed another way, because I've seen what the proposed "solutions" looked like that "played by the rules".

> Your standard seems to be that a service should be legal if two or more > people agree on a contract("providing a service people want and thus want to > pay for").

No, that's not the completely general standard I'd advocate, though that would still come a lot closer to reasonable. A general standard would also internalize any externalities (and any parties affected by them) before evaluating that metric. (Though keep in mind that "reduces the demand for a competing service" is _not_ an externality.) Overall, though, a world in which individual consent always wins would be better.

(We'd be better off still with a world where one of the providers of those services wasn't also, unrelatedly, engaged in various unethical behaviors such as discrimination.)

In any case, I'm not interested in turning this into a general evaluation of structures and approaches to regulation and government, not least of which because that would retread well-trodden conversational territory with little new to cover.

I think it's worth focusing on the _specific_ case of "is the world better or worse off" here, and then asking how, if you see the specific path taken as a problem, the same goal could have been achieved in another way.

> to allow people to survive without doing an incredible amount of research > into everything they consume

You shouldn't have to do 100% of the research yourself, but I think you should have a choice of who you delegate that responsibility and trust to.

<comment><USER18> From what I've read, it appears that Uber operates largely within a zero-sum space. I. e. they're not build around some innovative technology that improves everyone's life, but have simply ignored a few rules, allowing them to reward one class of people with $1 for every $1 they take from another class of people.

The statistic that's going around is that they're subsidising each trip at a rate of 50% – i. e. taking from the VC investor and giving it to the customer. At the same time, they're undercutting the income and benefits currently enjoyed by taxi drivers. The net effect is both the lower and upper class paying to the mostly middle-class customers. The contribution from investors isn't going to continue forever, so lets assume they somehow find the economies of scale, or market power to raise prices, to break even –although I'm somewhat sceptical because I don't know how a trip in LA gets cheaper if there are also drivers in Barcelona.

So now the customers get rides that are cheaper by anywhere from 50% to 0%, the latter if Uber manages to establish some sort of market dominance. And taxi drivers earning $40,000 are replaced by Uber drivers earning $30,000 and having no health insurance.

Is that worth it? That probably depends on your politics. There's the economic fundamentalist perspective that markets are always fair and if that means you have to work in a coal mine where the air smells funny and by the way Johnny didn't make it out today, then you should have better paid attention in school.

Personally, I think more equitable societies are more fun to life in, and kicking possibly hundreds of thousands of people a step down the economic ladder will, in the long term, hurt almost everyone – the trickle-up effect seems to have much more empirical support than the opposite

<comment><USER17> Regarding the actual service provided: it's a better service in a way that has nothing to do with cost, and it would remain a better service even at a higher cost than a taxi. (And due to efficiency improvements, it could also theoretically provide better rates than a taxi while paying drivers the same, or pay better while charging riders the same.) The entire experience of requesting a ride and getting one represents a massive improvement over taxis.

I don't know anyone who uses such services because they _cost less_ , rather than because they _work better_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Uber's disregard for local laws and regulations is well known, so I find it hard to be shocked by this.

But the chutzpah to implement something so blatantly designed to aide in breaking the law is still surprising. It reminds me of Zenefits in a way.

It also seems similar to VW's Diesel engine "Defeat Device". The future of technology will probably include ever more shady uses of programming to mislead regulators and the like.

<comment><USER20> That struck me too. A normal company might do this, but they'd at least pretend it was meant to deter criminals or catch abusers or whatever. Instead their statement says:

"This program denies ride requests to users who are violating our terms of service — whether that's people aiming to physically harm drivers, competitors looking to disrupt our operations, or opponents who collude with officials on secret 'stings' meant to entrap drivers."

It's rather blatant. I assume they think that last part makes them look good and "officials" look bad, but to me it just says "we built this to avoid getting caught breaking the law."

<comment><USER21> Both things can be correct if you believe the law in question is bad. The Jefferson quote comes to mind:

"If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."

<comment><USER20> You'd think they would mention that the law was bad if that was their justification here.

<comment><USER22> Maybe not. That might tie their hands in court. It might leave "have the court declare the law invalid" as their _only_ way to win. Limiting your options that way tends to be bad legal strategy (whether or not it would be the moral high ground).

Disclaimer: IANAL.

<comment><USER20> It seems to me that saying "we did this so we can violate the law without getting caught" is already an extremely bad legal strategy. If their statement was aimed at limiting their legal exposure it wouldn't have included that part at all. If it was aimed at showing that they're morally in the right, they would have said that the laws were bad. I can't see anything that justifies what they said, aside from thinking everyone sees the law the same way they do so it goes without saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So I ask this mostly out of horrified curiosity -- is there any negative press or revelation that could actually sink Uber at this point? What would it take for the company to fail?

We've seen:

* Systematic flouting of laws in public

* Even further hidden avoiding of laws

* Sexism complaints across the board

* What appears to be a pervasive toxic culture, inspired (if not explicitly encouraged) straight from the CEO's behavior

Are they actually too big to fail?

<comment><USER24> They're trying to become too big to fail, but aren't quite there yet.

Essentially they're undercutting all competitors by artificially keeping fares _very_ low and subsidizing drivers. Subsidies were the primary source of their enormous financial losses in 2016.

Once the competition is completely gone (local cabs, and Lyft in some areas), then they can stop subsidizing themselves and basically hold a monopoly. It's their entire strategy.

<comment><USER25> I simply don't see how Uber can be a monopoly. You need a critical mass of drivers, but nothing stops drivers from being on multiple networks. This isn't Microsoft doing per-CPU licensing.

<comment><USER26> > I simply don't see how Uber can be a monopoly. You need a critical mass of > drivers, but nothing stops drivers from being on multiple networks. This > isn't Microsoft doing per-CPU licensing.

They could force drivers to only work for Uber. "If you go to the competition, you can't work for us", they could try to lobby so that other networks can't legally operate, just like Taxi companies did... They just want to replace Taxi companies, that's why people who think they are the "hero of the libertarians" are misguided.

<comment><USER27> They could keep track of people as best they can, and shadowban them from all transportation using Greyball so the people couldn't function in society. It'd be kind of like getting blackballed for life from credit card issuers. Effective to the extent they can make a monopoly, probably more effective when it's a shadowban rather than explicit rules stating the person is barred from using the service forever.

It would be rather profitable to be able to hold the world hostage, single out whoever you want and make them hoof it. Particularly if they'd got used to using Uber to get to work or something. Long game would be making private vehicle ownership illegal, but that's very long term indeed. I'm just saying, you can keep going and every step of the way is increasingly profitable. Wall Street would love it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm not excusing Uber at all because what they've done is extremely bad in multiple cases but find it strange all these hit pieces are coming out of the wood works. There is a large section of society that hates Uber and will spring at any chance to bring it down. Which is partially what I think happened with the whole #boycottUber thing and the new video of kalanick yelling at the driver.

However, the sexism and dysfunction in the company is extremely disturbing. It almost starts to undermine the case against them when there are all these hit jobs coming out and it starts to seem that the media is biased or relishing their fall.

<comment><USER29> I think it's a mistake to interpret the wave of stories about Uber's misbehavior as indicative of a "hit job" or "media bias" against Uber. Courage is contagious, and as people have started to speak out publicly against Uber's abuses, it appears current and former employees are becoming emboldened to share their experiences as well. I hope that this wave of public backlash will demonstrate to Uber, and the tech industry as a whole, that the market is not blind to unethical behavior, and cutthroat competition at the expense of your employees and the law is not necessarily a winning strategy.

<comment><USER30> There's a similar phenomenon with sexual assault allegations - often they cluster in time, because a single accuser is more likely to be taken seriously when there are others making similar accusations.

This is, BTW, the motivation behind an app I've heard of where you can file a sealed sexual assault report against someone, with verified date of filing, to be unsealed only if some number of people make an accusation against the same person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not only am I done with Uber, I'm starting to wonder about associates and partners (investors, advisors, marketing partners, etc.)

If you're still doing business with Uber in 2017, it's because you don't want to know or you don't care who you're dealing with. Neither reflects well on you. It tells me you have your own very low bar -- your own version of "well we're not as awful as taxis _shrug_ " \-- above which anything goes ethically and professionally.

