Tech salary insights from 1.2M foreign worker visas - <AUTHOR> http://www.therotationship.com/blog/salaries/is-silicon-valley-in-a-salary-bubble-3-more-insights-from-salar-lys-1-2m-foreign-work-visas/ <comment><USER3> Why are tech salaries so _low?_

Especially from these companies with large profit margins and huge revenue per employee numbers. It seems like engineers have captured almost nothing of the fruit of their labors.

<comment><USER4> That's low to you? Wow. Just wow.

Over here in Europe (or at least Germany) salaries are incredibly uniform (doesn't really matter if you suck or get as much done in a day as others in 1-2 weeks; if your bugs get constantly reopened or your code is rock-solid), and most people seem to get maybe 35-50k€ after graduation (diploma/master's degree).

<comment><USER5> Bear in mind that the US is severely out of whack in terms of work/life balance. It's one of the things I find most difficult about living here - <USER2> I first arrived I had 10 days vacation a year. I currently only have 15. And don't forget to factor in healthcare costs and the like.

Money certainly isn't everything.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that _IS_ crazy. How come companies don't offer holdays as comp? Here (Sweden) having an extra week holiday (6 rather than 5 weeks) is a common comp.

Why aren't companies competing with that in the US? If I was offered $150k with 10-15 days holiday and 50hr work weeks (expected), I'd immediately start bargaining for 25-30 paid days off, and make sure I wouldn't be expected to work more than 40h/w. Is that uncommon in the US?

Or is it common to take unpaid days off, which you can afford given the high salaries?

<comment><USER5> I suspect that, particularly in the startup arena, time is more valuable than money. VCs are throwing cash at you, but they want you to launch yesterday.

<comment><USER6> Sure, and I realize good developers are hard to find, but unless you are looking for the 23year old "ninja" type developers who like doing all nighters, would you not need to care about work/life balance of employees too?

Startups that need to launch yesterday I realize often have young employees without family, but these are large corps like Oracle/Yahoo/Google, these have to employ quite a lot of engineers in their 30s, 40s and 50s? Like I said, I'd be willing to accept a _substantially_ lower pay for a good holiday (5-6 weeks), and a good work/life balance otherwise, like good processes that ensure there's no regular "crunch time".

<comment><USER7> It's not part of the culture. People sometimes quietly grouse about the lack of vacation time or the number of hours but no one is willing to publicly do anything about it for whatever cultural reason.

<comment><USER6> So in this culture, is it common to do a few years of high-income work with 12hr days and high compensation, and then you get a "quieter" job somewhere else when you need a job that allows you to pick the kids up at 4.30pm? Or how does it work? Obviously children aren't unheard of in Silicon Valley, and as far as I understand it's a pretty progressive part of the US, so I assume that families have two careers to worry about? Something doesn't add up if long days are norm.

<comment><USER7> > is it common to do a few years of high-income work with 12hr days and high > compensation

People working the longest hours aren't necessarily making more money because of it. There's no overtime.

People don't want to make less as they go on in their careers, and don't want to look like they don't want to work a lot, so if they take less time they try not to do so overtly.

> then you get a "quieter" job somewhere else when you need a job that allows > you to pick the kids up at 4.30pm?

Recalibrate your expectations. No one is leaving work at 4:30pm. 45 hours a week is called "40 hours a week" and no one works just 40 hours a week. People don't expect to do very much outside of work except on the weekends.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the insights. Perhaps it is time for companies to compete for talent on these parameters instead? I think I've seen some companies trying to attract talent like that now that I think about it (was it stack exchange perhaps?). I might underestimate the power of the almighty buck here, but I'd take the employer that says "we value work/life balance, when we say 40h/week we mean it literally, we allow remote work, and we have 5 paid weeks off".

As for my questions above, it still doesn't add upp. Either you don't have kids as long as you hold one of these jobs or at least both parents can't have such jobs, so it's basically a job that requires one parent to stay at home at least part time? Or you need a nanny to pick up your kids after school/kindergarten? My guess is that you are going to say that normally one parent (and not a random one) just stays home for years after having kids, but that would be a real blow to my view of SF/NYC as progressive...

It seems odd to me that people making a lot of money (which I hope these salaries are considered), wouldn't just invest a huge chunk of it in family/free time, by simply working less hours, e.g. 75% at 75% pay.

With my european glasses, the salaries look huge, but of course I haven't factored the cost of living and certainly not the impact on work/life balance. I hold a well paid (by local standards) full time dev job, and I drop off kids at 8 and pick them up at 4.30. Every other day my wife does that so I can work a bit longer. I never manage to do 40h at the office, but it's considered normal for people with kids to leave early and do an hour or so of work in the evening.

Not sure what my point is, I guess it's that I'm surprised of how a "culture of work" can form in this way in a country that is often percieved as valuing family quite a lot, especially in progressive regions where presumably equality means a lot. Also I'm surprised of how employers (candidates, rather) aren't pushing the compensation in a more work/life balance friendly direction. Especially since these were visa applications, a lot of which I assume come from people used to 5w holidays and actual 40h workweeks.

<comment><USER7> > I might underestimate the power of the almighty buck here, but I'd take the > employer that says "we value work/life balance, when we say 40h/week we mean > it literally, we allow remote work, and we have 5 paid weeks off".

Almost universally what you see in job ads and recruiter spam is "we offer _exciting challenges_ " and that they've created the most fun place to work ever and if they mention compensation at all they offer "market salary" or "salary commensurate with experience", to the point where all these different messages sound pretty much the same.

I get hundreds of messages on linkedin and they all sound like the above with exciting challenges with a market salary, but I don't recall anyone attempting to promise above-market salary or better vacation time, even once. You would think that you could get a competitive advantage by promising tangible benefits as you suggest, but I've never seen it.

Some do mention being more flexible with remote work though.

> so it's basically a job that requires one parent to stay at home at least > part time?

Yes, basically.

> Or you need a nanny to pick up your kids after school/kindergarten?

In the US children are universally bussed to/from school, you don't need to come pick them up yourself. So once they're old enough that they don't need constant supervision they often have a couple hours to themselves at home.

> My guess is that you are going to say that normally one parent (and not a > random one) just stays home for years after having kids, but that would be a > real blow to my view of SF/NYC as progressive...

In terms of labor conditions? CA and NY have a handful of better labor protections than the rest of the country, but progressive by your standards? absolutely not.

> It seems odd to me that people making a lot of money (which I hope these > salaries are considered), wouldn't just invest a huge chunk of it in > family/free time, by simply working less hours, e.g. 75% at 75% pay.

That would be great. I would totally do that.

Remember, people don't get paid by the hour so there's no counterincentive to employers using social pressure to get you to put in as much time as possible. There is no concept of a set number of hours you're supposed to work.

