House Address "Twins" Proximity - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulplowman.com/stuff/house-address-twins-proximity/ <comment><USER4> I live in a house right on the dividing line of Portland's neighborhoods.

On one side of a street, the house would be 1 N Graham St, on the other side of the street, it would be 1 NE Graham St.

Needless to say, some confusion occurs. In addition, many times locations are referred to as being on 39th and Graham, for example. So you must specify very carefully that you live at _Number 39_ _Northeast_ Graham St, "Not 39th and Graham, at the corner of Graham and Williams, on the Northeast side"

It's a bit of a hassle. But a nice neighborhood. My mirror-neighbors kindly forward me packages, and I return the favor. Saves everyone a lot of agony.

(This is leaving aside the area in Portland where, being east of the 'dividing line', but west of the river, the houses are numbered identically except with a leading zero. Many mapping systems truncate this leading zero. Ergo you end up ~15 blocks away)

From 63 NE Graham to 63 N Graham - 0.1 miles - [https://goo.gl/maps/xPLNKLzWv652](https://goo.gl/maps/xPLNKLzWv652)

From 10 SW Boundary St to 010 SW Boundary St - 98 feet - [https://goo.gl/maps/FRCXuYKir3M2](https://goo.gl/maps/FRCXuYKir3M2)

<comment><USER5> Oh, I like the leading zero.

I worked for the telco that runs Northern Canada - all the way up to and inside the Arctic Circle. Most communities there don't have the concept of street names or house numbers at all. Our provisioning database had addresses like "brown house down from church" and "three houses from general store". Many were just "house1","house12","house334455" etc.

As horrible as it was, our data was the best in existence, to the point Canada Post was asking to use it :)

<comment><USER6> I live in an area that is similar, in the rural US. I do have a street address, a long ways up a dirt road, but google maps can't locate it. Not even the locals know the streets by names.

For friends and family, since I am technically savvy, I was able to figure out a google maps lat/lng that navigates to my house.

For locals or, for instance, utility workers that I can't send a lat/lng to, I have to give directions like this. "Go past the school, take the road to the right. Turn left at the cemetary. When you're on the dirt road, take the high road at every fork. After 4 miles you will come to three mailboxes all together, and my driveway is the 2nd one after that."

My street address also has the word "box" in it, despite being a physical address, so lots of places like Paypal don't want to accept it s a real address. It's caused me some grief and actually cost me some money, too.

<comment><USER7> I went to grade (actually, "grammar") school in a similar place. We were something like "Rural Route 3 Box 39" or something like that, but we really on the Old Highway, first on the left after where Maynis' barn was before it burnt down as you're headed out of town. I am not making that up, and yes, the locals delighted in giving directions like that to visitors. I didn't like that town.

<comment><USER8> "Turn left on the road before the house with the bright yellow door, and then drive about 5 minutes and it's the second house on the left".

Oh how I hate those directions. "Ok, there's a house with a yellow-ish door, but it's kind of a dull yellow. Is that the one? Should I turn here or keep going?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I work in Boston MA which has this problem since it annexed a couple different other munis and didn't change the street names, so there are 2 different twin addresses to my work address, not a big deal except for the fact that for some bizarre reason google maps, which allows you save various addresses, doesn't save the zip code so when ever I'd get direction from work it would just pick whichever one is closest to the destination and give me directions from there.

<comment><USER10> That's a _clever_ optimization that is. They are providing you with the shortest route, thus improving your user experience, isn't it great?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmm. In US the people who operate emergency dispatch (police, fire, ambulance) often spend political capital to get changes to street names and addresses that might cause them to send service to the wrong house.

<comment><USER12> Years ago, we were weekly renting a house in Ocean Isle Beach, NC. I don't recall the exact number of the address, but let's say it was #164. The house was a duplex, with an east and west side. We were staying in 164 West. That house is on East First Street.

One afternoon, our infant son suffered a febrile seizure, stopped breathing, lips turned blue, eyes rolled back, and while my wife administered first aid, I called 911 to summon emergency services to "164 East First St, West".

Thankfully, we were able to manage the situation, as the 911 dispatcher thought that I was correcting myself and sent the responding services to 164 West First St. It was more than 15 minutes (which felt like hours) and a return phone call before anyone outside responded to the correct address.

I take some responsibility for the communications gap (in retrospect, there was no need to specify "west"; we'd have gone and got them) and everything worked out perfectly fine for my son, but even 5 years later, it's incredibly hard to type this without tearing up.

[https://goo.gl/maps/VV6Z5nLa4V92](https://goo.gl/maps/VV6Z5nLa4V92)

<comment><USER13> _I take some responsibility for the communications gap (in retrospect, there was no need to specify "west"; we'd have gone and got them) and everything worked out perfectly fine for my son, but even 5 years later, it's incredibly hard to type this without tearing up._

Don't beat yourself up too much. Having been a 911 dispatcher before (coincidentally, in Brunswick County, where Ocean Isle Beach is located), I can say that there is a tremendous onus on the dispatcher to verify, double verify, and even triple verify location / address if there is any possible ambiguity. And any BrunsCo dispatcher should know that the local beaches have a lot of those kinds of confusing addresses (Holden Beach has some similar situations, for example).

It's also the case that in years past, before cellphones were ubiquitous, most 911 calls came in on land lines which were mostly strictly associated with a specific physical address. Now, with the ubiquity of cellphones, things are both better and worse in some regards. Now you can often get to a phone faster, and in places where there would be no landlines, but the trade-off is that geolocating cell phones is still not perfect. [1]

[1]: [http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/12/28/911-centers-struggle- to...](http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/12/28/911-centers-struggle-to-find- callers-on-cellphones-and-results-can-be-deadly.html)

<comment><USER14> Oh wow. I've a house there and don't understand why a rural county even needs to bother with directional quadrant addressing. Surely there's not much need to disambiguate in such a rural place.

<comment><USER13> Most of the county at large doesn't do that, it's mostly just on the barrier islands. Most of them split East/West on the streets that parallel the strand (those beaches are all South facing, due to the weird shape of NC). Blame the local town governments for the beach towns, not the county. Generally speaking, disambiguation wasn't a big problem in most of the county... There might be two or three Smith Streets or something in BrunsCo, but if one is in Leland, one is in Shallotte and one is in Southport, there's not going to be any confusion.

<comment><USER12> I don't think there's a problem with the streets being called East/West (and in fact that helps people in their day-to-day usage of the barrier islands).

I do have a problem with the houses being called East/West (rather than A and B).

<comment><USER13> Right, having "Ocean Boulevard East" and "Ocean Boulevard West" isn't, in and of itself, a problem. But as I recall, the various island towns (Holden Beach, Sunset Beach, OIB, etc.) had quite a few varying issues with confusing addresses, and some involved the interaction of other issues with the "East/West" split. That said, I've been gone from that area for 17+ years so my memory is a little fuzzy on the specifics now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I used to live at a twin address, my parents still do. It was across the boundary of towns and the homes are 500m apart. Postcode is only 1 letter different at the end (e.g. AB1 1CD/AB1 1CE).

The only issues I remember was getting each other's mail, and we'd just walk over and post it manually to them.

We added a name to our property so we could use that in mailing addresses to help clarify.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here in our country we have an option to split a land plot into smaller ones. If for some reason you cannot take neighbouring numbers, you get assigned letters. We have some land plots, which have been divided into many smaller ones. So, there are homes (or homes-to-be-built) with address "Street 10, Town" and "Street 1O, Town".

I guess, postal service will make these people to get acquainted :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Queens, NY is full of weird, confusing addresses and intersections - <USER2> the addresses for a minute, you can go down 30th Ave, take a right on 30th street, then a left on 30th drive. If you miss the house, take a right on 31st st, then hang a right on 31st ave - 30th street is a one-way, so you'll have to go to 29th street to make a right and then a right on 30th street again. If you miss _that_ , take a left on 30th Rd, and give up on ever arriving.

And that's not even the most confusing block of streets.

</comment><comment><USER18> My father in law owns property in west Texas. No address just gps coordinates. He gets packages sent to a place in a nearby town.

<comment><USER19> Is this property registered with anyone? Or does he just sort of live there and no one asks?

<comment><USER20> Country areas used to be like this everywhere.

In the old days, my parents mailing address was RD1, Box 300. No street -- you have to tell couriers like UPS (who didn't deliver there until the late 80s) the physical address separately.

Road numbers were added in the early 80s, and mailing addresses were updated in the late 90s when individual telephone lines were available and 911 was mandated.

Directions for emergency services would be like "There's an emergency at the Smith's house, over on Country Road 5 houses after the Jones farm."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have lived for 17 years at 209 (blank) Street, and found it absurd and ridiculous that less than a mile away is 209 West (blank) Street. That's not twins, but it's so close that it's a real problem.

The most hilarious bit, though, was when someone moved into the other house and filed their change of address with the address "209 West Blank Not Blank", in a hamfisted attempt to remove ambiguity, but they got it exactly backwards. We got their mail for months.

<comment><USER22> I had to register to vote 4 times before they got the "N" for North part of my address correct. Half the addresses in my city have those and getting it wrong puts me in the wrong district! And two of those four times were me explaining the exact problem to someone on the phone and them saying "yes, I understand, I'll fix it" only to end up with it still being wrong after they 'fixed' it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Chicago itself is on a well-arranged grid system, and its south and west suburbs generally follow the same grid (so addresses on a street in one town might proceed from 9200 S to 10400 S, for instance, and the next town picks up at 10400) and thus it's not super important to know exactly which town you're in.