Which is your choice. It is also my choice to be concerned about doing business with you and steer clear.

<comment><USER32> EDIT: After re-reading your statement, it doesn't appear you meant customers. Leaving my statement below anyway.

> If you're still doing business with Uber in 2017, it's because you don't > want to know or you don't care who you're dealing with.

Or because I don't really have an option. Cabs are still terrible and require me to carry cash which I don't, and lyft doesn't work on my phone.

<comment><USER33> Curious, what phone are you using where Uber works and Lyft doesn't?

I actually agree with the OPs statement as it applies to customers (at least when there's a reasonable alternative). I live in NYC so it was pretty easy for me - I deleted the app and switched to using Lyft.

<comment><USER32> Well, that's complicated but...

I currently use android, and lyft won't work without permanent access to my location and contacts, which I consider unacceptable. I'm supposed to get the ubuntu phone in about a week, and afaik, there's no lyft client for that. There is an uber webpage, m.uber.com or something that should work with it though.

This is all untested on my new phone, so I may be incorrect.

<comment><USER34> hahaha

Man, I knew there were gonna be some libertarians on this thread.

<comment><USER32> FWIW, I would strongly not consider myself libertarian |;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This reminded me of a quote by Snowden, "Right and wrong has a very different standard from what is legal and illegal.... Every act of progression in nation's history has involved tensions with law..."

I'm glad Uber did the things they did to circumvent the law. There are countless number of times where my friends and I had the option to 'uber' to a party or bar instead of driving ourselves. Ive met many Uber drivers who loves the opportunity to work and provide a valuable service.

Despite the many flaws, Uber was able to bring social value and it has improved the quality of my life significantly. Had I waited for the law to 'do things properly'... I can't even imagine.

This is one of the things Uber did right and it made me realize the efforts Uber went through to provide me a viable alternative to public transportation and gave me the freedom to travel around the city reliably 24 hours a day. I'm now reinstalling Uber.

<comment><USER36> > I'm now reinstalling Uber.

Most people admit the service is needed, and well executed. But the company is shit. So use lyft

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> You've got to admit Uber has brought the BigCorp stereotype of the 80s to life. I am amazed at the (US?)-culture that makes people enact so poisonous policies. In my corporation, literally the first line of our risk appetite says that we uphold the law and common norms and morality. Seems trivial, but still gives guidance to everyday actions. Could you explain it to your mom? Whole layers of management and lawyers flaunting common norms... I couldn't work there. How's VC-ing this different from bankrolling Al Capone?

<comment><USER38> > _we uphold the law and common norms and morality_

Well then I guess if your government lawfully asked you for a list of all your Muslim/Jewish/etc. customers or employees you would comply?

<comment><USER30> Hence "common norms and morality".

<comment><USER38> A: "I need a ride"

B: "I will give you a ride for $10"

A: "Okay!"

I would say a government interfering in such a simple transaction is immoral and violates common norms. Traditional taxi cabs and the gov't regulations that propped them up is a textbook example of rent-seeking.

<comment><USER39> The government almost certainly creates and maintains the rights-of-way on which B will take you.

Revert to horses in countryside settings:

A to B: "I need a ride"

B to A: "I will take you on horseback for a penny!"

B to C: "I need to cross your field/forest/stream"

C to B: "That will be a quarter of a penny, and no refund if you cannot negotiate for permission to enter and cross the next property along the way"

[repeat]

In the history encompassing the legal tradition of where Uber's HQ is based, governments have been interfering with this (by road, trackway and holloway construction and maintenance) since before the Romans invaded Britain.

Indeed, formal regulation of taxi services appeared in England in 1635, with the Hackney Carriage Act setting up a legal framework, with further statutory and regulatory tools (including licensing, which imposed training and safety requirements on drivers and carriage owners, and which granted broad protections against rent-seeking by road owners, including public bodies) before the 1670s.

So the "interference" in the market you pine for has been going on for many centuries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> That's actually pretty impressive. I mean, it morally questionable maybe. Is there a law that says Uber is required to send a cab to city officials? The official gave Uber access to his personal details. If Uber doesn't want to fulfill the request it seems reasonable that ultimately it's Uber's decision. I'm not sure what to think about this one.

<comment><USER41> City officials are not a protected class in the US that are provided legal protections connected to being discriminated against.

<comment><USER42> protected class refers to groups of people who shall not be targeted by laws and regulations.

It has nothing to do with discrimination by companies towards groups of people.

<comment><USER43> It does in the US:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What if local law enforcement officer was posing undercover as an Uber customer as part of a sexual assault investigation or trying to track down all drivers in relation to a recent crime?

This is framed as getting around restrictions on taxi services, but any time you proactively thwart law enforcement, you're inviting a lot of dangerous unintended consequences. None of which I'm sure Uber is concerned about.

<comment><USER45> A sideways thought: this could be a good way for a criminal to vet someone before a meeting. "Take an Uber and meet me at 1st and Green."

<comment><USER46> Facebook is already better, with number of mutual friends. It does require having a social circle that's relatively immune from law enforcement coercion.

<comment><USER45> I'm not on facebook. Does that make me trustworthy or untrustworthy to a potential criminal employer? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Lets not forget that YC has endorsed Uber multiple times in public statements. When YC says "be naughty" this is what they mean.

They'll try to distance themselves from this now, but their statements were "be naughty" while holding up AirBnB and Uber as examples to be proud of.

Take what you will from that.

<comment><USER48> In jurisdictions where Uber is illegal, Uber's graywall activities are organized crime; there's no other way to put it. How is it any different than, say, an app that advises drug couriers where there are (possibly undercover) enforcement agents. This is serious stuff, and in no way does the desire to provide better taxi service justify it.

In 20 seconds of googling I didn't find pg urging entrepreneurs to be naughty. I did find YC's ethics policy[1], and the only mention the of the law that I see is related to sales tactics, "Not using misleading, illegal or dishonest sales tactics." This needs revision.

There are lots of laws that are challenging and problematic, even impractical to follow exactly, e.g., the tax code. It's one thing to interpret the tax code in your favor; it's another thing to write a program to distort your business information to avoid taxes.

[1] [https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/](https://www.ycombinator.com/ethics/)

EDIT: Found the naughtiness link. Reading now.... EDIT 2: I'm completely opposed to drug laws. Drugs laws are sickening and immoral, and our society and countless individuals have paid a terrible price as a result of these laws, but that doesn't make it ok for me to sell drugs on the street.

<comment><USER48> I read What We Look for in Founders[1], and I think the section on Naughtiness conveys the wrong message, unless pg actually intends to suggest that, for example, the graywall tactics that Uber has used are desireable. Is Portland's law against services like Uber's a law "that matters?"

pg makes a more specific case for disobedience in The Word "Hacker"[2], and maybe he really does look for people who will flout the law when they see fit.

I don't see an easy way to rephrase what pg is saying in a way I'd prefer to see it, except to say that the there is a distinction between civil disobedience for the purpose of insisting on human rights and mere criminal behavior. Surely YCombinator does not want to invest in criminal enterprises, no matter how clever or hackish.

[1] [http://paulgraham.com/founders.html](http://paulgraham.com/founders.html) [2] [http://paulgraham.com/gba.html](http://paulgraham.com/gba.html)

<comment><USER48> OK, one more thing. This "I can flout the law in my new business" attitude is a great example of white privilege, and this is why this attitude really grates on my nerves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> "But unknown to Mr. England and other authorities, some of the digital cars they saw in the app did not represent actual vehicles. And the Uber drivers they were able to hail also quickly canceled. That was because Uber had tagged Mr. England and his colleagues — essentially Greyballing them as city officials — based on data collected from the app and in other ways. The company then served up a fake version of the app populated with ghost cars, to evade capture."

Holy shit that's actually impressive in how deceitful it is.

<comment><USER50> It's actually pretty common if you cast this as an abuse detection tool, which it sounds like this may have started out as. Think of it like shadowbanning - when you catch someone, your measures are more effective if the person doesn't realize you've done it. You want to hide the mechanism by which they got caught, and then you want to delay their ability to take countermeasures. This basically checks those boxes.