> Also I'm surprised of how employers (candidates, rather) aren't pushing the > compensation in a more work/life balance friendly direction.

Yes. People are not willing to fight for this.

> Especially since these were visa applications, a lot of which I assume come > from people used to 5w holidays and actual 40h workweeks.

The bulk of these these are from Asia or India where the salary differential might be very large.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. Remember to go work in Stockholm when you have kids ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One confounding factor not considered here is the number of "senior" engineers with less than 4yr work experience. Seriously, title inflation is just as rampant if not more in the tech sector than wage inflation. So how do you account for Senior Engineer vs here's a job we'll just add this nice title to.

<comment><USER9> I never clearly understood how many years of experience you need to become Sr. exactly, seems like everyone follows different rules.

<comment><USER10> It's all over the place. A college dropout who starts a start-up as CTO then fails within the year will apply as a senior. But, it's one of those things where I don't judge a book by its cover in either direction. After talking to the person in the right context there's a certain confidence and deep level of understanding that I expect from senior engineers and it never reflects their years of experience.

<comment><USER11> Yep, I agree with all of that. A lack of a cut-and-dried definition in terms of years or other objective measurements makes it hard to compile data, but that is exactly how I think of a senior developer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Engineers are just middle class who didn't get screwed. The real bubble is in the medical industry and Wall Street and it's not gonna pop any time soon.

<comment><USER13> Some would say that the medical industry isn't seeing a bubble, as much of the inflation in prices and salaries is going straight to the insurance companies - so the real bubble is in Wall Street and Wall Street.

<comment><USER12> Yes the cost of health care is extremely inflated. However, it is not just insurance companies who benefit from this trend. Doctors' base salary is 189k while investment bank associates (2 years experience) get paid around that with salary and bonus. Most of the doctors I know are millionaires.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Most interesting takeaway for me is that salaries weren't significantly higher in SF in 2013. As someone living in NYC I always imagined moving to SF/Silicon Valley would give me a big pay bump.

Also one thing to note here: these are 'Labor Condition Applications', not actual salaries. Often they are one and the same, but (for example) they do not include pay rises. I've ended up being paid more than every LCA I've had since I've been in the US.

<comment><USER14> This is biased data. As someone who has mined the LCA data applications, I can say you're absolutely right.

These are H1B labor applications, and salaries are carefully calculated to be a certain margin over the average salaries for the same SOC jobs for employed citizens in the region. These SOC classifications can be nebulous and thus not reflective of the true market - e.g. "PROGRAMMER" could be anything from data entry to senior software engineer.

This means that the salaries are calculated and set for a successful LCA approval, NOT the market rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> According to the data here, salaries for "Senior software engineer" in both SF and NYC are lagging rental inflation over the last 5 years.

Does this jibe with reality? Is the data bad, or are engineers losing ground?

<comment><USER16> To be honest the numbers sound low. This could be because visa holders don't have a lot of leverage when negotiating. I have seen much higher paystubs and offer letters for the listed companies in Seattle. And I imagine the valley and NYC pays more than Seattle despite some companies claiming they don't change pay based on location.

<comment><USER17> Low? They seem high! Is this total comp or just base?

<comment><USER18> These numbers seem low for just base. $120K in NYC for a senior engineer is low - anecdotally I see it more at $150-170K nowadays.

I don't think there's a good reason why a capable, senior engineer would entertain a total comp under $200K these days in NYC - and I know many companies here that play with these numbers.

I think the fact that these are labor cert numbers definitely skews the data downwards.

<comment><USER19> You know, whenever we get one of these salary articles on HN, there's always one or two people chiming in with vague anecdotes like "That seems really low! Most engineers I know are making $200K+!" or "Company X pays engineers $250K LOL" despite the fact that most responses (backed up by averages from anonymously-reported salaries like Glassdoor) seem to agree that $90-$140K is about average in SF and NYC.

Not that I don't believe you, but I'd love to, one day, actually see a real, specific engineering job posting with a published (or unpublished) base salary offering over $200K. Just one.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, it's tough. Especially since everyone inflates their earnings. But this is what I surmised after researching and interviewing at a dozen companies:

 _I compared my offers with friends and concluded a mid level (non-senior, not college hire) dev should make at least 135k for base salary and enough stocks and bonuses to surpass 200k per year. This is for Seattle as of spring 2014. However I followed my heart and accepted a slightly lower offer to join a start up._

 _Caveat: never believe any compensation numbers you read online or hear in person. People brag and exaggerate. Engineers lie to recruiters, recruiters lie to engineers, recruiters lie to other recruiters, and engineers lie to each other. I only believe numbers when I 1) see an offer letter, 2) see a pay stub, or 3) hear multiple people with the same job title tell me identical numbers._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As I've commented on other stories like this...

The biggest thing to know about these data from the US Department of Labor (DOL) is that they DO NOT reflect visas granted. They reflect Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) granted. denied, etc. This is only one part of the application for a visa, and every year the DOL certifies far more LCAs than there are available visas.

It is impossible to tell from the LCA data what companies actually followed through with the rest of the process and fees and were able to sponsor a foreign worker before the visa cap was hit each year. That information would come from US Citizenship and Immigration Service, and as far as I can find they do not release that information.

</comment><comment><USER21> We recently used salary prediction data to come up with salary charts and maps as well: [https://salaryfairy.com/salary](https://salaryfairy.com/salary)

One interesting finding was that not only SF salaries are much higher compared to rest of the US, but users from SF tend to over-estimate how much the rest of the country is making. You can see this effect in the third map at [https://salaryfairy.com/blog/first-10k-users-salary-maps- and...](https://salaryfairy.com/blog/first-10k-users-salary-maps-and-charts)

<comment><USER22> For what it's worth, I work for a company that has offices in both Atlanta (which is probably a relatively low-wage market) and San Francisco. I was given a choice between the two offices (I lived in SF at the time of the offer but was looking to move) and was offered X in Atlanta or about 1.2X in SF.

(I took Atlanta, by the way. The cost of living difference is much larger than 20%.)

<comment><USER21> No kidding! I just checked Atlanta vs SF cost of living out of curiosity. SF cost of living is almost twice and rent cost is almost triple. Crazy!

<comment><USER22> When I was thinking of moving and looking into what the tech scene was like in Atlanta, I found this post on "startups for grownups": [http://academicvc.com/2013/07/05/startups-for- grownups/](http://academicvc.com/2013/07/05/startups-for-grownups/) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How hard is it to get a job in the US for an EU citizen? I've heard that one could wait for up to 2 years for a visa, so most small/middle-sized companies just don't bother and hire only US-based developers. Is it any easier for people with degrees in compsci?