But then there's the north and northwest suburbs...

In most (all?) of the suburbs out in that direction, the overall roads are _laid out_ on exactly same grid as Chicago, but they are _numbered_ with a separate zero location in each town, which in general are not coordinated in any way. So it is vitally important when navigating to know what town you're in and what you're aiming for; and for extra degree of difficulty, many town boundaries run down the middle of the major grid streets, so you can be headed north and addresses on your right will be increasing North addresses from one town and decreasing South addresses from another. And of course the town boundaries are often not well-marked....

</comment><comment><USER24> When I first moved to Seattle, a friend of mine on the eastside gave me directions to his house.

It included going through the intersection at NE 124th Street and 124th Ave NE.

<comment><USER25> One of my favorite Seattle intersections joins Bellevue Place East, Bellevue Avenue East, and Bellevue Court East:

[https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=8b4d04d9-f2c6-457d-8140-fb312...](https://www.bing.com/maps?osid=8b4d04d9-f2c6-457d-8140-fb312effe814&cp=47.626984~-122.326596&lvl=19&dir=248.303&pi=-0.792&style=x&mo=z.0&v=2&sV=2&form=S00027)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Different but related, and something I ran into trouble with over the weekend:

My grandparents live at 297 <Road B>, and to get there you have to take <Road A> off the main road in town. Well, the house immediately before you turn onto <Road B> is 297 <Road A>, but they have their driveway _and mailbox_ physically located on <Road B>. This means that it appears there are two 297 <Road B> even though the other house is on a different road!

This weekend was just the pizza guy going to the wrong house, but a few months ago it was the cops when my grandfather fell and got hurt. Not a great situation!

</comment><comment><USER27> I lived on a house in Oakland on the Berkeley border - the street crossed Telegraph Ave (which is a diagonal across the grid) - our street had 4 segments, most of which didn't touch the main streets (one bit touched Alcatraz, another was broken by Telegraph but didn't come out on to it) - <USER3> out corner the street numbers from Berkeley which increased going southward met the numbers from Oakland that increased going northwards.

We'd often find confused people staring at the street signs .... at one point we put up a sign "So you are lost ...."

<comment><USER28> On east/west streets, numbers in Berkeley increase heading east, and in Oakland they increase heading west. So if you follow Alcatraz itself from east to west the numbers:

      - at first decrease, from Claremont to College (in Berkeley)
      - jump down and then increase, from College to Dover (in Oakland)
      - jump back up and then decrease, from Dover to Essex (in Berkeley)
      - jump back down and then increase, from Essex to San Pablo (in Oakland)

It's really just dumb luck that the numbers don't collide somewhere.

(I have ignored Emeryville, like everyone does, but I think its addresses follow Oakland's?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I grew up in a neighborhood where one pair of streets intersected twice. This led to quite some confusion whenever a friend said "Meet me at Kiln & White." The two intersections were far enough apart that many people did not know there was a duplicate, and both were prominent junctions suitable for meeting other kids.

</comment><comment><USER30> this kind of thing has made me wish delivery firms would have a "don't attempt delivery i'll pick it up from the depot" option.

<comment><USER31> They do, at least in the US, [UPS mychoice]([https://www.ups.com/us/en/services/tracking/mychoice.page)(w...](https://www.ups.com/us/en/services/tracking/mychoice.page\)\(which) has a free tier and a paid one) and [[https://www.fedex.com/us/delivery/](https://www.fedex.com/us...](https://www.fedex.com/us/delivery/\]\(https://www.fedex.com/us/delivery/\)). In most urban areas you can hold deliveries in local stores. I mean really it is for signing for packages during the workday, but it would work well for this.

Though honestly, I imagine you'd get pretty friendly with your neighbor and just reciprocally transfer things.

<comment><USER32> Yes, if there is any chance I won't be home on the day something is supposed to be delivered, I will have stuff sent to the UPS store on my way home rather than my apartment. In fact I have something there right now!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I really enjoyed the writing style of the author. Great content.

Why don't we just use lat long coordinates or geohashes for addresses? The shit that delivery people have to put up with is truly ridiculous.

<comment><USER34> > _Why don 't we just use lat long coordinates or geohashes for addresses?_

Primarily because they're not very people-friendly.

\- It's only recently that we have the means to look up alternate representations from coordinates (such as directions between two coordinate points).

\- Street addresses partially encode path (as opposed to only point) information. If you know where a street is and how to get to it, it's more likely you can find the address you're looking for.

\- It's easier for people to remember and relay. Similar to how people don't refer to each other by some unique numeric identifier, it's easier for people to remember and relay street addresses than numeric ids.

* I'm using street addresses as a proxy for "non-point address". Address encodings around the world are different.

Perhaps postal addressing will change now that we have easier lookup. I believe Fedex and UPS already encode different information in their printed address labels. I suspect something similar to street addresses will persist for quite a while given their human interface strengths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> When I was a kid, I lived in a house with an address I'll call 12345 Foobar Rd. Just down the block, there was a house whose address I'll call 12345 Foobar Ct.

We would get each other's mail _constantly_. I knew their names just as well as I knew the names of our next-door neighbors.

</comment><comment><USER36> My address is 1234 Street, but just 6 houses away is 1234 Cross Street, and the house number is visible from Street.

Mail is rarely delivered to the wrong place but non-UPS/FedEx Amazon orders go to the wrong place every now and then.

</comment><comment><USER37> Location on Google streetview

[https://goo.gl/maps/xNEXsXv5gq12](https://goo.gl/maps/xNEXsXv5gq12)

Unfortunately the sign on the house on the right is blurred out.

<comment><USER38> Interesting — although presumably annoying — how the cycle lanes just stop at the boundary!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> and you should send that info to royal mail and tell them they should bump some numbers up.

<comment><USER39> Royal Mail do not have the power to change people's house numbers or street names!

I'm not quite sure who does, though. At the end they mention trying to get the local authority to do it. Some random googling found [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney- shet...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney- shetland-21712890) , where several streets had no names at all for years and the problem was eventually fixed by the local authority.

<comment><USER40> We don't have a house number or a street - I wonder who controls the registration of house "names" for rural properties?

Edit: Found it: Our local authority (Fife) has an online form where you can request changes to property details and even request a new street be given a name:

[https://www.fifedirect.org.uk/topics/index.cfm?fuseaction=se...](https://www.fifedirect.org.uk/topics/index.cfm?fuseaction=service.display&p2sid=FE858E04-FE16-D92D-A3352BB0E4D33BE4)

<comment><USER41> In the US, a lot of that sort of thing was cleaned up for E911 services. Rural cottages without mail delivery and houses on rural delivery routes were given street numbers. Not sure who did the assigning though.

Also, for example, roads that didn't actually connect in a navigable way in the middle were given different names as are roads with branches.

A similar issue to that in the article exists in the US--perhaps especially in the Northeast where there are lots of relatively small towns that connect to each other and restart numbers. (Though in New England, they do often change street names.)

[ADDED: Apparently they're assigned by local authorities in the US. [1]]

[1] [https://ribbs.usps.gov/npfpresentations/documents/tech_guide...](https://ribbs.usps.gov/npfpresentations/documents/tech_guides/2011/wheredoaddressescomefrom.pdf)

<comment><USER42> I remember reading an article in The Atlantic from less than 5 years ago describing an ongoing naming effort in West Virginia: [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/where-t...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/where- the-streets-have-no-name/309186/)

> _West Virginia entrusted most of the mapping project to individual counties, > tasking 911 directors with naming thousands of streets. Different directors > subscribed to different naming philosophies. Mercer County's director pulled > names from local history books and Scrabble Web sites. Others Google-Mapped > out-of-state towns for inspiration. Some directors gave residents the right > to name their own streets, despite the risk that future generations would > have to endure, in the case of one town, Crunchy Granola Road. In Raleigh > County, some communities named their streets after Disney characters or > Vietnam War battles._

<comment><USER43> > Crunchy Granola Road

That is actually a rather awesome street name, but I wonder if using registered trademarks as part of a public street name is something local government should allow at all.

Odd though; I can't find this nominative oddity on OpenStreetMap (or Google Maps for that matter).

<comment><USER44> >using registered trademarks //

How is a common description of a standard breakfast cereal still a trademark? If granola is an RTM then I'm afraid it's become generic (in UK at least, it's just "what US Americans call muesli").

Wikipedia have it as an RTM only in Australia and NZ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> d--b This is when you expect the top HN comment to be: "hey I live in one of these homes, AMA."

Fun post though. Something to add to "what developers should know about addresses"

<comment><USER39> I bet there's someone on HN who's tried to renumber their house to zero to see how many systems it crashes.

There's a platform zero at King's Cross, along with the famous (not actually a platform) "Platform 9 and three quarters"

<comment><USER40> "0 Egmont Road, Middlesbrough, TS4 2HT"

from

[https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers- believe-a...](https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe- about-addresses/)

I couldn't work out from Streetview if it actually exists or not.

<comment><USER45> The Royal Mail postcode finder ([http://www.royalmail.com/find-a- postcode](http://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode)) offers 1 and 1A for that postcode, but not 0. I had a look on Street View too and I think the houses to the left of number 1 (which you can clearly see) are probably 1A and belonging to the orthogonal road, respectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I think kind of confusion could be solved with [http://what3words.com/](http://what3words.com/)

It's a different way to look up locations through the entire world, using three random words you can find any address or location with in 10 feet.