<comment><USER51> The name suggests this as well. "Ban" is to "shadowban" as "blackball" is to "Greyball".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I thought the whole 'animated cars' user interface thing was faked anyway? [http://gizmodo.com/uber-is-faking-us-out-with-ghost-cabs- on-...](http://gizmodo.com/uber-is-faking-us-out-with-ghost-cabs-on-its- passenge-1720576619)

<comment><USER53> I suspect that the counterpart in the Lyft app is not actually faked. I've often had a driver accept a ride and appear on the map almost exactly where a car had been previously in the "animated cars" UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> > Uber then served up a fake version of its app that was populated with ghost > cars, to evade capture.

> To date, Greyballing has been effective. In Portland that day in late 2014, > Mr. England, the enforcement officer, did not catch an Uber, according to > local reports.

> To circumvent that tactic, Uber employees went to that city's local > electronics stores to look up device numbers of the cheapest mobile phones > on sale, which were often the ones bought by city officials, whose budgets > were not sizable.

Holy moley. That is so slimy and sneaky.

Well heck this opens a new startup opportunity -- build a device or service to create phone and accounts to evade Greyball and sell its usage to local law enforcement. The price would be low enough if it is sold or provided per hour for example. They could afford that.

</comment><comment><USER55> I'm confused by what laws were broken by Greyball. It's certainly deceptive, but is that illegal?

In these cases I'm sympathetic to Uber -

Let's call it "don't delay the pie to get your slice". One of the types of circumstances described is where a municipality doesn't know how to handle ride-shares, so Uber does questionable things to get ride-shares going while the legal situation is figured out. This seems reasonable (within bounds) - because: should the municipality be able to delay the pie while they figure out how to get their slice? Not exactly incentivized to do it in a timely manner; while, if the pie is out there happening, they're incentivized to get their slice in a timely fashion.

<comment><USER56> Obstruction of justice comes to mind. There's a concept of "misleading conduct" typically in obstruction laws.

Not sure, though, if it applies to tort type infractions...which is usually where Uber plays, or only in cases where the obstruction is hindering investigation of criminal activity.

<comment><USER57> Exactly.

You are not obligated to assist the police.

But lying to / actively deceiving law enforcement in the act of their work is usually considered a crime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> It says uber legal approved this, but uber legal is mostly corporate and ip counsel.

I strongly doubt they had anyone with significant criminal experience look at this, because i have trouble seeing someone not immediately saying "you're joking,right? Are you stupid?"

(unless they were a canonical tv mob lawyer)

<comment><USER59> Maybe Greyball was approved by Uber legal when it was envisioned as a system for excluding bad users (rival companies etc) and then without additional legal review they started using it to exclude suspected law enforcement?

<comment><USER60> My guess is that the approved tool the company allows to merely build a profile of the additional details necessary to provide additional 'white glove' style service to VIPs to ensure positive word of mouth occurs. Then they realized that they were seeing data that indicated that they were being watched a little closer by the .gov, and 'adjusted' the software to reject or process those people's Uber experiences differently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I wonder what rate of false negatives is, in terms of assigning Greyball status to someone who is not in fact a local official conducting a sting operation.

Picture a 19-year-old woman in college whose dad convinced her to put Uber on her phone so she'd have a way to get home safely at night -- and linked her account up to his credit card so she wouldn't worry about having to afford the ride.

Now picture her leaving a house party drunk at 2am. The party happens to be close to city government offices, and her dad's a cop and his credit card tracks back to a police credit union. She opens the app and tries to get a car, but there are no cars. Or there are lots of cars, but none will give her a ride.

A low-probability edge case, to be sure, but I wonder if Uber considered the possibility?

<comment><USER62> Your example would be better put to government officials trying to shut down Uber.

<comment><USER61> That's a very fair point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> At first, I considered it more clever than anything. Using data to reduce ticketable-offenses for their drivers (in an undeniably unethical way). However, my view quickly soured when I read:

> If those clues were not enough to confirm a user's identity, Uber employees > would search social media profiles and other available information online.

For some reason, I make a mental distinction between some automated system blocking access and having employees research potential customers online for a ride-share app. The bad PR week for Uber continues.

</comment><comment><USER64> "we need to permanently track your location on the app to better serve you. unless you are a possible government official, in which case we will track your location to block you from the service"

yes definitely not scary at all that they're tracking open/close of the app by location...

<comment><USER65> Where users open the app is just as legitimate a marketing tool as traffic counts or parking lot counts in retail, or musicians knowing where Spotify users are streaming their songs to inform concert tour plans, etc.

If you give me location access permission, it seems reasonable to expect that I'm going to use that location access.

<comment><USER64> i understand uber needs to use my location for their service. i don't expect them to use it to determine whether or not i should be allowed on their service.

and also i don't expect them to continue using my location once i leave the app in the name of "user safety" _especially_ given the above info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Are there legal grounds here for a court decision against Uber based on this?

I suppose the answer depends on the nation or state in which this tactic was deployed.

This behavior doesn't surprise me based on their strategy of negotiation regarding regulation.

<comment><USER67> Speculating: possibly they may be safe if their TOS prohibits using the service to ticket drivers, which is not the intended purpose of the service. Courts have generally been kind to private company's TOS.

<comment><USER68> Certainly not. You can't protect yourself from a lawful investigation by writing "NO COPS ALLOWED" on your front door, either.

<comment><USER67> Agreed but you could refuse access to cops unless they have a warrant, right?

The article did not mention whether they had a warrant, I assume not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I think Uber needed such tool because they tried to barge their way in a hostile market. I think people blaming Uber for being unethical should ask question what led them to do such behavior (because of ancient government laws) I'm not defending Uber but I think if they didn't enter market people would have never know what is it.

<comment><USER70> I second this feeling. Uber may be a terrible company led by terrible people, but they opened the floodgates for a better framework of cab transportation. I hope that sticks (the model, idc about the company)

<comment><USER71> They did produce a useful innovation, but their strategy is about stifling competition and there's nothing good about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> It sounds like Greyball started out as a fairly legitimate tool to protect their drivers and customers from violence and abuse. And, then, of course it's use started broadening to the current status...

<comment><USER73> This is reminiscent of a dynamic seen with certain intelligence programs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I am trying to come up with an analogy to comprehend this.

Imagine a city government has a rule against palm oil and no restaurants are supposed to use palm oil. A restaurant think that rule is nuts and decides to protest it publicly by using it. At the same time, they rip off the label from the palm oil. The city was having trouble finding the palm oil in the restaurant.

You can claim that the restaurant has broken the city rule - which is not a secret. But I don't think ripping off the label or making the regulators life more challenging is a crime by itself.

<comment><USER75> Imagine murder is illegal. But some guy thinks it isn't and does it anyway.

He puts bodies in acid, hides them in concrete, and so on.

Now this kind of behaviour is likely to mean the authorities will take a lot longer to find murderers. Murderers will get away with it from time to time. And a lot of resource needs to be spent just to find the criminals.

We do tend to be more forgiving with crimes where the criminal confesses, and rightly so.

<comment><USER74> Equating outdated city-level taxi regulations to universal law punishing murder is disingenuous, to say the least.

FTC did a report [1] in _1984_ about taxi regulations and pointed out why cities were not well-equipped nor incentivized to regulate for the purpose of market efficiency:

> There are, in fact, reasons to doubt that existing regulations are > efficient. One problem is that the analytical and informatiqnal problems > involved in determining the efficient levels of the relevant policy > variables are great. It is doubtful that regulatory authorities generally > have the necessary expertise or information to determine these levels. Also, > taxi ordinances and the government agencies that issue taxi regulations may > not be motivated primarily by concern for market failure and achievement of > an efficient resource allocation. It appears that taxi regulations have > often been designed to protect public transit systems and existing taxi > firms from competition.

[1] [https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/ec...](https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reports/economic- analysis-taxicab-regulation/233832.pdf)

<comment><USER75> It's totally irrelevant what the crime is, whether you like the rules or not, or whether the rules are economically efficient.

The point is you can't obstruct law enforcement from detecting that you've broken the rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Magically your Uber cars never arrive and the system _LIES_ to you about it. At the very least shouldn't this qualify as false advertising?

How does this not disturb people here greatly? Are you really so sure that you will never magically be in a group that is considered "undesirable"?