</comment><comment><USER24> > Marketing Director — $400,700

> Director of Marketing — $385,000

Are these different roles now?

<comment><USER25> There are actual reported data points underlying this. Likely they are just two similar jobs (maybe even the same one in different time frames) that were reported differently.

<comment><AUTHOR> agreed -- there's no uniformity in how companies fill out these apps; for example, as I briefly mentioned in the post but didn't look far into, even the company name "Google" was typed in 3 or 4 ways

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If Yahoos engineering salaries are so great, why do we never hear about them? How's their worklife balance?

<comment><USER27> As a Yahoo I'd have to say that I am loving it over here... (obviously this is purely anecdotal).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It looks like Microsoft is the only product company in the top 10 for VISAs. All of the rest are essentially work for hire (and offshore) dev/consulting companies. [http://www.salar.ly/statistics](http://www.salar.ly/statistics)

</comment><comment><USER29> Here is some detailed analysis on H1b visa app (it does not seem to be current year)

[http://www.infocaptor.com/dashboard/what-will-america-pay- to...](http://www.infocaptor.com/dashboard/what-will-america-pay-to-h1b-job- candidates)

</comment><comment><USER30> Salary bubble? More like a Salary deficit compared to the cost of living increases. Housing, Health, and Education have all nearly doubled in the last 15 years. My wages certainly didn't double.

</comment><comment><USER31> " salary data from more than 1.2 million work visa applications the US Department of Labor has received between 2009 and 2013."

this seems like a treasure trove. any links to the raw data?

<comment><USER32> A bunch of data here, and not just for H-1Bs: [http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm#d...](http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm#dis)

[edit: for a searchable interface to this data, as well as complete approved applications, check out [http://dolstats.com/](http://dolstats.com/)]

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> We're not in a salary bubble. If anything, it's the opposite.

I've analyzed the hell out of this "salary bubble" issue (or non-issue, because there is no such thing) at length.

[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/whats-a- mid-c...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/whats-a-mid-career- software-engineer-actually-worth-try-779000-per-year-as-a-lower-bound/)

[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/software- engi...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/software-engineer- salaries-arent-inflated-at-least-not-for-the-99/)

<comment><USER34> Your first article is based on faulty economics. When productivity increases are shared across an industry, nobody in the industry benefits. Instead, the benefits accrue to the customers and complements of the industry. There's a long historical precedent for that - productivity improvements in textile manufacturing destroyed the textile industry, productivity improvements in farming destroyed the small farmer, productivity improvements in fishing destroyed the individual fisherman.

Applied to software, the reason engineers aren't capturing most of that value is because _all_ engineers are getting more productive. The benefit is accruing instead to those who employ engineers and those who use & purchase software. The exceptions are those fields where there are still significant barriers to entry and effective techniques are not widespread - isn't this why you want to become a data scientist?

I might buy that we're not in a salary bubble, but not for the reasons you propose. Rather, I'd say that the existence of a thriving market for startup founders is a market inefficiency. When engineers top out at $200K at a corporate job (and they don't always...I know some engineers with multi- million-$ stock grants) but can quit their job and instantly get millions in seed funding, that indicates that salaries should rise and seed funding availability should fall to bring those options back to equilibrium.

<comment><USER33> _Your first article is based on faulty economics._

No. I'm not saying that software engineers _should_ earn $700,000+ or that any reasonable economic model would have them at that level-- because never in the history of economics has one's labor being worth something to the employer been, alone, enough to justify floating it to that rate. I'm only saying that their value to the businesses that employ them is at least that high.

 _Applied to software, the reason engineers aren 't capturing most of that value is because all engineers are getting more productive. The benefit is accruing instead to those who employ engineers and those who use & purchase software._

Then it seems like software engineers should unionize or professionalize. If there's no other way for them to get even a small fraction of their value to the business, then collective action is the best approach.

<comment><USER34> I doubt a union would get much traction as long as the software industry is in as much flux as it is in, and boundaries between engineers, entrepreneurs, and financiers are as porous as they are. It's not uncommon for someone to be an engineer for a few years, a technical cofounder for a few more years, and then a venture capitalist later on. Many, many people in tech (Andreesen, PG, John Doerr, Eugene Kleiner, Bill Joy) have sat in all 3 seats.

<comment><USER35> Actually it's incredibly uncommon. There are hundreds of thousands of engineers, far fewer "technical cofounders" and even fewer venture capitalists.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> kuni-toko-tachi Salary work is a dead end path. The only way to capture your economic value is to put it on the market as a business. I've taken too long to learn this. At a certain point you say to yourself that making the same thing week after week is foolish and you throw yourself into the fire to make it on your own.</comment>


Kay on the Meaning of "Object-Oriented Programming" - <AUTHOR> http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay_oop_en <comment><USER2> I like the notation "<-" instead of "." Here's why: "<-" looks like sending a message. "." looks like a scoping construct.

Thus, to my brain, "." implies synchronicity: Invoke this function and continue with the result, it's just that the language implementation will do some fiddly stuff to look up the function's implementation in an inheritance hierarchy at run time.

Whereas "<-" implies asynchronicity: Send this message to this independent entity that has its own memory, processor, whatever. If you need a reply, send a continuation along with it, a'la current Javascript style.

<comment><USER3> I've felt for a long time that the tendency to equate "sending a message" and "calling a function/method" has caused a lot of problems - one is more like IPC/RPC and the other is something that happens within the local context (process/thread/etc.).

<comment><USER4> sending a message = piping

sending a message with callback = continuation passing style

<comment><USER3> I think the Transputer/Occam and Google Go have a better approach where they were influenced by Hoare's CSP:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_proces...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_processes)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Kay mentions the Burroughs B5000. Boy you have to be an old timer to have worked on that. I did some Algol programming on the B6500, the next generation. They were stack machines, but what was interesting was that the memory words were typed in the B6500 and on. IIRC, the add instruction was not typed as it is in nearly all other machines, but it did a integer add or double add based on the tag bits of the operands. Wikipedia has a good article, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems>

<comment><USER3> I think the Burroughs CANDE shell was by far the worst user environment I have every used on _any_ system - the only nice thing (at least for Tron fans) being at least things were being fed to the MCP:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_MCP>

<comment><USER5> In those days everything was terrible. We had to deal with 360 JCL an similar abominations. You couldnt dignify them with the term shell. It was timesharing and ultimately Unix that liberated us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What does Kay mean by late-binding? ... not the dynamic binding of overriding methods in a subclass or virtual functions (C++)? The last paragraphs compared smalltalk with lisp in this respect.