The only downside I see is the three words are all English words. Which could be unfamiliar to non English speaking parts of the world.

Just think about how easy it would be teach your children where they live by memorizing just three words instead of House number, Street name, City, State, Zip code.

<comment><USER47> The other downsides are

\- It's a proprietary system

\- The three words give no clues in relation to other words -- except that similar words are some distance from each other. "59 Main Street" is very often very close to "57 Main Street".

<comment><USER48> Yeah, basically _all_ the three words give you is "somewhat? memorable unique identifiers". You get jack diddly squat in terms of routing information.

You want a lot of things out of a good address system.

      1.  Unique identifier.  (ie, no duplicates)
      2.  Reasonably simple to remember.  (ie, not lat-longs)
      3.  Simple levels of abstraction.  ("Do you deliver to X?")
      4.  Recursive routing. (Navigating to one layer of the address, then another, should work reasonably well.)
      5.  Decentralized implementation.  (Localities must be able to assign names while following a few reasonable rules.)

#1 and 2 aren't really the hard parts of the problem.</comment></comment></comment>


Emoji: how do you render U+1F355? - <AUTHOR> http://meowni.ca/posts/emoji-emoji-emoji/ <comment><USER2> "An emoji is a coloured glyph."

OK. Stop right there. An emoji is a glyph, it need not be colored. The funny part, is that on my system and my fonts, all the examples (not provided as PNGs) are plain black-and-white renderings with the Symbola font. Even on Chrome on Linux, I don't even see the Canadian flag example she shows.

Really, most of this seems solid but it continues a rather annoying trend of assuming that Apple's font are _the_ emoji. At least she recognizes that other fonts exist, but carries on this assumption...

<comment><USER3> emoji are apple and google (and late to the party, adobe) way of enforcing their wishes on everyone else.

they are using their monopoly to push the utf groups, just like microsoft did with w3c when using IE6 monopoly. at least emoji cause less damage.

<comment><USER4> More like SoftBank and NTT DoCoMo's way of enforcing their wishes on everyone else. Emoji started off as being proprietary to Japanese cellphone carriers, and got picked up by Apple when they realized they could make a killing by smoothly transitioning Japanese users to their platform.

<comment><USER3> rigth. maybe in the 90s. now its mostly dictated by apple and google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FWIW, linux also has some emoji that are colour, albeit, gecko-only: [https://github.com/eosrei/twemoji-color- font](https://github.com/eosrei/twemoji-color-font)

<comment><USER6> There's also EmojiOne, install instructions for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS here: [http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/05/emoji-one-font-linux- ppa-...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/05/emoji-one-font-linux-ppa-easy- install)

And from OPs article:

 _> These fonts are AppleColorEmoji (OS X), Segoe UI Symbol/Emoji (Windows), NotoColorEmoji (Android) and I don't know what Linux does, but it's probably black and white and who cares, I hear you can run bash on Windows now._

Statements like these are precisely the reason why I think getting Linux/Bash support on Windows is a _bad_ thing.

<comment><USER7> Installing the noto-fonts-emoji package on Arch and viewing the page on Firefox, I can see the color emoji, like the popcorns before the "How did we get so lucky?" header.

<comment><USER6> I just tested the two Emoji displaying Chrome extensions on Linux and compared the output with Mobile Safari.

Chromoji [1] got all of them right, including the special Canadian flag emoji. Emojify got some of them right, but wrongly shows the flag as a "C" and "A" character and misses a few others.

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chromoji-emojis- fo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chromoji-emojis-for- googl/negakbijaemdgbhklopmghphgaeadmpo?hl=en)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Emoji does not have a plural in Japanese, so stop trying to make emojis happen._

In the long run, I would have preferred Gretchen make fetch happen rather than Regina make this turn of phrase happen.

<comment><USER9> Once English speakers start using it, it's no longer a Japanese word, and doesn't have to follow Japanese rules.

"DVD" has four syllables in Japanese. Stuff like that just happens with loanwords sometimes.

<comment><USER10> There's a decent history in English of "borrow the pluralisation rules of the source language". Many English dictionaries accept cherubim as a plural of cherub, seraphim as a plural of seraph, aquaria as a plural of aquarium, criteria as a plural of criterion, phenomena as a plural of phenomenon, referenda as a plural of referendum, fora as a plural of forum, etc.

Now, maybe this approach only applies to languages which English-speakers have traditionally considered as culturally prestigious or authoritative. Arguably that's true of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, traditionally not so for Japanese.

<comment><USER11> It's typically the undereducated that defines this popular usage trend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Make sure you click the party emoji in the left menu.

<comment><USER13> Oh that's fun. I will use it everywhere I can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can we fork Unicode into a version that has none of these… things?

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this a JS blog? It suddenly started talking about JavaScript for some reason.

<comment><USER16> It is only used to show the number of bytes of a string of emojis

<comment><USER17> Which entirely depends on the encoding, of which there are many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> And yet we still don't have a good way of doing keyboard-input of arbitrary unicode characters based on their name / description.

<comment><USER18> Swiftkey has an option to autocomplete to emojis, and it's pretty useful.

<comment><USER17> There is more to unicode than emoji. That's why i phrased it the way I did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We're using emojis as icons within an internal app now, and it works fantastically. I was kinda against emojis at first but having seen the use cases, they seem to be working out well.

</comment><comment><USER20> Related, why is Whatsapp missing the facepalm emoji, U+1F926?

<comment><USER21> Most likely it's Unicode database is too old. It was a recent addition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone know which atom theme that is? All I found was a squirrel in the html.

</comment><comment><USER23> Awesome article! Thanks for the share!

</comment><comment><USER24> FFS why do we even need emoji? This is ridiculous.

<comment><USER25> They're a cultural import from Japan. People like them. That's really a good enough reason.

<comment><USER9> No one ever complains about the Egyptian hieroglyphs, or Linear A, or alchemical symbols, or any of the _actual_ useless cruft in Unicode... just emoji.

Why? Is it the poo emoji? Do people hate emoji because they're popular? I don't understand. The utility of including emoji in Unicode is more evident than with a lot of other character sets. It shouldn't even be controversial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sigh. I remember when font color used to mean something.

</comment><comment><USER26> I could have done without the first paragraph, but other than that this was interesting and well written.

I particularly enjoyed the roll-over effect on the links.

<comment><USER27> I don't trust anyone who thinks Nicolas Cage is dreamy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> hint: if you write an article about something that is broken and constantly moving by the hour, do not use that thing to document your article.

if she didn't use utf but images (to talk about the rendering) that article would have been something in 4 days, when it will be irrelevant because fonts and browsers will already have changed.

Also, people on the several platforms she dismissed as nobody-cares (android pre 5, linux, windows pre-7, etc) would have had a clue about the subject.

<comment><USER28> This seems a bit harsh. From the article, "I'm going to keep talking about the Apple font, because that's the code path I worked on in Chrome..." Although this is toward the end of the article, it does give a good reason for why the author is only focusing on a rather small domain: she worked on this specific domain (Chrome, Apple, emoji). In case it wasn't immediately obvious, she doesn't actually mention any browser (or rendering engine) other than Chrome (Blink). Perhaps you were looking for a more complete essay on all things emoji, but it looks more like the author just wanted to write about some stuff she had worked on that she thought was interesting.

<comment><USER3> Was talking about presentation not content.

for anyone outside the san francisco bubble (ie not using Chrome on a last model mac) this article only shows mojibake.

if you want to talk about broken rendering, always take screen shot.</comment></comment></comment>


Bill Gates advocates for stopping end-to-end encryption - <AUTHOR> https://reclaimthenet.org/bill-gates-end-to-end-encryption/ <comment><USER2> Is this real news? I see no mentions of primary sources, and when I do a google search I find some much older articles with much more context and nuance.

I'm not sure I believe this in any way. It is taking quotes out of context, and creating an exaggeration.

<comment><USER3> So clicking the wired link in the post then doing ctrl+f I found where they are getting this from [https://www.wired.com/story/bill-gates-on-covid-most- us-test...](https://www.wired.com/story/bill-gates-on-covid-most-us-tests-are- completely-garbage/)

I think wired is generally not out there trying to libel people. I am honesty curious why Gates has been out of the public sphere for over ten years but is suddenly out there shilling against crypto for 'the children'.

<comment><USER4> I had a look at that article but I couldn't find where in that article he is "shilling against crypto for 'the children'". Can you share a quote?

<comment><USER5> There are these:

> When you have encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally > believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child > pornography.

> Being big in the social media business is no simple game, like the > encryption issue.

Personally, I wouldn't call these quotes "shilling", but Gates does seem to have funny thoughts on encryption. Maybe half-baked, but he is smart enough to not voice half-baked thoughts on an interview.

However, I'm also sceptical about the type of "free speech" reclaimthenet.org is advocating. The tone of the article is very sensationalistic, focusing more on calling-out Gates, rather than debunking his thoughts.

<comment><USER6> I thought he seemed pretty exasperated in that interview on corona response. Maybe he let his guard down, I was surprised to read the encryption stuff too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This bears more research. Disturbing if true. Article is marred by inflammatory rhetoric.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't believe there is a way to stop end-to-end encryption. You can easily make data look non-encrypted but actually contain something encrypted underneath.