If you want to defend Uber on the axis that they are a "proper" taxi replacement who is "just" sweeping away old, stupid regulations, this just lost you the argument.

In addition, lying to people is how you get _MORE_ regulation piled on you, not less.

<comment><USER27> You might want to be careful. If Uber employees can associate your identity with the fact you say things like 'the Uber system lies to you', they already have a shadowban system set up and might be motivated to punish you for your cruel, meanie opinions. Perhaps never being able to get transportation would be a suitable punishment. Who are you going to complain to, the cops? They aren't running the system ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> People seem to be defending Uber by saying they're disrupting taxi cab monopolies. But Uber themselves is positioning themselves to become a monopoly. It's naive to think that once they're there they are going to have the people's interests at heart.

</comment><comment><USER78> It is very interested how Uber is seen as extremely evil and the government chaps & taxi drivers are the good.

I'd say that what they are doing is "Rent Seeking"[1], which has extremely detrimental effects on the economy and that if some of the conversations between them were made public, they would end up in an even bigger mess.

My impressions come from the halting of the Uber service in Sofia, where the link between local authorities ans taxi companies was even more obvious than in Paris, Berlin and other cases.

What are your thoughs on that? It seems to me that Uber is in a lesser moral violation and hence the lesser evil.

Are there any mainstream medias which represent neo-libertarian or whatever it is called views and or at least try to be objective?

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent- seeking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking)

P.S. Isn't this nearly morally/legally equivalent to using those speed gun detectors or police camera location applications?

</comment><comment><USER79> Well, the final call for Uber in Taiwan is this, the government let anyone to report the driver and can receive reward in money if successfully doing so. Soon enough, Uber stopped operating.

<comment><USER46> Obvious-to-me countermeasure: spam the government with fabricated false positives. If most Taiwanese citizens opposed the government on this, it'd work.

<comment><USER80> _spam the government with fabricated false positives_

Right. So you say people should _lie_ to their government???!

Martha Stewart thought that she was so smart that she could lie to the FBI when they came to talk to her. Unfortunately for her, it turns out that making false statements to government investigators is a federal crime. Martha wound up doing time: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Stewart#Sentence)

I have to believe that the USA is not the only country where it is a crime to lie to investigators. You have a right to remain silent, not a right to lie.

<comment><USER46> Right, good point. I (embarrassingly) forgot that that was an option for dealing with invalid input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> The company I work for builds software platforms for cities, tldr: we have a pretty basic sub/pub idea for city data, and give them a little abstraction tool that allows folks who work in cities but don't know what an API is a way to create and publish one so they can then hold the vendor to account (From IoT to the Ubers and Lyfts of the world) -

I spent a lot of time in cities talking to them and the way uber has lobbied and created special interests is absolutely mind blowing. Sometimes a CIO in city using our tool will go to the Mayor and show them how uber, lyft, airbnb etc could integrate to give the city more insight, and without fail the Mayor is scared to push the companies.

<comment><USER82> Off topic, I just checked out your site. Cool stuff. I work for a labor market data company of whom EDO/WIBs are a large portion of our client base. I'm curious to what kind of data you have at the zip level.

<comment><USER81> Decent. Feel free to email me. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Hmm, so it seems we have a relatively small corporation duking it out with many sovereign governments and standing a good chance of winning the fight. Governments have ultimate authority in their territorial regions (Westphalian Peace), but that idea may no longer be valid these days. My small survey of the zeitgeist says that it is likely to continue this way. So then, what is the next step. We have some sort of corporate-governmental feudalism right now, where either of them 'farms' the people and you elect to be a serf of Google or FB or Uber or many at once, just as you were a Huguenot and a Frenchman and a Gascon all at once. What is the next step here?

</comment><comment><USER84> Uber really getting Theranos-ed lately. It's like the press was saving up their Uber hit pieces and is just unleashing them this week.

<comment><USER85> Unlike Theranos, Uber has a product that works very well and at a low cost to the consumer.

<comment><USER24> The cost is artificially low due to loss-backed driver subsidies.

<comment><USER21> What could be greater than getting your rides subsidized by fat cats?

<comment><USER24> livable wages for drivers

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> This is just as bad as the Volkswagen emission testing scandal and I hope just as disastrous for the offending company.

</comment><comment><USER87> I'm a bit torn by this. On the one hand Uber is a terrible company exploiting people desperate enough to sell themselves in the "gig economy" and breaking all manner of laws in the process.

On the other hand I remember my friends and neighbors being abused by police and our "justice" system on a near daily basis as I grew up so it's hard for me to muster much sympathy when their efforts are thwarted.

To me this looks like two powerful entities engaged in a game of slap-fight that ultimately disregards folks of lesser social and economic means.

</comment><comment><USER88> This is clear cut conspiracy [1]. It's 5 years of federal time (no parole). I am sure once a federal agent arrives at the uber office for a few questions people will be pointing fingers & divulging information without lawyers. Brutal. Hilariously, the people that turned over the docs to the nytimes didn't realize they will also be indicted.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371) [1]

</comment><comment><USER89> Of all the things Uber is accused of this week, I'm pretty sure this one is the least concerning. It seems to involve the ethical dilemma of a radar detector.

Speed limits are about public safety, too, but speed traps are usually about money. Ride-sharing regulations might be about safety, but Uber 'stings' seem to be about hurting drivers (not Uber) and preserving the value of taxi medallions.

If the police want information, subpoena Uber; don't play spy vs spy with folks trying to eke out a few bucks.

<comment><USER90> _It seems to involve the ethical dilemma of a radar detector._

It is similar, but I think an important difference is that Uber, as an organization, was deliberately flouting the law and also building tools to avoid suffering the consequences of that behavior.

I'd say it is similar to the difference between an individual using a radar detector for personal travel vs. a trucking/shipping company equipping all of their vehicles with radar detectors and making it a company policy to violate the speed limit.

<comment><USER89> Yes, the ethics at the level of "should I sell a device that lets (usually) minor law breakers avoid surprise enforcement."

Uber here seems to be in the same league as radar detector manufacturers, Waze's "Police" alerts, police scanner apps, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> The question is, did they really have to engage in these tactics to "win"? This just makes Uber sound another notch less moral and legal to everyone further making it look like the evil corp. It's like their motto is the opposite of Google's 'Do no Evil'.

And I guess the other question here is: does this matter for people (i.e. consumers)? I would argue that given two equivalent choices, one would vote for the one with better reputation, so yes, it matters

</comment><comment><USER92> How things like this remain secrets for so long is astounding to me. By definition of what the day to day of driving strangers around Uber has hundreds of drivers who hate their job yet it took this long for these stories to start finding their way into the press.

With Volkswagon cheating the system it was a small group of engineers and covert approval from the top that explained how they could get away with it for so long.

</comment><comment><USER93> There was a time when Lyft employees would call Uber cars, wait 2 minutes, then cancel the ride. This left riders driving around to pick up phantom rides, unable to make any money servicing legit customers.

If you're questioning whether this system should exist, it seems totally reasonable to build. The question is how aggressively do you use it to protect the company, and from which threats.

(And yes, Uber did that to Lyft too.)

</comment><comment><USER94> If anything, I find this very clever. While there are many valid reasons that justify anger against Uber (workplace harassment and predatory pricing), I don't think this is one. Instead of outlawing Uber, cities and governments should take a step back and reflect on these laws which Uber has proven servers no one.

</comment><comment><USER95> That is pretty interesting, although 'greyballing' as a analog for 'blackballing' as an analog of creating a list of people you won't serve is taking it a bit deep. I wonder if a counter hack would be to make it illegal to discriminate against people based on whether or not they were a public employee.

I think it is completely reasonable to have a 'reputation' system where drivers can rate passengers as well as passengers rating drivers, and then sharing that rating so that drivers wouldn't pick up people known to be combative drunks. Having your app display a bunch of 'ghost cars' always out of reach has a certain poetic justice.

But parts of this are really mind blowing, going into shops and recording the IMEI's of burner phones for later correlation? I think that's a service right there.

</comment><comment><USER96> This is certainly a hardball approach, but I see nothing especially wrong with it. When you install Uber, you authorize it to send location data. If you happen to work at a transportation enforcement office, that is going to be immediately apparent to them unless you take countermeasures, such as using a GPS spoofing app.