<comment><USER7> Not being in his head, I'll try to guess from what I know of smalltalk. It means the actual binding of a message to the method to execute is done only when the message is received. TOo give you an idea, you may associate some code to specific messages to an object at runtime, you may also implement doesNotUnderstand and decide how to handle messages who don't have corresponding methods (forward it to another object, have some special behavior, create the method on the fly as needed).

<comment><USER8>
      Foo.counter = 0;
      Foo.prototype.handle = function(message, data) {
        if (message == 'bar' && Foo.counter < 3) {
           return this.bar(data)
        }
        else {
          throw "I forgot about 'bar'."
        }
        Foo.counter++;
      }

<comment><USER7> Not too sure about what the point is, or maybe it is just my limited knowledge of javascirpt that's playing me tricks. In any case I didn't know of a prototype.handle function and can't figure out any way for it to intervene in the usual way of calling functions on an object.

var f=new Foo()

f.bar() //Just says that f.bar is undefined and therefor not a function

//If I add

f.bar=function(something){return "nothing"}

//Calling

f.bar("ABC") //Many times always answers "nothing"

<comment><USER9> There isn't such a function built-in, though something like it (a doNotUnderstand functionality to call a default function instead of throwing an error if the requested field isn't found on an object) has been proposed as a future addition to the JavaScript standard.

IgorPartola's example code won't intervene in the usual function-call process; rather, it provides a tacked-on means of simulating message sending behavior that _ought_ to be included in the language's syntax under Kay's definition of OO. With this convention, you'd never call bar(), or any other method, directly; you'd call handle to send a 'bar' message to the object instead. Then, if you send a message the object doesn't understand, handle() can route it properly.

<comment><USER10> Lua has this, with metatables that can set methods to handle undefined stuff. It is actually very useful and you can do a lot with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like Erlang is close to Dr Kay's notion of OOP - though my Erlang-fu is not strong enough to know if it has polymorphism.

<comment><USER12> Yep.

I should note that OO means "objects having state".

You can send identical messages to different processes and they can respond with (structurally) same answers, so Erlang is polymorphic enough to be OO.

 _"Erlang might be the only object oriented language because the 3 tenets of object oriented programming are that it's based on message passing, that you have isolation between objects and have polymorphism":_ <http://www.infoq.com/interviews/johnson-armstrong-oop>

<comment><USER13> Erlang also has support for _extremely_ late binding method dispatch. It's a bit tongue-in-cheek to call it a lightweight object-oriented programming language, though. I wouldn't use processes as objects in practice. My successful Erlang programs usually use fewer and more long-lived processes than I use objects in C++, Java, and Objective-C.

<comment><USER12> >My successful Erlang programs usually use fewer and more long-lived processes than I use objects in C++, Java, and Objective-C.

I think I could attribute it to lack of tools in C++, Java and Objective-C. You basically forced to use objects for almost everything (especially in Java).

In Erlang, however, you have tuples, higher-order functions and pattern matching, among with process creation and message send/receive. They are different from processes (and objects) and that's where your feeling come from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is wrong with data?

<comment><USER15> Nothing! The extreme opposite to Smalltalk in this respect is the APL/J/K family of languages where everything is expressed as mathematical operations on multidimensional arrays of data. For example, a K programmer wouldn't use an array of rectangles, preferring to have separate arrays of widths and heights. It's a very eye-opening programming style in its own right, and a curious programmer would do well to get acquainted with both.

Here's a nice page of "K finger exercises": <http://kx.com/technical/contribs/eugene/kidioms.html> . To someone who grew up on modern OO languages, it's unbelievable how much K manages to accomplish in one line of code.

<comment><USER16> There is a trial version of q (a newer k variant) at the Kx website, and a couple of us are also working on Kona, an ISC-licensed k-like language, at <http://github.com/kevinlawler/kona> .

The k way of doing things is indeed eye-opening. There is some documentation for Kona on its github wiki page, and Hakan has an extensive set of k resources at <http://www.hakank.org/k/>.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We should really link to <http://www.purl.org/stefan_ram/pub/doc_kay_oop_en> which is still valid and may outlast fu-berlin.de.

<comment><USER18> Nope, that's down for me, too. However, I managed to snag something on Coral:

[http://userpage.fu- berlin.de.nyud.net/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81H...](http://userpage.fu- berlin.de.nyud.net/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay_oop_en)

<comment><USER19> I get a 403 from that link too...I've actually never seen that from Coral before, anyone know what's going on?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> aeohu</comment>


MemSQL Community Edition Launches on AWS and Azure - <AUTHOR> http://blog.memsql.com/memsql-on-aws-and-azure/

<comment><USER2> I want to like this product but I am skeptical as a result of endless streams of new database products promising the world and under-delivering.

How are we allowing horizontal scaling but ensuring transitionally consistent, write anytime records?

Also, I know MSSQL will use nearly all memory on a system to put the DB into memory. If it can't fit the entire DB it will use logic to put the most appropriate data into memory. This product seems entirely based around the not new idea of putting records into memory. What am I missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Steve, this is Eric, one of the cofounders; to answer your question, it's about combining a few ideas together that make MemSQL a database that delivers on its promises. They are:

\- Data resides in memory with lock-free data structures

\- Full SQL, both operational and analytic

\- Distributes on commodity hardware, distributed query optimizer

On its own, putting data in memory isn't enough. As you mentioned, MSSQL does it, as many other vendors. The gap though is that they are still single-box DBs. With a distributed database, not only do you get more storage, you also (and most importantly) get more compute power.

Once the data is in-memory, using SQL to manipulate it and query it is the way to go. But again, once you escape a single box, you have to build a distributed query optimizer, which is hard stuff to say the least.

Customers use MemSQL because they no longer need multi-million dollar Big Iron Appliances from the monolithic vendors. Customers want a cost-effective architecture that uses commodity web servers. We can prove the technology works by our customers who vouch for its efficacy.

And, since we launched the Community Edition, please feel free to take MemSQL for a spin and even use it however you'd like. It's unlimited in both scale and capacity and has all the SQL features in the enterprise edition.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for replying. Here is another question that may help clarify some things:

Availability: Each client can always read and write.

Consistency: All clients always have the same view of the data.

Partition Tolerance: The system works well despite physical network partitions.

The saying goes: "Pick two." Are you implying that you can pick three with your system?

When you say 'Data resides in memory with lock-free data structures' I feel like the trade-off is consistency-- data becomes eventually consistent.

What are your thoughts?</comment></comment></comment>


A Harsh CSS Environment for Testing Widgets - <AUTHOR> http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2009/06/a-harsh-css-environment-for-testing-widgets.html <comment><USER2> Neat idea -- and here I thought it was just going to redirect to <http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/> D:

</comment><comment><USER3> Incredibly useful. We just released a widget, and will definitely be using this to make sure its bullet-proof.