<comment><USER5> a.k.a. steganography

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The actual quote, without breathless editorializing, is:

"The irony is that it's digital social media that allows this kind of titillating, oversimplistic explanation of, 'OK, there's just an evil person, and that explains all of this.' And when you have [ ] encrypted, there is no way to know what it is. I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography."

I've removed Wired's additions within brackets, and suddenly it doesn't seem at all clear Gates is talking about end-to-end encryption directly. It might be said that is the only way to accomplish his wish, but when I first read the article I thought he could as easily be talking about legal remedies as anything else.

</comment><comment><USER10> Bill, I thought you were a pretty smart guy... Can't you think of anything that will increase public health knowledge and awareness (especially vaccines) that doesn't involve monitoring private conversations for goodthink? I think this is a very lazy way to go about you foundation's mission statement.

If we can't (and I really don't think this is the case), then anti-vaxxers are the price we pay for a free and open society. To quote David Foster Wallace, there is a "baseline vulnerability" that a free society has (whether it be terrorism or the proliferation misinformation), and those that succumb to those vulnerabilities are "sacrifices on the altar of freedom." [0]

[0] - [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just- as...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/11/just- asking/306288/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Even if true, he's just one (already rich) person.

<comment><USER12> He's riding high on being correct about covid-19 so he is influential to a lot of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is this click-bait news, I cannot tell anymore?

</comment><comment><USER14> He didn't outright advocate for it from the interview that I believe motivated this article, but he did pretty strongly imply that end-to-end encryption facilitates crime and shouldn't be allowed:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/bill-gates-lies-spread- faste...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/bill-gates-lies-spread-faster-than- facts-on-social-media.html)

>"Some of the messages on their platform, they don't even see because of the encryption on WhatsApp," Gates said. "In order to not have any responsibility, they've made that opaque. You know, so whatever the issues — anti-vaccine, child pornography — they have made sure they can't intervene on those things."

<comment><USER15> That's not how I read it. The quote is Gates talking about Facebook. My interpretation isn't that he's saying E2EE is bad, but rather he's saying that E2EE is a convenient way for Facebook to avoid/deny responsibility for things being spread through parts of the platform that they own.

<comment><USER14> I can't see any implication from that position with respect to E2EE except that these platforms shouldn't be allowed to have it.</comment></comment></comment>


Observations on Observability - <AUTHOR> https://blog.colinbreck.com/observations-on-observability/ <comment><USER2> What I wish I had is a book that introduces control engineering in some depth for software folks like me.

I wanted to write such a book, or half of such a book, as a second part of _Knative in Action_. I wrote a simulator[0] and did a ton of reading which felt like I'd barely scratched the surface of the surface.

But really, there's just no room for what I wanted to do. Based on a simple estimate it would have run to about 200 pages on top of another 250 pages of actually-about-Knative material. So that whole section wound on the cutting room floor. Maybe another time.

In terms of books I felt helped me the _most_ down this road, here's a reasonable reading list I'd point to:

 _Feedback Control for Computer Systems: Introducing Control Theory to Enterprise Programmers_ , by Philipp Janert. Short, to-the-point introduction to basic classical control theory using PID controllers.

 _Matching Supply with Demand: An Introduction to Operations Management_ by Cachon and Terweisch. A short, meant-for-MBAs textbook on operations management (ie applied operations research). Simple and approachable. Very good for warming up to...

 _Factory Physics_ by Hopp and Spearman. Magisterial in scope, also magisterial in grumpiness and idiosyncracy. I've directly applied material from this book and _Matching_ to research work.

 _Business Dynamics_ by Sterman. Still the best system dynamics book I've ever read. I'm anxiously waiting for the 2nd edition, expected circa 2021.

 _Performance Modeling and Design of Computer Systems: Queueing Theory in Action_ by Harchol-Balter. Approachable and enlightening. I stumbled on a few of the proofs and got lost once or twice in thickets of notation, but that's due to my own mathematical immaturity more than the book itself.

But I still don't have _a_ book to refer to for the specifics of software dynamics, spanning its physics and economics. And I wish I did. I would love to read that book, if folks can make recommendations.

[0] [https://github.com/pivotal/skenario](https://github.com/pivotal/skenario)

</comment><comment><USER3> > At scale, digital becomes analog. — Michael Feathers

> Fortunately, as discrete pieces aggregate, they start to look continuous. At > scale, we can take advantage of this, embracing higher-level metrics that > can be treated as continuous signals.

He's saying that rather than look at request-level metrics in your Big Data Message Queue (request ID, etc.), your message queue _in aggregate_ can be seen as an industrial process, and there's an entire discipline built around managing those called Statistical Process Control.

Seen in this way, the next NewRelic is going to be all about creating p- and c-charts [1] where the limits algorithmically turn knobs on your kubernetes cluster.

In other words, the next big dev-ops trend is going to be the return of Six Sigma.

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

<comment><USER2> I've occasionally pitched SPC as a source of concepts to mine, starting with XmR charts and the Nelson or Western Electric rules.

I think that actually, observability has always been one of the weakest areas in tech -- we reinvent a lot of it ourselves while the wider world _abounds_ in rich concepts of measurement, inference and control. SPC, control theory, inference engines, classifier systems, measurement theory, design of experiments, fuzzy sets, Dempster-Shafer theory, avionics, system dynamics, cybernetics and frankly a bajillion other disciplines that I've never heard of and never will.

Sometimes in R&D, the R is much more profitable than the D.

Which point, I should say, the article makes reasonably well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can not say that I really understand anything but I like it; any chance of using the term factorial in meetings outside of gaming is a win.</comment>


Google's Fuchsia OS Confirmed to Have Android App Support via Android Runtime - <AUTHOR> https://9to5google.com/2019/01/02/android-runtime-app-support-fuchsia/?xyz <comment><USER2> It's interesting how the trend in newer OSes seems to be towards client apps running in some sort of VM. Windows runs Linux. Some Chromebooks run both Linux and Android.

I wonder if we'll get to the point where hardly anything is a native app and the concept doesn't matter much anymore? The host OS just exists to run guest OSes.

<comment><USER3> Why not? The history of computing is about isolating applications, really. Why do we have Virtual Memory? Because it allows each process to have an independent address space. Why do we have preemptive multitasking? Because it allows each process to behave as though it is the only task running. Why is hardware virtualization so great? Namespacing and containers?

I think Casey Muratori did a good job outlining the case for removing the OS from the equation entirely in "The thirty-Million Line Problem" [0]. He describes a hardware architecture where standardized ABI and hardware virtualization replaces the OS and drivers, allowing each process to behave as if it was the only software on the computer, as it was in the olden days with platforms like the C64. The closest thing to an OS would be a hypervisor, which should be the kind of thing an enterprising young programmer could write in their spare time in a month.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZRE7HIO3vk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZRE7HIO3vk)

<comment><USER4> But isn't it also a problem? We not only want to do things contained within a program, we also went them to cooperate. Don't we also want accessibility? I think that middle ground is needed, but currently pendulum is inclined in other direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This makes perfect sense, it would be naive to think that Flutter would be the only way to write apps for Fuchsia. Having such a hard break in compatibility would only succeed is tanking the new platform for consumers.

<comment><USER6> fuchsia apps use a different runtime ie part of the runtime ie the rendering part is in flutter in plain sight

from the web demos I have seen of fuchsia running flutter its the same UX as android ..different apis that's all and way faster rending pipeline via flutter rendering engine

<comment><USER7> Actually Fuchsia is getting an UI abstraction layer for multiple UI engines, where Flutter is just yet another UI.

Guess what will happen afterwards.

<comment><USER8> What will happen afterwards? Will it become the _only_ UI?

<comment><USER7> Here is Scenic, the UI agnostic scene graphic composition engine.

[https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/master/docs/ui/sce...](https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/master/docs/ui/scenic.md)

Here is fuchsia-ui, an UI prototype done in Rust, remains to be seen if it really only meant for the Ermine session shell.

[https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/0a214f5721d723a7d0...](https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/0a214f5721d723a7d0757531d157f76bb54b9f95/public/rust/fuchsia- ui)

I bet Flutter will either be yet another UI framework and then the one with market adoption wins, or it will be rebooted somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not really excited about Google dumping linux for something they have more control of. It will make it harder to create device drivers and utilities. And lead to an even more closed google-controled ecosystem than the current Android world.

<comment><USER10> Yup, that's exactly the plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is not super surprising. Google OSes may come and go, but they will put the Android Runtime on all of them.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there any indication on how important/significant Dart will be to Fuchsia? I really like Dart, I think it's a fantastic interpreted language, but it has very little momentum because javascript es6 is good enough. If Fuchsia makes Dart its darling (with flutter?) perhaps the tides can turn?

<comment><USER13> I guess if Google want Fuchsia / Flutter to really take off, they will have to port Flutter to Javascript. One may or may not like Dart as a language, but if it didn't get any ground in some many years since it exists, why would it all of a sudden.

<comment><USER14> > I guess if Google want Fuchsia / Flutter to really take off, they will have > to port Flutter to Javascript.

just like that time when iOS was suddenly hot, but there were no apps for it, because programmers hated Objective-C and weren't willing to learn it. So Apple released a new SDK and toolchain that allowed them to write apps in C++ instead.

oh wait.

Okay, all snark aside. Come on, guys. Isn't the fact that high tech is always new and innovative considered to be a _good_ thing? So why is there always so much pressure to insist that every new thing has to be exactly like all the old things?