If I declare myself to be an enemy of a given entity, I fully expect them to use every resource at their disposal to attempt to defeat me - especially when that entity has billions of dollars at stake. That they are using tactics like this shouldn't be surprising. It should be expected.

I kind of have a newfound respect for Uber's ingenuity after reading this. It's probably one of hundreds of examples of the reasons that they have risen so fast.

<comment><USER97> > If I declare myself to be an enemy of a given entity, I fully expect them to > use every resource at their disposal to attempt to defeat me

What an absolutely absurd way to characterise the actions of those who enforce law with those who attempt to break it.

<comment><USER96> It isn't necessarily about breaking laws. There are many legitimate reasons to deny service to undercover law enforcement personnel who are often simply looking for ways to boost their agency's revenue through specious allegations. Uber has no legal obligation to do anything for people that do not declare themselves to be law enforcement personnel with special rights.

Not that it will ever stop them, but I often build a clause into the TOS of my websites that law enforcement personnel may not use the site without prior authorization. I have no idea if this will ever stand up in court, but perhaps this clause will, for example, be useful in defeating a search warrant for user information since the suspicion upon which the warrant is based would necessarily have been obtained without authorization unless the government asked for permission to access the site in advance. A healthy disdain for government agents makes for a healthy, free society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> The question I'm not getting answers through reading comments here is this: can someone go to jail for this?

That's the most important thing. Anything else is a noise, even if considered bad PR I don't think those who hail for a cheap ride could care less.

</comment><comment><USER99> Uber is having a very bad month.

<comment><USER100> not as bad as the company deserves.

<comment><USER101> Kind of weird IMO to think of a company as deserving or not deserving something. It's a group of people with a with array of opinions and behavior, many of whom probably like having a place to work

It's much more constructive to want the organization to get better than to cheer on some kind of punishment we think it's owed

<comment><USER102> > Kind of weird IMO to think of a company as deserving or not deserving > something.

Companies have patterns of behavior just like any other entity. As much as the idea of 'deserving' applies at all, it can apply to companies.

> It's much more constructive to want the organization to get better than to > cheer on some kind of punishment we think it's owed

It's a strange implication that this is different from how we should treat individuals. We should be _more_ focused on rehabilitation when it's an individual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER103> Glad to see the government being handed back some of it's own techniques. They seriously think they can spy on American citizens? Just wait until the the large tech companies start spying on them.

</comment><comment><USER104> Even if the law says that Uber must admit taxi inspectors, it's hard to say Uber's breaking the law if the inspectors don't "show their badge" or otherwise identify themselves as officials.

Of course if they do show their badge, there's a great incentive for Uber to say "Sorry, no drivers are available in your area" even if this is not really true.

So you have this curious cat-and-mouse game where the taxi inspector pretends to be somebody else, and Uber tries to penetrate the facade.

<comment><USER105> That would make sense if they didn't go out of there way to identify potential investigators and law enforcement. I don't see how they could create a system to target law enforcement and then say they didn't know they were.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> Where I'm from a taxi driver gets a fine if they refuse service to someone. Seems that Uber has that built in. Seems like it could easily abused for discrimination.

<comment><USER107> > Where I'm from a taxi driver gets a fine if they refuse service to someone.

Discrimination problem is solved by competition, not regulation. You can't regulate against discrimination.

See how it works with jobs. When employer doesn't want to employ someone for whatever reason, he will simply state that candidate didn't pass the interview or whatever, and you can't prove it otherwise.

<comment><USER106> In this case, I think regulation serves as competition - either you get the money from the fare, or take a double financial hit from missing the fare and owing a fine.

Edit: Also I disagree that discrimination can be solved by competition. Competition can result in mutually exclusive sets of discrimination eg. extreme nationalism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> If you work for Uber and read these stories, day after day, how do you feel working there?

I am really interested - were there thoughts of walking away because of it?

<comment><USER109> I used to work at Uber, and there would always be bad press. Negative spins on just about everything we did.

It didn't deter me at the time simply because 90% was totally bogus and completely blown out of proportion. Just like this article is.

I left the company because it grew too big and the culture began to suffer for it, but all these doom and gloom stories about Uber breaking the law are just silly. Existing taxi regulations are terrible, and none of it makes any sense. None of it even benefits taxi drivers. They are designed to benefit companies who hold medallions, companies who are deep in bed with local governments.

Cities would never have had the incentive to get with the times if it wasn't for Uber, Period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> Now we know why they wanted your location after your ride -- to profile your home and work activities and possibly infer your occupation.

</comment><comment><USER73> Setting aside the rather questionable ethics for a moment, this program is quite badass when looking at it from a purely logistical point of view.

In fact, it's so machiavellian that it feels like I'm reading an article disclosing an NSA program and not a private transportation company's activities.

If only they had the same fervor for say, combating sexual harassment in the workplace.

</comment><comment><USER111> And what if the tool doesn't actually track police officers ? Tracking bad customers by credit card, and making it difficult for them to inconvenience other drivers after doing it a few times would seem to be a quite normal thing for any credit card payment receiver to do.

I mean this thing would probably be looking for jokers (think ordering pizza to your neighbour's house), people with invalid credit cards, people who abuse drivers, and so on and so forth.

So what happened is probably more like this: officers order cars, have the Uber drivers drive up to them, cancel the ride and ticket the driver. The Uber app then proceeds to ask the drivers to "rate the passenger". Needless to say, the police accounts get very bad scores. After doing this 2 or 3 times, the app still shows the police officers the normal interface, but doesn't actually calls cars, knowing the rides will be canceled. The tool now has 2 or 3 separate pieces of information indicating these are not good-faith customers and stops acting in good faith towards them. So it don't tell the bad users it's ignoring them, because they'll just get a new account and start harassing more drivers again. And there you have it: "greyballing".

So it could very well be this isn't designed to catch law enforcement. It just happens to.

<comment><USER112> Please don't throw out random speculations before reading the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> So much bad news all at once for Uber, recently. Is there some sort of campaign in motion to buy them out or destroy them?

</comment><comment><USER114> Uber leadership provides yet another reason to be happy with deleting their app. A weak apology that didn't even mention their most egregious behaviors??! Travis, you should do the right thing and step down as CEO. You will never be thought of as trustable or honorable again (if you ever were...)

</comment><comment> the-dude A shadowban of a sort. Very effective.

</comment><comment><USER115> If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so. -Jefferson

</comment><comment><USER116> I wonder if this is an airing of dirty laundry ahead of Holder's upcoming review...

</comment><comment><USER117> Good thing Uber was not in the Apple seat about backdooring specific iPhones...

We know on which side of ethic they are... I'm happy that, at least in Montreal, we have Téo as a more legit alternative.

</comment><comment><USER118> It's a 'bad' culture.

Somebody said we could do this (greyball). I know how.

And some body else above this person should have shot down the idea as "just wrong"

But the culture missed that lesson.

</comment><comment><USER119> The title of this article could of just as easily been "Uber protects it's drivers from sting operations". I am on Uber's side on this

</comment><comment><USER120> This seems like one of the first major illicit uses of data science. There should be more regulation and oversight over the data owned by corporations.

<comment><USER21> It seems like a good idea until you think more about it.

I at least wouldn't let the US Government, NSA included, have even more access to private data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER118> One question. If i'm uber and I want to know who is at npa-nxx-xXxX cell number (not a customer obviously) where does uber pick up that name?

</comment><comment><USER121> I don't understand why it was so difficult for officers to find a Uber driver? Why didn't they just stand outside a bar at 2am?

</comment><comment><USER122> "Greyball-as-a-service" would make for a startup with interesting applications (think protecting sex workers etc.)

</comment><comment><USER123> Wow. This has GOT to be illegal...right?

<comment><USER124> Isn't that Uber's specialty?

</comment></comment><comment><USER125> I don't see why this is so bad. They're a private business, and they're allowed to do business with whom they will. It doesn't really change anything w.r.t the fact that they're skirting regulation, especially if the given origin story is true. Pretty tame compared to the other stuff we've been seeing from Uber, lately.