<comment><USER4> We just launched a widget too and were surprised by how hard it was to stop the cascade. This is pretty useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is probably the fifth "Why didn't I think of that?" thing I've seen on HN today. Really cool stuff... bookmarking it in case I need it one day.

<comment><USER6> The exact thought I had. Having just released a widget this weekend I had thought about how to give it a thorough test. I'll just try it out on some different blog platforms was my sad idea. Then, this today. Thank you very much Gabriel!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is the "!important" thing part of a coming arms race? Must admit I have not encountered it before. Can they be combined (!important !important or !veryimportant,...), and in a couple of months all style sheets have to be !supermegamegaimportant?

<comment><USER8> This is one of those times I pat myself on the back for reading the specifications directly ;P

<http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/cascade.html#important-rules>

<comment><USER7> This feature sucks. So once stylehseet authors start using !important everywhere, users will have to use !important everywhere, too. Then in the next incarnation they will introduce a !moreImportant property to overide the !important setting of the user stylesheet.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Where to host your site for anonymity and free speech? - <AUTHOR>

This is not about sharing illegal files or disgusting porn but it should be such kind of geographical and technical setup. Where is it save to have one's opinions published without being bothered - ever?<p>Take a .to domain and host it in Russia for example? <comment><USER2> <http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/> is willing to host anything that U.S. law allows them to, and makes more of an effort than most hosting companies to keep anything up that they can, and requiring that proper legal procedures be followed before they'll take things down (policy: <https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/help/abuse>). That would cover your "brand X sucks" example most likely, though perhaps not others.

<comment><AUTHOR> U.S. law doesn't exactly conform with my interpretation of freedom and it doesn't help with the anonymity issue.

<comment><USER2> Well, it's anonymous unless a court serves them with a subpoena demanding they turn over your identity. So it depends on just how anonymous one wishes to be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://prq.se/?intl=1>

PRQ.SE used to run Pirate Bay servers.

Also <http://baywords.com/> which is a free and uncensored blogging platform runs on their servers apparently.

Totally anonymous.

Downside is that they are really costly!

<comment><USER4> Just to clarify, according to <http://baywords.com/about/> , Baywords is free of charge. I presume agentcris was saying that PRQ.SE is "really costly".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Where is it save to have one's opinions published without being bothered - > ever?

Why does it have to be one site? In other words, why not engage in publication arbitrage?

> This is not about sharing illegal files

"Illegal files" are a form of restricted speech.

<comment><AUTHOR> arbitrage? what's that?

<comment><USER5> Arbitrage is doing biz where it's most profitable.

In your case, you'll find that some govts are more tolerant of speech A they are of speech B while other govts are the reverse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> O.K. I got it googled. The notion I was looking for is "offshore hosting" which could enable some quite popular free speech platform. Costs about US $120/month for a dedicated server. Thanks for your answers!

</comment><comment><USER6> You could try i2p ( <http://www.i2p2.de/> ). You can host anonymous websites inside i2p, which gives you anonymity and therefore, free speech.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> .to domains seem to be a good bet. Tongas domain authorities don't provide anyone with information about domain owners.

</comment><comment><USER7> You might be interested in <http://freenetproject.org/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Try using Tor.

<https://www.torproject.org/>

<comment><USER9> Tor doesn't host anything. Maybe it would be useful in connecting to or administering a server that is hosted elsewhere, but this is not what the OP is asking for.

<comment><USER7> You can run a webserver and use Tor to provide a 'hidden service' <https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-hidden-service.html.en>

<comment><USER9> Interesting, I didn't know that.

<comment><USER10> I also recently discovered it. It's a very interesting concept and pretty effective in hiding where something is hosted. On the other hand, this only works well for digital-only services. As soon as you have to ship something or even accept money, there is a trail. Although you could use a fully digital currency like bitcoin to get around that...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> xs4all</comment>


Burt Rutan Is Up To Something… - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/11/burt-rutan-is-up-to-something-cool/

<comment><USER2> One thing I've been waiting a long time for someone to announce -- and realize I probably have a long time to keep waiting -- is a light, subsonic jet that can do NY-SF without refueling, in about 6 hours. The current VLJ projects (Cirrus, Honda, Diamond, etc) don't have a range that comes _close_ to that, nor do decommissioned NASA/USAF jets (which, though they can be much cheaper and obviously _way_ faster, _devour_ gas). Especially if you want to go international: either you're flying essentially an arctic route and bringing survival gear for a 3-day trip, or you're buying a $20M+ jet. A VLJ capable of the North Atlantic tracks? Amazing.

If I ever have the resources, and Rutan is still designing aircraft, one of the first things I'd do is see if I could commission him to design that plane. A very long range, low-cost, 2 or 4-seater would be huge.

<comment><USER3> This article[1] is a very good explanation for why VLJs are un-economical and will never have the speed, range, and efficiency of a larger jet. Written by Austin Meyer, the developer of X-Plane, an FAA-approved flight simulator package (and seeming inheritor of the MSFS legacy).

[1] <http://www.x-plane.com/adventures/50_avanti.html>

<comment><USER2> I guess I don't really care if it's a jet or a turboprop. The point about the relationship between surface area and volume and drag is a good one. It'd be really cool if your VLJ was supersonic, in which case you win a lot for being really small, but there are other problems there that are even more serious.

On the topic of the specific plane in the article, I've seen the Avanti and its range still sucks wrt what I want.

Also, I wouldn't call X-Plane the _inheriter_... it's been around forever, too!

<comment><USER3> More like inheritor of the MSFS developer community and userbase now that FSX is abandonware.

Looks like you need a G-V or a Citation X. :)

<comment><USER2> Neither the G-V nor C-X are rated for single-pilot operation... :(

<comment><USER3> Now there's the new G650: Mach 0.925. :) But fastest single-pilot-rated is the Hawker 200, which does 465kt, but only 1500nm range.

(An F-15 can do 3000nm in ferry configuration... Or I wonder if you can contract with USAF to arrange in-flight refueling over Nebraska?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish he was still working on spaceships. Planes already work and large corporations dominate their development. But a breakthrough in spaceship technology could really change all our lives.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wish Scaled would work on a supersonic plane that could replace the Concord. With the engineering knowledge we have today, and EC2 assembled supercomputers to handle the computational heavy lifting a project like that would need, the only part missing is the right company to go after it.

<comment><USER6> Alas, development costs typically scale as the cube of the take-off weight. Concorde was a 100-passenger SST with trans-Atlantic range at Mach 2.2 -- it burned over 100 tonnes of fuel making the crossing and take-off weight was comparable to a wide-body, so if you want composites as well you're talking dev costs probably in the same range as the Boeing 787. As it is, Concorde cost multiple billions of pounds sterling to develop in _1960s_ money. Even if you shave an order of magnitude off the cost, you're still talking something that Rutan could only manage if Bill Gates or Warren Buffet were to open their wallet and bankroll him.