Learning Dart is not difficult. I did it myself, without even trying. I just pretended I already knew it, by following examples I found online. After a couple of weeks, my pretend-knowing turned into real-knowing.

<comment><USER7> Thing is, Objective-C was the official language on iOS, and yes they did release C++ support, it is called Objective-C++ and exists since NeXTSTEP days.

Dart is just a programming language trying to get its killer app, which was dropped by Chrome team and gets political answers from Android team.

<comment><USER14> > Thing is, Objective-C was the official language on iOS, and yes they did > release C++ support, it is called Objective-C++ and exists since NeXTSTEP > days.

I am well aware, I have used Objective-C++ myself, but it's irrelevant. No, you cannot write iOS apps completely in C++. you still have to use Objective-C or Swift when dealing with UI components.

Further, Objective-C is not "just" a programming language, in this case. All of Apple's native frameworks are very strongly influenced by it. They allow you to do things that wouldn't be possible in other languages.

Obviously, it's possible to translate that experience to something else (see Swift), but it's an entirely different experience. Worse, in my opinion.

The same is true of Flutter and Dart. A lot of Flutter's architectural decisions are tied closely to the strengths (and weaknesses) of Dart. It would not make sense to switch to a different implementation language at this point.

<comment><USER7> Which is why Fuchsia is getting an UI agnostic composition engine, where Flutter is just another possibility.

While there are experiments in a Rust based UI and now Android.

I bet just like Brillo original plans, Flutter is on its way out.

<comment><USER4> By UI agnostic composition engine do you mean like Wayland? So every app is supposed to paint itself?

<comment><USER7> Every app is supposed to paint itself on any UI toolkit.

<comment><USER4> So what makes UI agnostic composition engine different from other composition engines?

Your answer means just a yes or "your question is irrelevant"? If the latter what I meant is a difference between Wayland and X. Wayland is a dumb pipe. X is mostly used as a dumb pipe, but it offers primitives to do the painting on the server side. Linux or Wayland does not have UI toolkit, but i.e. GNOME has.

<comment><USER7> Scenic ([https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/master/docs/ui/sce...](https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/garnet/+/master/docs/ui/scenic.md)) is similar to the UI compositor in Android, macOS, Windows.

No different than using the UI toolkit of choice, while the window manager takes care of window decorations, OS input events and what have you.

Just push the window contents into the scene graph using Fuchsia IPC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> ChromeOS already has an Android runtime. There's no reason an Android runtime couldn't be portable. There's no reason Android apps could not, if using the APIs appropriately, adapt to all the different devices and other parameters of an Android runtime that's implemented on a variety of OSs.

As long as their apps work, users won't care.

<comment><USER16> That's a big if on whether apps work or not though. It's already a pretty big hassle to design/test for the permutations that exist (with or without Play services, testing on ChromeOS, etc) compared to iOS development.

<comment><USER15> Since very early versions of Android, APIs existed for determining the characteristics of the hardware/software environment: What sensors exist, input methods, etc. If your app works on tablets and phones and handles orientation changes correctly, it will probably work in a window on a Fuchsia OS device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone else have a suspicion that Google is about to completely screw this up?

<comment><USER18> I don't know about screw it up, but I am wondering what is the upside in adopting this new OS in lieu of Android for all phone makers not named Apple?

<comment><USER19> Google will just make it a requirement in order to provide the Play Store and other Google apps on your device. Then most will be forced to follow along.

I could see it being the straw that finally breaks the camel's back for Samsung, though. They have their own assistant, web browser... they could just choose to go it alone.

<comment><USER20> This sounds like a cost to phone manufacturers, not a benefit.

<comment><USER21> At this point manufacturers don't have a lot of choices. To a reasonable approximation, the options are Android with google's blessing, android without play store, beg microsoft for windows mobile 10?, KaiOS, Tizen?, don't make phones.

About the only one that will sell the final product in the US is Android with Google's blessing.

<comment><USER20> Correct, Google has all the leverage to dictate what non-Apple smartphone manufacturers sell. Moving to Fuchsia would be expensive for everybody involved. Google is developing a new OS. Chip manufacturers will have to write new driver code. Cell manufacturers will have to integrate a new system. Everyone loses the work they put into the Android Open Source Project and their private branches of ASOP.

With all this cost, who's getting the upside? Google is clearly getting the lion's share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My wondering out loud: is the Android Runtime in Fuschia supposed to be Google's Blue Box or Red Box? Classic or Carbon?

</comment><comment><USER23> I get the feeling what started as a measure to keep staff has now turned into the perfect way to replace the Linux kernel for a lot of Google components.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is Fuchsia only going to run on Google hardware, like iOS?

All third-party manufacturers will be stuck with just legacy Android, and Google will have a contender to iOS.

<comment><USER25> Considering it's going to be open source, it would be strange to be proprietary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> They were so close to having a .fart file extension

</comment><comment><USER27> Its Microsoft all over again

<comment><USER28> microsoft in the 90's would relentlessly execute. Word and excel spring to mind, but really hundreds of little software shops woke up to discover their product was now a windows or office feature.

Think instagram eating snap, but for lots and lots of products.</comment></comment>


Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II Turns 20 Today - <AUTHOR> Jedi Knight turned 20 years old today according to Wikipedia.  Even though I haven't played video games in many years, I still have fond memories of playing this title as a kid.  Vast, mysterious, dark, and a lot of fun.  This topic isn't what you usually see on HN, but I thought this kind of crowd might enjoy a trip down memory lane. <comment><USER2> Thanks. Played the hell out of JK2 when I was 12-13ish. Loved the old zone.com multi-player matchmaking. Sabers only, no force, of course. There was a site (cannot remember name) that JK2 players used as a ladder. I got up to around 10-15 ish at one point. The old clans[0] were an awesome experience. I remember thinking the guys in Atomic, Iron Knights, Digital Heroes, Eagles of Space were so cool. So nostalgic. This game introduced me to internet gaming culture, and probably played a big hand in setting me on a path to be using computers for a long time.

[0] [http://www.jkdf2.net/JKBot/JKArchive/JKDF2/JKDF2/Multiplayer...](http://www.jkdf2.net/JKBot/JKArchive/JKDF2/JKDF2/Multiplayer%20Community/clans.txt)

</comment><comment><USER3> Crazy. This and Jedi Knight Academy is easily one of my most defining childhood moments. I remember playing this game for countless hours. Started an awesome clan, met a ton of people, and helped drive my love for designing video games.

</comment><comment><USER4> Strangely enough, one of my clearest memories about this game (played it after Jedi Knight Academy), is my first experience with motion sickness... Nonetheless, I loved it and lost a lot of time to it, even though my internet connection was practically nonexistent at the time, so multiplayer was not an option.

</comment><comment><USER5> Totally great game. I was home from college and me and my little brother played it straight for a week. So much fun :)</comment>


3 Lessons in Building a Remote Startup to $11,500 in MRR - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hubstaff.com/building-a-remote-startup/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting.</comment>


Analyzing Token Sale Models - <AUTHOR> http://vitalik.ca/general/2017/06/09/sales.html <comment><USER3> How about analyzing whether the projects funded by ICOs make any sense? With the current mania the token sales model hardly matters. Also after the mania is over, probably no matter what the model, people won't be investing, since the stupid money will run out at some point.

<comment><USER4> The OTC penny stock market still seems alive and well.

<comment><USER5> I think that you raise some interesting considerations, but I don't think it paints a full picture, and some of the missing parts of the picture are important.

While there are some parallels between coins and penny stocks, there are also some fundamental differences which means they aren't so easy comparable.

Sure, penny stocks are very highly speculative, just like coins, however unlike coins they have very well defined "value". That is, they are fractional ownership of a legally defined entity.

The value of a coin is much more difficult to understand and/or appreciate.

<comment><USER6> There is a strong parallel. As most coins do provide actual value and ownership of the platform. For example, while the gnosis coin is overhyped, the idea is that because of fees on the platform.. Eventually you will earn some money back. But as said before, the mania has to stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Security (token) sellers get lots of money up front. Security (token) sellers then appear to work a little bit until they move on to their next security (token) sale. Actual purchasers of "token" never exceed 10% of total purchasers because projects use is mostly Ponzi gambling.

All fun and games till the SEC decides enough people have lost their life savings, and calling things tokens instead of shares is comedy.

<comment><USER8> But they're not shares. Owning a token dies not necessarily mean you now own a portion of the company or profits.

<comment><USER9> The Supreme Court has given the SEC ability to duck type the definition of securities, which is:

> The term "security" means any note, stock, treasury stock, security future, > security-based swap, bond, debenture, evidence of indebtedness, certificate > of interest or participation in any profit-sharing agreement, collateral- > trust certificate, preorganization certificate or subscription, transferable > share, investment contract, voting-trust certificate, certificate of deposit > for a security, fractional undivided interest in oil, gas, or other mineral > rights, any put, call, straddle, option, or privilege on any security, > certificate of deposit, or group or index of securities (including any > interest therein or based on the value thereof), or any put, call, straddle, > option, or privilege entered into on a national securities exchange relating > to foreign currency, or, in general, any interest or instrument commonly > known as a "security", or any certificate of interest or participation in, > temporary or interim certificate for, receipt for, guarantee of, or warrant > or right to subscribe to or purchase, any of the foregoing.