<comment><USER58> "Q: What sorts of acts may constitute obstruction of justice?

A: Obstruction may consist of any attempt to hinder the discovery, apprehension, conviction or punishment of anyone who has committed a crime.

Q: Does obstruction of justice always involve bribery or physical force?

A: No. One particularly murky category of obstruction is the use of "misleading conduct" toward another person for the purpose of obstructing justice. "Misleading conduct" may consist of deliberate lies or "material omissions" (leaving out facts which are crucial to a case). It may also include knowingly submitting or inviting a judge or jury to rely on false or misleading physical evidence, such as documents, maps, photographs or other objects. Any other "trick, scheme, or device with intent to mislead" may constitute a "misleading conduct" form of obstruction. "

If the city has made it actually illegal to drive uber vehicles, this is pretty much textbook obstruction on the part of uber, ....

<comment><USER126> Isn't obstruction of justice something that happens after a crime has been committed? If I'm a thief and I do my thieving in the middle of the night when no one is around that's an attempt to hinder discovery but it's not obstruction of justice (I don't think?).

Similarly if Uber is operating illegally in a city and they use software to avoid picking up a city official in a sting operation that doesn't sound like obstruction.

I'm no lawyer though.

<comment><USER58> IAAL (but i've only done small amount of criminal work).

A crime has been committed, even if they don't pick up the officials. If uber is operating illegally, the drivers that have picked _anyone_ up have committed a crime.

Keeping the cars away from the officials trying to ticket and prosecute those drivers is the obstruction.

That is, it's not the "avoiding sting" that causes it to be obstruction, because the crime was committed the second a driver picked someone up. Instead, the obstruction is "helping drivers who have committed crimes not be noticed, ticketed, or prosecuted"

That's definitely obstruction in jurisdictions that have this form of obstruction.

<comment><USER126> But the city's goal with these sting operations wasn't to catch and prosecute drivers/uber for previous trips. It was to catch them in the act for a single trip and prosecute them for that.

To use another analogy, if I'm a drug dealer and the cops try to buy drugs from me in a sting operation and I somehow figure out that they're cops and walk away before doing a deal is that obstruction of justice? Because I think that's basically what is (was?) happening here.

<comment><USER58> "But the city's goal with these sting operations wasn't to catch and prosecute drivers/uber for previous trips."

Errr, sure it is. Their investigatory mechanism happen to be to try catch them on a trip they could prove originated in the city, giving them probable cause to stop them and ticket them.

This just happens to be easier to do as a sting.

"It was to catch them in the act for a single trip and prosecute them for that."

That is just the method, not the purpose of the investigation.

Your argument is what would be called "a distinction without a difference"

If the FBI is looking for illegal uranium sellers, and they try to buy/bust a low level guy as part of the investigation, it does not make the investigation about the buy/bust, it's still to catch and prosecute illegal uranium sellers.

Here, the investigation's goal was to catch and prosecute uber drivers driving illegally. In any case, it doesn't matter.

Remember "Obstruction may consist of any attempt to hinder the discovery, apprehension, conviction or punishment of anyone who has committed a crime. "

Not "the crime you are currently investigating", but _any_ crime.

For example, oneo the the federal statute says: "(a) Whoever willfully endeavors by means of bribery to obstruct, delay, or prevent the communication of information relating to a violation of _any criminal statute_ of the United States by any person to a criminal investigator shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."

(emph mine)

(Ignore the bribery part, there's a ton of these statutes,i'm just pulling out one)

"To use another analogy, if I'm a drug dealer and the cops try to buy drugs from me in a sting operation and I somehow figure out that they're cops and walk away before doing a deal is that obstruction of justice? Because I think that's basically what is (was?) happening here. "

This isn't obstruction, but it's not what is happening here.

Imagine if the cops were investigating you for dealing drugs. They already had evidence you deal drugs. They ask your friend where you are, even just to talk to you, to try to get cleaner evidence, and he deliberately lies about where you are to protect you. Congrats, that's obstruction in a lot of jurisdictions. No sting reuired.

Here, the cops are asking the uber app where the drivers are. They know or have probable cause to believe the drivers have committed crimes (again, the sting part is just about having a very clean prosecution, it's not required or necessary here). Uber deliberately lies about where the drivers are, with the purpose of protecting them from this investigation.

You can ignore the sting they were doing completely. The crime was complete the second a law enforcement officer, trying to investigate the crimes of an uber driver, opened the app in an attempt to find a driver (even just to talk to!) and got fake results.

<comment><USER126> As the lawyer in this conversation I'm gonna assume that you're right. Seems like a pretty broad law though. Seems like it could be an add on to almost any other criminal act as criminals almost always try to avoid getting caught one way or another.

<comment><USER127> Eh, seems fine to me that you can add on extra punishment for not simply owning up to the crime, it's not like avoiding to be caught is a desired behaviour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER128> >Uber had tagged Mr. England and his colleagues — essentially Greyballing them as city officials — based on data collected from the app and in other ways. The company then served up a fake version of the app populated with ghost cars, to evade capture.

Wow, that's genius.

Uber has my full support when it's them vs. outdated entrenched state regulations.

</comment><comment><USER62> It's sad that Uber has to go to such lengths to avoid busybody government officials from interfering in peaceful commercial transactions. The people of Portland should fire these officials. Not only are they wasting taxpayer money, but they are also imposing costs on Uber and their customers.

<comment><USER129> It's sad that sweatshop owners have to go to such lengths to avoid busybody government officials from interfering in peaceful commercial transactions with children. The people of the United States should fire these officials. Not only are they wasting taxpayer money, but they are also imposing costs on manufacturers and their customers.

Uber has demonstrated a willingness to treat their employees like shit. The fact that local governments haven't interfered _more_ is a testament to the pervasive attractiveness of two-bit libertarian confusion. I don't want to be driven around by a driver on their 14th hour of work. I don't want to be driven around by a driver with a poor driving record. I don't want to be driven around by a worker who is being exploited because they have been wrongly classified as a contractor and willfully mislead about their earning prospects. That's why we have government labor and safety regulators, because the profit motive is constantly in conflict with the rights of individual works or customers.

Don't like e coli? Don't like false advertising? Don't like children smoking cigarettes? Don't like predatory lending? Thank a regulator!

<comment><USER62> Regulators are not protecting the public when they go after Uber; they are protecting the monopoly profits of the taxi services. Uber, a ride-sharing service, is not a dangerous bacteria; it's not a sweatshop using child laborers; it's not false advertising; it's not children smoking cigarettes; and it's not predatory lending. Associating Uber with these is an attempt to substitute misdirection for honest arguments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Greyball officially makes Uber the Zenefits of the ridesharing industry now.

</comment><comment><USER130> It seems to me that Uber here is facing its "Zenefits moment".

</comment><comment><USER124> It seems like someone really wants Kalanick to step down.

</comment><comment><USER131> Why so much negative news around Uber recently?

</comment><comment><USER132> This insane, yet somehow I'm not surprised. Could this culminate in a real change at Uber - no more Travis, maybe?

</comment><comment><USER133> Uber did it.

</comment><comment><USER134> There are laws that protect people from physical harm such as licensing for doctors or to keep people in certain fields from working too many hours (e.g. airline pilots and Emergency Room Doctors). There are laws that protect patents, copyrights, and other forms of IP so that inventors, writers can get some returns on their work.

Then there are laws put in place by special interest groups to benefit themselves economically creating a market inefficiency (e.g. "rent-seeking") at a cost to others. In NYC, before Uber/Lyft came on the market the was a political restriction ("rent seeking") of 13,000 hailable cabs throughout a city of population exceeding 8 million creating a politically-induced scarcity. At times it was hard to get cabs, the value of a Taxi medallion was $1.2 million.

Then Uber/Lyft/Gett/Via came along and hailable taxis are more readily available at lower costs but the value of the Taxi medallion is now less than $750,000. Naturally the medallion owners fought politically to protect their politically induced scarcity that harmed consumers in both availability and pricing.

Many of the laws that Uber is countering is in the form of "rent-seeking" laws that create a market inefficiency benefiting special interests and that harms consumers in terms of availability and price.