(Scaled Composites is no longer owned by Rutan; last I heard it was a subsidiary of Hughes.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an article about nothing. Some guy I've never heard of it has a secret idea. Just wonderful. There's millions of tech-savvy people with secret ideas in various fields, and yet there is nothing reportable about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... Some guy I've never heard of it has a secret idea ..."_

Bert Rutan is one of those Apollo inspired aero-engineers. A product of the 60's space race which inspired people to become pilots, astronauts and engineers. You might not know of his work as a test pilot of the MD F4 [0] but every geek & nerd knows, or should know, he is responsible for the design & building of SpaceShipOne. [1]

Rutan is to commercial space travel what Von Braun was to Apollo.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Rutan#Life_and_career>

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne>

<comment><USER8> I would also throw in he gave a nice TED talk. Available at [http://www.ted.com/talks/burt_rutan_sees_the_future_of_space...](http://www.ted.com/talks/burt_rutan_sees_the_future_of_space.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Driver in 2018 fatal Mountain View Tesla crash was playing video game, NTSB says - <AUTHOR> https://abc7news.com/automotive/driver-in-fatal-mountain-view-tesla-crash-was-playing-video-game-ntsb-says/5966601/ <comment><USER2> This is the brave new world.

Sign up to beta test a system called "Autopilot".

Sold with a package constantly called "Full self driving" when it's "FSD... Capability" ([https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/11117625335205314...](https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1111762533520531456))

Where "your hands are only on the wheel for regulatory reasons"

The when you die you'll get victim blamed to top it all off.

Crazy how crusty old boring old failure of a carmaker GM could figure out how to detect eye focus and disable comparable features if you're not actively watching the road... yet Tesla couldn't, isn't it?</comment>


French Uber drivers have created their own Uber - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/3/9841562/french-uber-drivers-launch-app-vtc-cab <comment><USER2> If the app works then great but I'm not about to herald this as some great accomplishment. There is a reason Lyft/Uber completely steamrolled the taxi industry (aside from skirting regulations that were arguably bad to start with) and it's because they provided a 10000x better experience over calling a taxi dispatcher and waiting for cab (if it even shows up). I hated using taxis but Uber/Lyft changed all of that fixing all the problems with the taxi industry.

Plain and simple the taxi industry had a monopoly, got lazy, didn't innovate, and didn't give a shit about their customers. I relish watching them burn down in the same way I enjoy watching Google Fiber trouce it's competition.

Now if drivers want to create an app to compete with Lyft/Uber then more power to them, if they want to run it as a non-profit then great, just as long as their app isn't a buggy/crashing POS then I'll use it but I'm not holding my breath for that to happen. The best I saw from a cab company was a mobile website that asked for your location and allowed you to dispatch a cab after typing a short message. TWICE they never showed and once they didn't even read the message as I had scheduled the cab for a specific time and they showed up 45min early and called to ask where I was...

<comment><USER3> >>Plain and simple the taxi industry had a monopoly, got lazy, didn't innovate, and didn't give a shit about their customers.

I take this another SV hubris in trying to look at every problem like they've been working on it for a long time, or have better understanding than the actual people working in that domain for decades.

The only reason Uber like companies can give you those rides for a cheap price is not because there is some magic, or innovation happening there. Its because they are burning billions of that VC money to subsidize your travel, transportation is a very capital intensive business.

The day these companies are subject to the same tax rules as every body else and have to work without those billions in the bank, it will be game over. There is a reason why these airlines, logistics and transportation companies are always scraping from bottom.

Its very hard to run these businesses if you play by fair rules and don't cheat.

<comment><USER4> >> The only reason Uber like companies can give you those rides for a cheap price is not because there is some magic, or innovation happening there. Its because they are burning billions of that VC money to subsidize your travel, transportation is a very capital intensive business.

This is certainly _NOT_ the case in NYC where I live. Artificial scarcity of taxis was created by the city government by limiting the number of medallions to 13,000 and as a result, taxi medallions had cost $1.2 million. Much of taxi fare went to paying for those $1.2 million medallions. Uber has offered lower fees, offers greener rides and lower still fees through Uber pool where passengers share an Uber than the taxi industry with a rating system so that you know if you are getting a good driver. Now those $1.2 million medallions are worth about $700K and many taxis are now not in use and the taxi companies are declaring bankruptcy.

It is possible that if the government had not created the artificial scarcity by limiting medallions Uber may not have gained traction.

<comment><USER5> So, what stops NYC from taxing Uber? That $15 billion is going to have to come from somewhere.

<comment><USER6> The money already came from the sale of the medallions. It isn't a yearly fee, which is good, since at 150m taxi rides per year, that would increase the price of each ride by at least $100.

Though medallion sales also aren't worth anything near $15b, anyway -- the 1.2m figure is what medallion sales peaked at. Most sold for significantly less in the past.

Normally very few new medallions come up for auction; the city knows their value is in their scarcity. Though the current budget[1] accounts for some $400m per year from medallion sales, mostly from the continuing rollout of green/boro cabs, which, if coming from the rest of the system instead, would still be a pretty significant fare hike per ride.

1: [http://council.nyc.gov/downloads/pdf/budget/2015/taxi.pdf](http://council.nyc.gov/downloads/pdf/budget/2015/taxi.pdf)

<comment><USER5> they'll probably institute some kind of tax that if you have a medallion you don't have to pay. Since all the Uber data goes through the internet all the transactions can be tracked and taxed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use Uber a good amount (~10x a month) and while I like the service I just don't see why everyone is so impressed with the company. Let's consider what people like about Uber:

"It's so much more convenient to use an app than a taxi dispatch" \- totally true. The taxi industry was definitely lazy. But now most Uber markets also have a competitor to dispatch a taxi by phone (Flywheel, etc).

"The drivers are not (jerks|unsafe|scary|etc)" \- at this point half of the smart taxi drivers have gone to Uber, there's not much of a difference in driver quality.

I think the real thing that nobody else can do that Uber does is sell you a cheap ride. Uber is cheaper than a taxi in almost every city (30% in my experience). If taxis were 10% cheaper than Uber, I'd go to Flywheel immediately. How did they achieve this low price? Simple: by ignoring laws, not paying for expensive regulations, and passing more costs on to the driver.

This is not impressive to me. I could think of 10 industries that could easily be 'disrupted' if you add the rule 'You're allowed to ignore all existing laws and regulations'. I could provide you with a $20 massage ... assuming you don't want a licensed massage therapist. How about a $10 light repair ... assuming you don't want a real electrician.