Quoting Marine Bank v. Weaver:

> The definition of "security" in the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 is quite > broad. The Act was adopted to restore investors' confidence in the financial > markets, and the term "security" was meant to include "the many types of > instrument that, in our commercial world, fall within the ordinary concept > of a security." The statutory definition excludes only currency and notes > with a maturity of less than nine months. It includes ordinary stocks and > bonds, along with the "countless and variable schemes devised by those who > seek the use of the money of others on the promise of profits. Thus, the > coverage of the antifraud provisions of the securities laws is not limited > to instruments traded at securities exchanges and over-the-counter markets, > but extends to uncommon and irregular instruments. We have repeatedly held > that the test "'is what character the instrument is given in commerce by the > terms of the offer, the plan of distribution, and the economic inducements > held out to the prospect.'"

ICOs are almost certainly selling securities. Tokens look like a duck. They quack like a duck. They are sold by people promoting them as ducks. A ToS which says "n.b. Our quacking avians are not ducks; they're a totally different non-duck like thing which will supplant ducks in the future because they're so much better than ducks and cannot be regulated as ducks" will probably not mollify the SEC.

<comment><USER10> Is a security the same as a share? Do you say you have a share of a bond? Do you have a share if you buy a loan or a CDO?

Or does the word "share" imply a "stock" and therefore voting?

Is an Amazon gift card a security?

<comment><USER11> A security is a standardized and tradeable asset that derives its value from a contractual claim. From my layman's understanding of US securities law, for a token sale to be defined as a securities offering, the token issuers have to make representations of the token providing the holder with contractual rights to a share of an underlying enterprise, including all profits derived from it.

In my opinion, the vast majority of token sales haven't advertised their tokens as representing a legal claim on an enterprise and its profits.

Orocrypt is one that has gone the route of issuing an equity-token, and if offered to US residents, would fall under US securities laws:

[https://orocrypt.com](https://orocrypt.com)

Again, none of this is legal advice. Consult with a lawyer if you're going to do or participate in a token sale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> a fool and his Bitcoin are easily separated.

</comment><comment><USER13> Notwithstanding all the problems with token sales: I don't really understand Vitalik's objection to the "partial refund model." He dismisses it out of hand as creating deadweight loss because the coins have to be locked up for a period of time.

First, it's not clear to me that the coins need to be locked up at all - <USER2> can't participants deposit or withdraw their funds as they please, with the funding contract relying on the current state at the end of the funding period?

Second, even if they do have to be locked up, I'm not at all sure that it results in deadweight loss. Certainly not appreciable amounts compared to traditional methods of funding.

To me, this is pretty clearly the best system currently available. It avoids problems like scammy, uncapped sales (Bancor) and sales that instantly sell out to a few buyers (BAT).

</comment><comment><USER14> Is anyone here educated enough to explain the implications of ICOs as it relates to national boundaries? If I'm outside the US but sell to an American, am I responsible to the SEC? What if I'm an American, but I register my organization in another company (like Augur in Estonia) am I immune from the SEC then?

<comment><USER15> As long as ICO is not a 'security' then you can sell it to Americans.

<comment><USER16> I'm not certain (and not a lawyer either) but I think if you sell to an American you are bound to US laws.

<comment><USER17> No, US law only work in USA. If you buy any virtual item/service from me in EU via internet, I don't care about US law, I only care about EU law and international treaties.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure why I was downvoted but I clearly stated that "I'm not certain".

The reason I had this idea is: If you are in finance and accepting US customers you'll need to oblige to US laws. It'd be better if an experienced person clear this more.

<comment><USER17> If you are unsure it's always better to ask a question instead of stating something, probably people will not downvote you then.

European commission directive from around 2013 states that place of sale is in the origin country of the seller which means it's bound to origin country law which means it's bound to EU law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Token Sales" are unlicensed security sales[1], please be very wary of sending them money if you live in the United States.

[1] [https://hackernoon.com/dear-sec-icos-tokens-are-killing- inno...](https://hackernoon.com/dear-sec-icos-tokens-are-killing- innovation-2f8d287f88c3)

<comment><USER19> That post was written by a person who also writes stuff like this, just so you know who you're putting up as an authority on security sales: [https://twitter.com/derosetech/status/866740735558680579](https://twitter.com/derosetech/status/866740735558680579)

<comment><USER20> Another criticism: [https://prestonbyrne.com/2016/08/12/against- crowdsales/](https://prestonbyrne.com/2016/08/12/against-crowdsales/)

As for DeRose, if he isn't actually an asshat, he's certainly doing a flawless impersonation of one. But many of his points are correct nonetheless. Though do note that as a Bitcoin maximalist he would be making very similar arguments even if he were wrong ;)

<comment><USER11> A much more comprehensive analysis by experts in US securities law:

[https://www.coinbase.com/legal/securities-law- framework.pdf](https://www.coinbase.com/legal/securities-law-framework.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Most cryptocurrencies but the very largest seem to behave like penny stocks being manipulated with pump and dump schemes. There seem to be a lot of clear pump and dump talk about cryptocurrencies on sub-Reddits.

In some ways cryptocurrencies that are tied to specific companies/business endeavors become unregulated stocks in those companies. Thus it much of market the of cryptocurrencies is some sort of an unregulated stock market.

</comment><comment><USER22> Not a single comment here actually addresses the content of the article. Just pointing that out.

<comment><USER7> If ICO's are scams, then optimizing their profit (theft) is bad. Do you like seeing companies get $35 million on a dream with no share of ownership, and likely SEC violation? I don't like people throwing their life savings away on things that will not, and should not work (as nearly all crypto projects have been deeply cash negative if not for investor funds.) Disclaimer: I like bitcoin.

Thus, I'm not happy to see, or help others see ways to further screw the people getting crypto gift certificates instead of shares for their hard earned money, or I'd make more comments on the article.</comment></comment>


Search ":wq" - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/search?q=%22:wq%22&type=Code

<comment><USER2> The language statistics for this are interesting. 5.3million C files with everything else coming in way behind in the tens of thousands.

<comment><USER3> It's also interesting that if you limit the search to the C language, it looks like the search ignores the ":" after the first dozen or so hits and the remaining entries are matches for "wq" in variable names, etc. e.g.:

       extern struct workqueue_struct *kcrypto_wq;

Edit: Actually, this seems to be true of most languages...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Context? What is :wq - I'm assuming some sort of Vim shortcut?

<comment><USER5> "write file and quit"

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is hilarious. You should probably also search files named ":w". I have a lot of those.

</comment><comment><USER7> I constantly find myself questioning the sanity of doing something like:

> inoremap :wq

</comment><comment><USER8> try "sync"</comment>


Are Protests Dangerous? What Experts Say May Depend on Who's Protesting What - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/Epidemiologists-coronavirus-protests-quarantine.html <comment><USER2> >Those who protested stay-at-home orders were "rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives," the letter stated.

I feel like we've gotten to a point where "white nationalism" has become a code word for "anyone the disagrees with me" I agree white nationalism and racial justice is an important topic, but by arbitrarily labeling everyone who disagrees as a "white nationalist" it seems to be an intellectually dishonest way of refusing to engage with their arguments and the ultimate example of an "ad hominen" attack. Plus it makes it hard to figure out where to really focus attention because to quote Syndrome "If everyone is a [white nationlist] then no one is".

Am I alone on this, or do we really believe everyone that doesn't agree with one side is secretly just trying to bring back Jim Crow?

<comment><USER3> Two sides of the same coin. They are the same as the highly vocal opposition who use the same tactics. These are people who can't think for themselves and are comfortable with herd mentality. They love the concept of teams and beating the other team is the only goal, even if it means murder. They are easily manipulated and social media has enabled these "teams" to get their tentacles right into the pocket of every person on this planet. And you wonder why we have a political cesspool.

> Am I alone on this, or do we really believe everyone that doesn't agree with > one side is secretly just trying to bring back Jim Crow?

Watching a video of a black man being choked to death by a police officer, on camera, certainly makes me feel that we haven't completely eliminated Jim Crow.

<comment><USER4> > Watching a video of a black man being choked to death by a police officer, > on camera, certainly makes me feel that we haven't completely eliminated Jim > Crow.

The USA is a big country, and you can have your pick of instances of police brutality to support any conclusion you want to draw.

A white man choked to death, on camera, while police laugh? Here you go: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/01/police- laug...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/01/police-laughed- joked-he-lost-consciousness-handcuffs-minutes-later-he-died/)

A white six-year-old shot to death by two black police, one of whom only served 21 months in jail for it? Coming right up: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jeremy_Mardis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jeremy_Mardis)

Multiple studies showing police killings (though not violence) are not, on average, racially biased? [http://jewishworldreview.com/0620/hughes061620.php3](http://jewishworldreview.com/0620/hughes061620.php3)

Will this change your mind? No it won't: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23757135](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23757135)

<comment><USER5> Yes, unaccountable police are a problem for _all races_. But if you're actually concerned with reform, then you have to agree that Black Lives Matter is doing a fantastic job leading the charge.

<comment><USER4> Fantastic, as long as you ignore how whites are being cast as villains in a country where they are becoming a minority, and anyone who brings up statistics refuting this is denounced.

Historically, such a situation always worked out _great_.

<comment><USER5> I do not agree that Whites are being "cast as villains" by a significant portion of the BLM movement. I do agree that the few who _are_ doing so are in the wrong. But it's all too easy to write off an entire group by focusing on a few social-media-amplified outliers.

<comment><USER4> True, it's hard to get an unbiased picture, especially from abroad - is "White silence = violence" such an outlier?