It is wrong that taxpayer money go into enforcing these laws that benefit special interests over consumers. Tax money on law enforcement should be spent fighting violent crime and activities that lead to violence crime, insider trading and other forms of white collar crime, etc.

<comment><USER42> You call it "rent seeking" but that's just not the case. Almost every law is founded in some sort of public interest. In 1937, NYC passed the Haas Act to clean up the taxi industry which had become so competitive that taxi drivers were not able to make ends meet (sound familiar?) and were turning to less than legal means to supplement their income.

While that law is 80 years old, its original principle was to provide a safer more reliable experience for the average person. And it worked. Should it be re-examined, yes absolutely. But to disregard it as "rent-seeking" and suggest that uber/lyft other tech startups shouldn't be subject to the same rules as everyone else is grossly negligent and demonstrates a true lack of understanding of the problem at hand.

Not to mention, this is entirely off topic from the Greyball tool.

<comment><USER135> This is a common and bad form of argument: "there is at least one conceivable justification for this law, so it is not rent-seeking".

But no one ever makes their primary public justification "we'd like to screw over the public and make more money". There is always something about some harm that the law will prevent. The question is whether the law is well targeted and proportionate. The restrictions on supply for taxi medallions fail that criterion by a long shot.

<comment><USER42> its not a bad form of argument if its he truth. the world isn't black and white as much you might try and force to be.

I have taken a number of ubers that I wish had been regulated better: Both from safety and cleanliness.

Yes, the taxi medallion issue is wildly inappropriate at this point in time. But it obviously served a purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER136> Unethical, shitty company does unethical, shitty thing. Cue unwavering show of support from the HN faithful.

</comment><comment><USER137> bash them for the sexism agreed, but not everything. When riding a taxi was ridiculously expensive. Uber made it affordable and bought it to the middle class. Haters will remain haters.

<comment><USER138> In the US, riding in a taxi has never been ridiculously expensive, and it has not gotten any cheaper on account of Uber.

Moreover, Uber did not create a business to offer affordable rides to the middle class. They created a business to offer the sort of luxury that titans of industry who have private drivers experience, to people willing to pay for that service.

What Uber did do is make the 'car on demand' idea functional and ubiquitous. But A) they didn't do it legally and B) it turns on the 'on demand' part matters more to customers than the 'luxury' part.

So today, because rides are subsidized, you can summon a car and be driven around for what seems like quite a bargain. But subsidies are pretty much the opposite of 'product market fit'.

This news appears to be a clear-cut example of Uber not only breaking the law, but of obstructing justice to protect their illegal operations from enforcement of the law. I think that ought to be looked upon contemptuously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER139> I am so sick of Uber news

<comment><USER140> I bet they are too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER141> I'm not supportive of Uber anymore because of the apparently toxic culture, however, I DO side on the free market, especially when it comes to things like taxis, etc. The fact that a grown adult with a car can't engage in a transaction with another consenting grown adult to exchange money for a ride somewhere (or pick your product of choice..) to me, that's anti-liberty.

The argument has always been "we have to protect the public." However, if that's the case, then why wouldn't the government "protect" people from hitchhiking? Apparently hitchhiking is legal. ([https://expertvagabond.com/hitchhiking- america/](https://expertvagabond.com/hitchhiking-america/)) Getting into cars with strange guys someone meets at a bar is also legal. Going to eat food at someone's unlicensed kitchen in their home is legal -- as long as you don't pay for it. All "dangerous" activities.

In terms of "protecting" the public, why does the public always need protecting? For example, arguments against marijuana, yet alcohol is legal. Drinking 1000 Coca Colas is perfectly legal, but the Szechuan peppercorn was was banned in the US from 1968 until 2005 to "protect" people. Kinder Surprise eggs are illegal. Swimming pools kill over 3,500 people per year in the US -- far more than die (or are even injured) in Ubers. Yet we need to restrict Uber/Lyft/etc. because "protecting the public?"

Regarding "protecting" us from "unsafe" drivers -- that really ought to be up to the individual to decide. If Uber, Lyft, et al were getting into daily fatal accidents, then the public would likely chose another means to get a ride -- meaning, the market (when it's allowed to work,) does achieve an equilibrium. If one service is "dangerous" or "rude" or whatever, a competitor can win business by promoting "safety" or "politeness." Yet, when the taxi mafia controls a town, the market can't respond because there are artificial barriers to entry.

"Don't like Yellow Cab? -- ok, you could try calling Yellow Cab if you want an alternative."

I strongly condemn Uber's apparently toxic culture -- but in terms of the need for "regulation" or other such nonsense, I feel like grown adults ought not need to be continually "protected." There are some notable exceptions; pharmaceuticals for example because there are long-term ill effects from faulty medicines and the general public isn't knowledgable about molecular biology. However there aren't any long-term ill effects from riding in an Uber -- not any more so than riding in any other paid conveyance. Regulating hair stylists? Even exotic dangers have to have a license in many places: a girl actually has to have permission from some city agency to take off her clothes and dance. That's just nonsensical.

Freedom ought to matter, but nowadays it seems as if it's freedom, as long as you fill out a bunch of forms and pay a fee or have political influence (as does the taxi mafia.) Who cares if some dude wants to take people in his car for money. If you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to ride. Cities are pissed at Uber not because citizens are dying in Uber wrecks but because they're missing out on extortionate fees and/or campaign donations from the taxi lobby. Funny how "liberal" Portland and Austin had banned Uber. Not very liberal at all if you ask me -- just old fashioned money-grubbing cronyism. Portland had legal marijuana but illegal Uber. Ridiculous. True liberalism is about freedom -- not the nanny state.

Good for Uber in doing what they can to thwart these "officials" that seem to think their mission in life is to control, subdue and "protect" the population.

</comment><comment><USER142> I came away from this article impressed with how smart the guys at Uber are. Very impressive!

<comment><USER143> Not smart enough to realise the ethical and moral line they were crossing, it appears.

</comment></comment><comment><USER126> Let's be clear here. The laws Uber violated here were bad laws. They were the result of a semi-corrupt relationship between city governments and taxi cab companies. Uber has been the prime mover in killing these laws. That's a good thing.

<comment><USER144> Laws about accessibility and safety are bad laws?

<comment><USER126> Portland trying to prevent Uber from operating there had nothing to do with accessibility or safety.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER145> I like this. Some call it hustle, others call it evading LE because cashflow is king, and nothing shall stop the flow.

I commend this but also frown at it for being so brazen. If such a tool was used for the opposite reasons (spotting crime and reporting it to police), then perhaps the tool might stand a chance, but showcasing it in full view of LEOs is outright brazen and guaranteed to embarrass.

People are campaigning on Twitter to #DeleteUber[0] but fail to recognize the naive nature of the story. I consider Uber nothing more than an ongoing experiment, and any tool they release to increase their revenue should be both commended and also be treated with suspicion.

[0] [https://twitter.com/hashtag/deleteuber](https://twitter.com/hashtag/deleteuber)

<comment><USER146> > _I commend this but also frown at it for being so brazen. If such a tool was > used for the opposite reasons (spotting crime and reporting it to police), > then perhaps the tool might stand a chance_

That's like commending a hammer murderer for his swing technique, but frowning on him for practicing on skulls instead of nails.</comment></comment>


New Ubuntu is out - <AUTHOR> http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810 <comment><USER2> This is something that is an absolute must if you're like me and hate the current huge button/label/tab/* trend in UIs.

[http://martin.ankerl.com/2008/05/13/human-compact-gnome- them...](http://martin.ankerl.com/2008/05/13/human-compact-gnome-theme/)

It just makes the default Human and Clearlooks themes much more compact, so its a good way to get more screen space without going all XMonad-crazy ;)

Edit: Also, the "Esco" and "Metabox" window borders are good companions to this, as they are the most compact ones shipping be default (at least on 8.04)

<comment><USER3> "absolutely the current"?

is that like "i accidentally the whole..."?

<comment><USER2> oops. I accidentally the verb while editing ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try unetbootin: <http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/> I installed the new ubuntu on my 2GB USB flash drive in less than 15 minutes. Sure is handy when you don't want to burn a CD you know you are going to use less than 5 times :-). Plus it boots fast, unlike the sluggish livecd's. You can make your choice from about a two dozen distro's including LinuxMint (which I intend to try very soon), Fedora, Puppy, DamnSmallLinux and other great ones.