You might respond: "but habosa, who cares? You're getting a good ride at a lower price with more convenience". My frustration comes from the precedent this sets. Uber says that if you have enough VC funding, you can make lawbreaking and regulatory blindness a central pillar of a billion-dollar company. There are a lot of people who have invested in credentials such as taxi medallions (or the equivalent in other industries) because they didn't have a hundred million dollars of VC funding to shake off the lawsuit. And some Uber-like company can come into their space and instantly devalue their investment. I don't believe the ends justify the means because soon there will be an Uber we don't like, and there will be nothing we can do about it.

<comment><USER8> I was in complete agreement with you until the last sentence. "An Uber we don't like" probably won't happen because if people don't like a service, they won't use it. An unpopular business can rarely force itself on customers.

And it seems that the same is true of Uber itself. It's possible that the existing laws and regulations aren't necessary. People seem to be able to conduct themselves properly without being licensed and bonded. I consistently hear more good things than bad things about Uber, and all of my personal experiences have been positive. Whatever they're doing, it's working.

The same might not be true for an electrician or a massage therapist. As much as I hate to say it (deep breath), the Free Market seems to be sorting this out just fine. I'm not going full libertarian and suggesting we conduct social experiments with the FDA or the fire department. But in some cases, maybe the best way to figure out which regulations are really necessary is to ignore them and see what happens.

<comment><USER7> By an "Uber we don't like" I mean "an uber that comes into your industry" (or an industry of your family members, etc).

As far as The Free Market, I agree 100% that Uber provides a good service. However I feel bad for the people who made investments in the taxi industry by following the law and then had those investments completely devalued by a lawbreaker with good PR.

A ton of america's certifications are not necessary, I'd bet. But the proper method for removing those certifications is not to just ignore them with a fat stack of money. One day that will go wrong.

Tangentally, I think AirBnb will one day get bitten by this. They're gonna have some shady AirBnb burn down without a fire alarm or give a bunch of people an infectious disease and everyone will realize why we have hotel regulation. Again this is another service of which I am a happy customer, but we are playing with fire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every time I see an article about Uber or taxi drivers I feel thankful that I live in a place where apps like Hailo exist. Every time I read the comments on these types of articles I see people pointing out what the people want/need and how taxi companies could make it work while thinking to myself "Hailo already does this".

It was created by ex-taxi drivers too and every taxi driver I talk to speaks very highly of them and how they manage to satisfy both drivers and passengers. Hopefully they can manage to expand further

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure if Hailo works like MyTaxi, which is quite popular in Barcelona (specially since Uber got banned). Personally, I don't like it. It's just an app that replaces calling a taxi company. So yeah, better than calling, I agree, but it's not as good a service as Uber. Why? Because you're dealing with taxis. In Barcelona, you either live in a part of town where there are taxis driving by your street all the time anyway, so why use it? Or, like me, live somewhere where taxis don't really go as much. So when I use MyTaxi, they're always quite far, and very often cancel the ride when I've already been waiting for a few minutes, probably someone hailed them on the street. So overall, not the awesome experience that Uber always has been for me.

<comment><USER9> Hailo is actually available in Barcelona (as well as Madrid), and it deos basically work as you describe. However, your issues sound very similar to how it was in Dublin but they started expanding further and now they cover the entire county and they're pretty damn good. There's even competitors over here (Lynk is one I think), which is usually a great sign.

<comment><USER11> If anything, I think the Hailo case shows that these drivers will have a tough go of things. Hailo managed to get significant funding, had their own in-house engineering team and still had to pull out of all of North America. It's a difficult market to compete in (unless taxi manages to leverage their monopoly status to keep new apps like Uber out).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Created" vs "Rebranded"

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=592351321420775866...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=5923513214207758667)

<comment><USER13> Uber vs this, looks like Apple vs Android (or PC many years ago).

What I mean is, to compete with Uber it's a good idea to build taxi calling platform that all local taxi networks could adopt (and brand to some degree). Same way that Google needed to create open platform that established mobile manufacturers could participate in.

They will eventually adopt it because it brings customers (and they can't adopt Uber), and customers will adopt it because they'll be able to use central platform to call local taxi with all the conveniences of pre-defined destinations and automatic payment.

I think the Uber is successful not because of price achieved by hiring non- professional drivers with their non-professional cars and getting the price down. I think they are successful because you no longer need to talk to the driver or manually pay to get somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Angry French Uber drivers have created their own Uber"

Now that's a misleading title. These guys seems perfectly reasonable, and it is clearly an alternative platform that suits better their own interests than Uber, not something done by an angry mob.

<comment><USER15> You've obviously not have spent much time around French taxi drivers and Uber drivers. Not the must sedate group.

<comment><USER16> I wouldn't want someone driving me to be sedated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I still don't understand why Uber couldn't let drivers set their own fares. It seems to me that it should create a healthy market that in the end would be great outcome for consumers.

E.g. some hours are much less profitable for Uber drivers - so they set the fare higher and thanks to that you can always find a driver when needed. On the other hand, higher current fare works as an invitation for the new drivers. It auto adjusts to drivers/users availability in given region.

<comment><USER18> Because Uber is using these people as a resource and allowing them to set their own rates would cut in on Ubers margins.

Drivers provide capital goods (a vehicle) and work (as opposed to hiring a bunch of employees which you'd have to pay even if there was no work) and they provide these at a moments notice at Ubers discretion.

If Uber allowed drivers to set their own rates that would initiate a 'race to the bottom' reducing the fares and thus Ubers percentage.

Because it is convenient to make these operators out to be independent entities for legal reasons does not rule out Ubers desire to treat them as unpaid employees for totally different reasons.

From Ubers persective _some_ independence is good, just enough to not assume any responsibilities that go with operating a company like this but too much independence (such as control over the rates) is a bad thing.

The 'new middlemen' have to ride a very fine line here to protect their income stream.

A real free market is simply not in Ubers interest, they would like the prices to stay as high as possible, basically what the market will bear.

<comment><USER19> >If Uber allowed drivers to set their own rates that would initiate a 'race to the bottom'

Not necessarily, it could easily go both ways as it would create a market for people that want to pay more for "better" drivers.. people with nice cars (teslas and generally expensive automobiles) just to be seen in them or to experience riding in them, drivers that pamper their clients with newspapers, in vehicle entertainment, free water, etc.

<comment><USER20> Right, but what would the UX look like for that? You're suddenly selecting multiple options, filtering based on your criteria, then having to reselect when there's not enough drivers that meet your criteria, etc. etc.

Part of the beauty of the uber experience is that (at least from a UX perspective), it's very very frictionless. You make two, maybe three selections and hit go, and you the car arrives.