But in either case, I wouldn't write BLM off - just because I think they're wrong about _some_ of the racial stuff, doesn't mean I think the rest of their platform is without merit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >"I certainly condemned the anti-lockdown protests at the time, and I'm not condemning the protests now, and I struggle with that," Dr. Troisi said. "I have a hard time articulating why that is OK."

and

>"But we have to be honest: A few weeks before, we were criticizing protesters for arguing to open up the economy and saying that was dangerous behavior. I am still grappling with that."

Sounds like "I do not yet have a justification for why that was okay in one case and not in another." However, tune in later as the rationalization machine grinds out a "reason;" I recollect it was a couple of weeks before the memeplex came up with some kind of explanation for why Rachel Dolezal wasn't trans-racial. Despite being told that singing and chanting for a religious function was a great way to spread the virus, apparently protest yelling and chanting carries no such risk. We're just waiting to hear _why_ , and at some point you can be sure a meme/justification will be along to tell us.

Let's face it -- the messaging as to what was okay and what was not okay was political, which has been par for the course for the whole COVID-19 response. Masks are ineffective, don't buy masks, there's no human-to-human transmission: we all remember these important messages delivered with surety and gravitas.

I've heard a saying that goes "Never let a good crisis go to waste." I think this particular crisis has not gone to waste, as various parties have made quite a lot of hay.

No wonder people have so little faith in science. We've _earned it_.

</comment><comment><USER7> If people can gather in the tens of thousands with masks on for a cause, then why couldn't we celebrate July 4th with our masks on? Why does the state get to sponsor a political movement? How dangerous can this virus be if we're willing to allow mass protests, looting, and "autonomous" zones? All it can take is <1% of a crowd to pull down their masks to sneeze to spread the virus and kill more people.

> A study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found _no > overall rise in infections_ but could not rule out that infections might > have risen in the age demographic of the protesters.

Funny, because that's definitely not what I see on the total infections chart from JHU. How are everyday people supposed to interpret this?

EDIT: Retracted a part I misunderstood.

<comment><USER8> > So racism has been killing more than the 130,430 people who have purportedly > died from COVID-19 in the United States?

Well, yeah.

> Current estimates are that about 12 million to 12.8 million Africans were > shipped across the Atlantic over a span of 400 years. The number purchased > by the traders was considerably higher, as the passage had a high death rate > with approximately 1.2–2.4 million dying during the voyage and millions more > died in seasoning camps in the Caribbean after arrival to the New World. > Millions of slaves also died as a result of slave raids, wars and during > transport to the coast for sale to European slave traders.

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

<comment><USER9> Yeah but that is 12 million over 400 years, which is a rate of 30,000 a year. Covid is 130,430 in just over 4 months, which is a rate of 391,284 a year. So covid is about an order of magnitude more dangerous.

<comment><USER4> The 12 million is for both North and South America, while 130 thousand Covid deaths are in the USA alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This just pretty much comports with what we're coming to understand to be the case around the vast majority of human decision making. That is, we choose first and then justify. The process we call "deciding" is really backfilling with reason.

</comment><comment><USER11> One set of protests were against mask-wearing and another involved wearing masks for the most part.

I think the consensus is that outdoor activity is ok if you're distancing or wearing masks (preferably both) but as soon as you come indoors where there is less ventilation, the aerosolization of saliva particles can create a vaporous suspension that lasts a long time - if even 5-10% of the population isn't wearing masks then it could be dangerous.

<comment><USER12> Don't forget that many of the anti-lockdown protests were also indoors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> In the United States, it doesn't make any difference if protests are dangerous.

They are protected speech in freedom of assembly, end of story.

<comment><USER14> From the government's perspective, maybe. People still need to decide whether they want to take on the risk of attending a protest, and they should be informed (by experts) when doing so.

<comment><USER13> In 1789, the year of ratification of the U.S. constitution, smallpox was still a lethal disease.

Preventative treatment for smallpox was a procedure named "variolation," which involved purposeful infection with smallpox by a scratch.

Variolation had a 3% fatality rate; normal transmission of smallpox was 15-20%.

A person who had recently undergone variolation could transmit the disease normally, and definitely required isolation.

George Washington required all members of the continental army to undergo variolation in our rebellion against the British.

The United States has faced enormous pressure from disease, and no mark of this is in the first amendment.

(p.s. I am surprised that we have not attempted the equivalent of variolation with ancestors of the current corona virus.)

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Politics, not religion, is the real opium of people. If you have tried to follow the process of the protests from a diverse set of sources, you might have also seen how two parallel worlds exist in the same space. Banach and Tarski would be proud.

<comment><USER16> Politics have become religion.

<comment><USER17> That explained a lot to me about America in 2020.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If the protest has a reasonable chance of increasing the fitness of your group then it may be worthwhile even if it is risky for the individual. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection)

This logic applies to non-contagious, individual level, hazards such as this 8 year girl shot after her mom inadvertently drove into a mini-CHAZ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTEemY1d0dc&t=338s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTEemY1d0dc&t=338s)

However in the case of contagious pandemic it seems to be risky for the group to concentrate in one place. Is there a name for this effect? I can not find any papers on it.

</comment><comment><USER19> Makes me wonder if the Supreme Court would have ruled differently in emergency stay requests from churches had they seen the change in responses towards the protest rallys by the same leaders who were restricting religious gatherings.

</comment><comment><USER20> In a world where global warming poses an existential threat to humanity, any actions that devalue public perception of experts and scientists are dangerous.

We are in big trouble, and if we don't collectively recognize that, put aside our differences wherever possible, and start acting accordingly, a lot of people are going to suffer.</comment>


Best Buy offering iPhone 6s for $1 on contract - <AUTHOR> http://9to5mac.com/2015/12/17/best-buy-iphone-6s-1-dollar-deal/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just checked their page, and it's live now.</comment>


PG&E suspends dividends because of uncertainty about causes of wildfires - <AUTHOR> https://wolfstreet.com/2017/12/21/citing-uncertainty-related-to-causes-of-bay-area-wildfires-pge-suspends-dividends-shares-plunge-further/ <comment><AUTHOR> From the article: "CEO Geisha Williams told [Wall Street] analysts that PG&E only carried $800 million in liability insurance for that blaze and that _our costs over and above insurance coverage should be shared by all customers._ "

Now that's chutzpah!</comment>


Uber is facing the biggest crisis in its history - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21719509-can-ride-hailing-giant-stay-fast-lane-uber-facing-biggest-crisis-its-short <comment><USER2> Here's the money quote:

> If Mr Gurley and the rest of the board cannot find an experienced candidate > willing to work with Mr Kalanick, calls for him to step down may grow > louder. But that is his decision to take. Uber is a prominent example of > founders' power at fast-growing tech firms. On its own, Uber's board does > not have the clout to change the CEO, because of his super-voting shares and > those of his co-founder, Garrett Camp: together they control a majority of > the voting stock.

Well, that's a pretty bad corporate governance problem. The CEO's behavior, and the culture he created at the company, have badly damaged the company's image and driven away senior executives and probably a lot of engineers too -- and yet the board can't get rid of him.

I would certainly think twice about investing in a company whose board is powerless to do anything about such a terrible self-inflicted wound.

<comment><USER3> While I'm not sure I disagree with you, devil's advocate here...do you think you'd feel the same way as a founder who could prevent yourself from ever being fired from your own company? I can think of several situations where retaining that kind of control would be hugely beneficial and important (in the right hands of course, which is the whole issue here).

<comment><USER4> And that's why Google and Facebook (I think) both took steps for the founders to retain control in that manner. So that they would be able to focus on what's important to the company vs. bs next quarter results. And it's worked out well for both of them. But of course, they don't seem to have the "ethics" issues that Uber does.

<comment><USER5> If google had a ethics issues, i certainly never found something on that on the web :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I make a habit of talking to taxi drivers about Uber. Consistently they say they drive taxis because there is no money in driving for Uber (which of course that tells us less than it seems, because they are self-selected to be people who prefer driving taxis). One told me something new: I asked, as I often do, if they don't make money then why are there so many Uber drivers?

This man said that some Uber drivers are trapped by car loans: They are working-class people who took out loans to buy their Uber cars. All cars lose value the moment they are driven off the lot and these cars are driven hard and for high mileage, so their resale value is low. He said these drivers keep working for Uber because they have to try to pay off the loans. (I know nothing else about that story other than what one random driver told me; I'm hoping others can contribute some better knowledge about it.)

It struck me: Not only does Uber treat their workers like contractors and give them no benefits or other employee protections, but they ask (often) working class people to provide Uber's capital. Arguably, it's like General Motors calling factory workers 'independent contractors' and asking them to bring their own machinery. In contrast, taxi drivers lease the cab for a shift, AFAIK; they have no long-term capital investment or debt trap. It's almost as if Uber's main business proposition is a loophole in labor rules that allows them to shift almost all costs onto their own workers.

That said, I hesitate to pile on, even for a company I don't like personally (which is why I take cabs). Let's not let the hype exceed the reality.

EDIT: A few clarifying edits

<comment><USER7> > AFAIK; they have no long-term capital investment or debt trap

Medallions?

<comment><USER8> My understanding is that very few places have a medallion system. It's apparently quite common in the US, but I can't say I've heard about it anywhere else.

Does anyone have statistics on this?

<comment><USER6> How do other places control supply of taxis, or do they not do that at all?

<comment><USER8> I don't know, and it's likely they don't do it at all.