<comment><USER5> Hey, thanks for that! I don't have any CD-R's handy (and won't be able to get any till next week), so this was perfect. Once I figured out that the USB drive has to be formated as FAT32, I was solid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm still not convinced the 2.6.27 kernel is stable enough. Our .27 test cluster (various distros including U8.10) has numerous issues that just ARENT fixed yet.

I always hate Ubuntu .10 releases :( even when they call it "stable" is usually isn;t and we see a huge increase in (client) issues...

<comment><USER7> I have to reluctantly agree with this statement. It shouldn't be that when I upgrade to 8.10 from 8.04 I am stuck fixing all of the issues that the upgrade itself broke (for example wireless is working poorly and is non-functional after suspends). While these issues are marginal and will only suck up a few minutes of my time, there are plenty of positives. Notably, GIMP, GNOME, and various other upgrades are quite nice.

I always felt guilty complaining about the stability of an Ubuntu distro. If I wanted stability I would stick with Debian or BSD. For free software of such quality, what I am gaining is certainly worth the time ensuring it works on my system.

<comment><USER6> I sympathise over the Wifi issue. Had many similar issues.

I always consider 8.10 of "cutting edge" quality and never bother to upgrade our day-to-day systems for a couple of months after release (sometimes we even wait till the next .04). As you say it's not worth the issue fixing headaches :P

Agreed though: the package updates are nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there any harm in installing the 64bit version? Will most programs be available for it? I have a core2duo processor, those are 64bit right?

<comment><USER9> _"... Is there any harm in installing the 64bit version (ubuntu)? ..."_

Are you upgrading or re-installing from another OS or is this a new system? Each of those have slight problems (bloat when upgrading, backup your data before you install). Aside from that the only problems I've had are existing commercial software like flash (32 bit probably never to be 64).

<comment><USER8> Doing a clean install. Was running Hardy 32bit. Anyone know if flash 64bit works yet?

<comment><USER9> _"... Anyone know if flash 64bit works yet? ..."_

No 64bit but try <http://wiki.ubuntu.com/FlashPlayer9> (Adobe Flash Player Non-free plugin installer) and more FOSS alternatives System->Administration->Synaptic & search for 'Flash'.

 _"... Was running Hardy 32bit ..."_

You can keep your home partition or data if you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Do you guys think we'll start seeing this release on Slicehost/Linode soon?

Any major advantage over Hardy (from a server perspective)?

<comment><USER11> I updated my slices to it a few days ago, and it seems to work ok:

[http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/10/25/slicehost-ubuntu- intre...](http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/10/25/slicehost-ubuntu-intrepid- upgrade)

BTW, more here:

<http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/10/30/slicehost-migration>

<comment><USER12> When I did a test upgrade on my slice a couple weeks ago ( same reasoning as yours :P ), I ended up with a _lot_ of .sh scripts in my `rcconf` listings as things that would start up with the box. Any idea if you have those on your machine now, or if it was a fluke of upgrading back before the RC/final?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm going to hold off a bit before upgrading. What I run on my laptop, while having Ubuntu as a base, ends it's similarity to the Ubuntu defaults there. There's not much in this release that helps me out a bunch, may as well let some bugs / deficiencies work themselves up before upgrading the system.

</comment><comment><USER14> I appear to be on the list of people for whom the upgrade will remove 3d acceleration. I'm going to have to wait. Does anyone know if this is purely an issue with kernel and drivers that should get resolved soon or if this is a strategic change in supporting the vendor drivers (Nvidia in my case)?

<comment><USER14> Update: my driver was supported, upgraded, all was quite smooth. Bonus: couchdb package in 8.10.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> the new kernel change my /dev/hda to /dev/sda, which messed up my custom fstab entry. so it went to command prompt on startup to allow me to change it. fine apart from that.

</comment><comment><USER16> I know people complain when new Windows releases take 5 years, but is the opposite better. I mean I just got my official 8.04.1 CD last month.

<comment><USER11> You can stick with the long term support releases if you don't want to do lots of upgrading.

<comment><USER17> Exactly. The Ubuntu releases are more incremental. Really all that the new releases contain are new and updated patches, occasionally a new kernel release, better support, occasionally additional applications, etc.

It's not like Windows where each release usually brings some serious changes.

<comment><USER11> Linux distribution releases are really about cat herding. With

* Gnome * KDE * The kernel * Openoffice * Firefox * Mysql * Postgresql

You're almost bound to release just before or just after someone else's "big release" and so either miss it and be a bit out of date, or include something that is perhaps not 100% stable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> and trashed my damn xorg.conf

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't know about ubuntu, but Kubuntu sucks(at least the RC did).

<comment><USER20> I don't know about Kubuntu, but Ubuntu doesn't suck (at least the 8.04 version didn't).

<comment><USER21> I don't know about Kubuntu but I wish linux had something like Microsoft Update.

apt-get and yum are a bit too "no, it's your decision, do _you_ want to update libobscure-2.4.6.so and risk breaking everything?"

<comment><USER4> You can set your update manager to only fetch security updates and install them in the background (and via a GUI, too!). They don't break anything and you won't get bugged.

Plus, many people have huge hard drives and making backups of the OS isn't hard. You can fix it of course, but why bother when can you do it faster restoring from a backup..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Intel wifi cards (4965 and 3945) don't work anymore? [http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810#System%20lo...](http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810#System%20lock- ups%20with%20Intel%204965%20wireless)

I hate to sound negative, but this makes no freaking sense. Those two Intel cards have been pretty much the only safe choice for Linux laptop buyers: everything else, including Dell crap, doesn't work at all or requires using terrible hacks like ndiswrapper. The first thing I look for when getting a laptop, is to make sure the wireless card is one of those two. AND THEY DON'T WORK ANYMORE?!

To me this sounds like a distro with pretty much disabled WiFi.

FUCK.

<comment><USER23> From the release notes link you posted:

 _Users affected by this issue can install the linux-backports-modules- intrepid package, to install a newer version of this driver that corrects the bug._

Calm down.</comment></comment>


China, U.S. to cease new tariffs and continue trade talks - <AUTHOR> https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d414f3041444d31457a6333566d54/share_p.html <comment><AUTHOR> Further reading: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-01/trump- ope...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-01/trump-opens-dinner- china-s-xi-with-truce-in-trade-war-at-stake)

</comment><comment><USER2> Just as expected, the tariffs game is just a prelude for haggling.

<comment><USER3> Not really. When you haggle, you don't bluff by lighting your money on fire.

<comment><USER4> Although I enjoyed that comment, is really more about lighting someone else's money on fire.

Tariffs, like taxes, adversely affect the people those who use said commodities.

U.S. Tariffs are a tax on U.S. consumers. My guess is, in typical fashion, politicians (all of them) are fairly well insisted from feeling the effects of their policies. (e.g. their own healthcare, their own security detail, federal pensions, sure pay on the 1st and 15th, job security, ...)</comment></comment></comment>


Cost-of-living comparison tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living

<comment><USER2> Seems like the server is a bit overloaded at the moment, I get 504 errors while trying to use it.</comment>


DIY-Spy: a homebrew 2.4GHz wi-fi spectrum analyzer - <AUTHOR> http://tim.cexx.org/?p=646

<comment><USER2> Neat hack.

The word 'spectrum analyzer' is used fairly loosely though, fortunately the author is quite aware of it, and uses it tongue-in-cheek.

This thing sweeps a limited number of channels and displays signal strength in each.

That's a basic use of a spectrum analyzer, but calling this a spectrum analyzer is the same as calling your soundcard an oscilloscope.

What if you want to see what is happening between the bands ? That won't work because of the discrete steps between the channels, 5 MHz per step.

Those are pretty wide gaps, you could hide a whole bunch of FM-stereo radio stations between those channels and you'd never know about it.

On a real (sampling digital using fft or analog) spectrum analyzer those would stand out pretty clearly. The FM band is elsewhere (88-108 Mhz, not in the 2.4 GHz range), but an FM-stereo station usually has a swing of about 200 KHz, and on a 5 MHz channel separation 200 Khz is just a drop in the bucket.</comment>