Why would the number of taxis need to be controlled? I don't know much about the taxi industry and perhaps there is some good reason for it that I am simply not aware of?

<comment><USER6> My baseless assumption always has been that it is for two reasons:

* It's one of those situations where the free market fails. Because anyone with a car can give someone a ride, it creates a race to the bottom and nobody can make money. You'll note that one criticism of Uber is that they create exactly that situation.

* Safety and fraud prevention for customers

Note that the community has an interest in quality transportation, including for tourists.

<comment><USER8> But does controlling the number of taxis achieve those goals? The countries that I have experience with all have regulations attempting to ensure those very things that you mentioned, but none of them actively limits the number of taxis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a part-time Uber driver in Toronto I haven't noticed any drop-off in ride requests whatsoever. Uber will survive, at least unless someone else beats them to market with an autonomous alternative.

I don't get any incentives or bonuses either, just ~75% of the gross receipts from the customer.

<comment><USER10> I think it's important to remember that Uber users aren't loyal: if a ride isn't immediately available through Uber, they use Lyft; if Lyft isn't available, they go to the next app.

While I agree that the service is here to stay, the individual players are likely to shift.

<comment><USER11> Based on what? I'm pretty loyal to Uber and use it because I know what I'm going to pay when I order the ride and because I'm not pressured to tip in the app. I guess if another app had both those features, the same ride availability, and cost the same I'd download and try it but currently none of them, that I've tried, do.

<comment><USER12> Yes but Uber will have to raise prices at some point. Will you be loyal then?

<comment><USER13> What do you base that on?

<comment><USER12> Here's a link from a comment a bit further down the thread: [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uber-true-cost- uh...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uber-true-cost-uh-oh)

If you really want to go down the rabbit hole I'd recommend reading this series on nakedcapitalism. They're at nine parts now: [http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?s=can+uber+ever+deliver](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?s=can+uber+ever+deliver)

<comment><USER14> The naked capitalism series is written by a cab dispatch consultant, and reads almost like a paid hatchet job. Makes huge assumptions on data not in hand, and spins iffy conclusions with evident bias. At one point he claims Ubers costs can never be as low as cab dispatch because Uber is spending money expanding! That makes zero sense.

It's pretty clear Uber is in heavy investment mode, in market expansion as well as new businesses (uber-eats, self driving cars, etc), no one can know what their real costs per ride are unless they can break out that detail.

But it's also clear in their core business their cost to dispatch a ride should only be pennies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Uber is too young for the phrase "biggest crisis in its history". It has no history. It has none of the institutional depth to warrant such comparisons. That comes only after decades, after a company has survived multiple boom and bust cycles spanning multiple administrations. This is an upstart company run by upstart kids. That isn't bad per se, but we should expect unpredictability. Talk about company history when the CEO is in his 70s, is the child of a former board member, and the head office has become a listed building. Those companies won't grow massively every quarter, but they do know how to weather a storm.

<comment><USER16> I totally agree. Seems like the Economist would know better.

To me, a crisis would be if software stopped working as intended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I suspect management quitting has to do more with options being deep in the money and no longer having a financial incentive to stay with the company, more than Uber actually being in much trouble. Sounds like more alarmism. Uber has gotten a lot of bad press over the past few months but the business itself is doing fine.

<comment><USER14> Quitting means forfeiting options.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The consummate leader cultivates the moral law, and strictly adheres to method and discipline; thus it is in his power to control success. -Sun Tzu

</comment><comment><USER19> yet another case of our boss went bonkers, wth should we do about it before we get wrecked.

</comment><comment><USER20> IMHO as a part-time Uber driver, Uber could fix a lot of their current problems by putting tipping into the app. The self-driving car is not here yet, and Uber does not do enough for its drivers. If they would just add tipping I think that better drivers in better cars would start driving again. Without the tips, it's just not worth it.

<comment><USER21> No thanks! If drivers need to be compensated better, I would suggest increasing the fare or Uber taking a smaller cut. A lot of people prefer Uber just so they don't have to deal with tipping like in traditional cabs.

<comment><USER22> Uber isn't taking a cut. They're subsidizing fares. [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uber-true-cost- uh...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/uber-true-cost-uh-oh)

<comment><USER21> They are subsidizing the passenger's trip, but taking a cut from the driver's fare. There is a difference.

<comment><USER22> Taking a cut from where? I don't think Uber's costs are 60% and the drivers' are 40%.

<comment><USER21> The article is talking about a different thing. If the trip costs me $10, the driver keeps ~$7 and Uber gets $3. If the driver thinks he needs $9 for this to be viable, then Uber should either take $1 or charge the customer $12 and pay the driver $9 is my point. I don't want the additional $2 to be covered by tips, which is determined by an unspoken rule.

<comment><USER22> But right now Uber is actually subsidizing your ride, so you pay $10, the driver gets $20 and Uber's "cut" is -$10. On top of that Uber does have expenses of their own so Uber loses $15 total.

The only way this works over the long term is to force out competition so that they can massively jack up prices, and/or replace drivers with self-driving cars that have lower costs.

<comment><USER21> Right, so make my cost $15 and pay the driver $25 and Uber still loses $15. I'm okay with that if that means I and the driver don't have to stress out about the tip before each ride. I don't want to be responsible for the driver making living wage when I don't employ him.

If Uber does this and they realize customers are not riding as much anymore, then it is a problem with their pricing and setting of expectation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >Two questions face the company. One is whether Uber will continue prospering under Mr Kalanick's leadership. Silicon Valley and its denizens may celebrate his type, but ...

Well fuck you too, Economist. That seems like an unnecessary and ignorant jab.

<comment><USER24> "Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter." -Paul Graham in "What We Look for in Founders"

[http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html)

There's definitely a sense in which Kalanick's "boundary pushing" is the sort of thing Silicon Valley encourages.

<comment><USER23> Yeah there's a sense, but a bunch of the negative stories about Uber/Kalanick have originated in our community too. Would Susan Fowler's story have gone viral had it not been for the outrage within Silicon Valley? Including "Silicon Valley _and its denizens_ " includes a giant group of people who have been crying out _against_ this behavior.

I suppose I just don't like the insinuation that I (or my part of the Silicon Valley community) support that behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Honestly, how many other companies, government agencies, or other organizations would hold up under the kind of coordinated, orchestrated drubbing that the media has dished out to Uber over the last couple of months?

<comment><USER26> I'm not at all a fan of Uber, but at this point it seems like a coordinated smear campaign.

<comment><USER27> It's not a smear campaign; it's a feeding frenzy. When public perception shifts one way or another, the stories follow to cover it in that angle (though you'd expect at some point there'd be some contrarian hot takes that take an apologist stance towards Uber, maybe something like "Don't blame Uber. Blame the tech industry/gig economy/etc."). There's something rotten at the company, so journalists will naturally shift to cover it and dig up every juice piece of mud they can rake.

Same thing happened to RIM a few years back. None of this is personal. It's just a domino effect.

<comment><USER26> Hadn't even considered that. Suppose the results are the same either way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


This Is What Fracking Really Looks Like - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2013/07/19/nina_berman_fractured_the_shale_play_looks_at_lives_affected_by_fracking.html

<comment><USER2> This article isn't anything more than a collection of NIMBY quotes and emotive pictures. It doesn't really have any substance.

There are fair criticisms of hydraulic fracturing, but I've found that most content outside of scientific journals / EPA reports to be incredibly overblown and very inaccurate.

</comment><comment><USER3> I recommend this BBC documentary which tries to shed some light on the matter. Fracking: The New Energy Rush - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjgzrmoLc7g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjgzrmoLc7g)

</comment><comment><USER4> Two days ago I watched "Promised Land" which deals with this issue, but I thought it was just hyperbole when they were talking about dying animals and people setting water on fire.

</comment><comment><USER5> Whats happened to good regulatory frameworks in America? Was the breakdown of industry regulation a Bush thing or does it pre-date that? Seems to be a similar theme across Health, Food, Petroleum.

<comment><USER6> Industries are always working to capture their regulators regardless of administrations. The massive push for deregulation since Reagan has certainly helped destroy it though.

The other side of the problem is the explosion in global energy demand (and hence prices).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wait a damn minute here. The EPA came down and even tested the damn waters (*wells) in these areas. Methane had been coming out of the ground before these people were born and now they are saying something? Are these the very people that don't own the land that fracking is leased on?

<comment><USER8> Perhaps you should give these people the benefit of the doubt before attacking them? "Methane existed before" is very simplistic. Has the amount increased? Has the affected area increased? Is there a change in prevalent isotopes that might give a clue as to the origin of the methane? Is the change enough to put the level over EPA standards?

There isn't really any question that some people have seen an increase in methane in their water supply (unless you believe these people have been living without usable water for decades but only cared to do anything about it once fracking came to town). Working out why is more difficult.

Here is one study (insert usual disclaimer about relying too much on a single paper) [http://www.pnas.org/content/108/20/8172.long](http://www.pnas.org/content/108/20/8172.long)

 _Our results show evidence for methane contamination of shallow drinking- water systems in at least three areas of the region and suggest important environmental risks accompanying shale-gas exploration worldwide._

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article should be #1 on HN right now but has been disappeared.

Shenanigans has been called.

</comment><comment><USER9> False,

<comment><USER10> Can you expand on that point or is that all you have to say?

<comment><USER11> Parent may be referring to this: [http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/19/doe-...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/19/doe- study-fracking-didnt-taint/2567721/)</comment></comment></comment>