<comment><USER21> Surely that is the point of the Uber exec etc categories?

<comment><USER20> Right, but there's three or four of those and you can only select one. The GP was describing filtering based on driver quality, on car style and model, etc.

That could easily balloon to a pretty large number of elements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is called disintermediation. In short, unless you can convince at least 51% of the drivers to join your platform in a very short period of time, your offering will be inferior (longer ETAs, lower earnings per hour for drivers) due to the network effect. As times go on, your drivers will leave the inferior platform. This is assuming that your app is at least good as Uber's.

<comment><USER23> There's not much of a network effect with taxis. Someone's going to build a free aggregator so you can see which local service has the closest car and it will become a commodity.

<comment><USER11> The network effect was just explained above. The more drivers on the system, the shorter the ETAs. The shorter the ETAs, the more riders want to use that system. The more riders on the system, the less downtime between each ride for drivers. New entrants have to subsidize the market (pay drivers more than they make and give riders steep discounts) in an attempt to catch up.

Recent reports about Lyft burning hundreds of millions of dollars in a relatively short amount of time, without gaining much market share most places, shows just how high of barrier there is. Hailo pulled out of all of North America this year for similar reasons. It's just really expensive to try to subsidize your way to competing with the network effect.

<comment><USER5> from what I understand drivers still get on both systems. hard to call someone a contractor if they can't work for other companies.

<comment><USER11> Well, there's a difference between being able to work for multiple systems, and having all or nearly all drivers actually doing that. Is there anything to suggest that all or nearly all drivers actually do that? In SF i see most uber drivers exclusively driving for Uber (but most lyft drivers seem to be on both systems). That's an admittedly small sample size, so is there some evidence that isn't accurate?

<comment><USER23> You don't need the drivers working for multiple systems, you just need the users to be using an aggregator that connects to multiple providers, like Kayak or Expedia do for flights.

Once the user is blindly choosing between providers based solely on price/ETA then the established companies have no advantage anymore and the margins will go to zero just like the airline industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> From the article: "The geolocalized app offers the same basic services as Uber; users can hail black cars, rate their drivers, and drink free bottled water."

Does the app also remove drivers with consistently low ratings from the system? From where I stand, _that_ is the killer feature of Uber. In the early days, I was happy to pay a premium to Uber not to put up with the typical crap you get from cabbies in Los Angeles. For example, swearing the entire duration of a cab ride from LAX to El Segundo or Manhattan Beach because they were hoping to go for a longer ride.

I've never had an Uber or Lyft driver that was anything but pleasant to talk to.

<comment><USER25> The incentives don't seem to align for this. Why kick someone out of the system and lose their 250 Euros/month?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The main issue with "each their own app" is that as a person who travels, I'm not going to install one-app-per-city. I'll just use Uber.

<comment><USER27> I'd love to see some kind of universal "Hailing" API. Something that would allow a single app to coordinate rides wherever you go.

I travel as well, and really wish I didn't need to have an entire folder of transportation apps on my phone.

But alas, I have a feeling that many services would not go along with this because of direct competition in the same market area. And some probably just aren't sophisticated enough to publish an API, much less adopt a centralized / standardized interface.

But I can dream.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, protocols, not platforms.

<comment><USER28> When was the last time a protocol had a unicorn valuation? I completely agree, but it's not aligned with investor interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> "Whereas Uber takes a 20 percent commission for every trip in Paris, VTC Cab charges its drivers a monthly fee of €250"

So the drivers need to make at least €1,250/month for this model to be better than Uber (for the driver)? Not to mention that it has a higher upfront cost.

Sounds like most drivers would rather pay 20% on whatever they make than pay an upfront fee with no guarantee of revenue.

<comment><USER30> The typical Uber car lease is way over that, anyone not making at least that shouldn't be a driver at all I guess...

<comment><USER31> I'm sure there are plenty of drivers who drive for Uber to supplement their income, not replace. If they already have a car, they only need to cover the additional mileage/depreciation, not pay for the entire car lease.

<comment><USER32> > _they only need to cover the additional mileage /depreciation, not pay for > the entire car lease._

Don't forget the extra insurance required when you are using your vehicle to transport passengers, commercially. Of course, not many people actually buy it, which is essentially insurance fraud. Don't think so? Call your insurance provider and ask their opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> What's the user experience like? There is a lot of talk about these "worker- own" apps/networks, however I very much doubt that they are able to compete with the uber level of service in the longer run. You need lots of software engineering etc skills to run this kind of service smoothly.

<comment><USER34> Exactly. Outsourcing your main tech stach isn't exactly competing with Uber.

It's easy to tell them apart. Which team has a properly restful API available to the public.

<comment><USER35> It's amazing to me that you think that anybody (besides developers) will care about REST API design rather than the service offered by the driver.

<comment><USER33> I don't care about the REST API, but I care how well the app works etc. It doesn't sound trivial to me. Showing the locations of the car and the customer in real-time, routes in real-time, having all the communication systems working all the time, the reputation system etc.

<comment><USER36> While I agree with conclusion, Uber, et al. doesn't actually show real-time locations and the communication system is error prone.

<comment><USER37> It looks like real time locations when I've taken uber, unless you mean not real time as in slightly delayed time to get GPS, go to uber and then back to my phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It seems to me Uber's management openly disregards their workers (but tell me if I'm wrong) and they openly disregard other social goods such as the law. I see this in actions and occasionally in words too.

If Uber becomes the dominant service, which due to the network effect would be the only place to find customers/drivers, what will they do to their workers?

There's no reason to think Uber will, out of the goodness of their hearts, do any less than use their full market power to take as much as possible from their workers.

<comment><USER39> Uber wants to replace their drivers with self-driving cars. They've always been very open about this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I installed the app and the estimated trip prices seems from 1.5x to 2x more expensive than for competing services.

</comment><comment><USER41> It's great that they are deciding to compete in the marketplace rather than the courtroom.

It'll be interesting to see if the zero-commission model works for them though - The 20% Uber takes is actually fairly reasonable (and much less than what a traditional taxi company takes from their drivers) when you consider CC fees & Collections, customer support costs, customer acquisition costs, marketing, etc is all covered by that. Uber is spending huge amounts of money on growing the customer base (which is good for drivers as they have a liquid market of ride requests coming in all the time), and a service like this will most likely not be able to invest as much in that since they don't have the commission and investment to pay for it.

</comment><comment><USER42> > He says it costs more than $200,000 a year to maintain the app, which was > developed by Multi Brains LLC, and his organization has begun buying ads on > Google and Facebook.

That sounds a tad bit less (even assuming 250K, to account for "more than") considering it includes salaries for >2 app developers, hardware/AWS costs and marketing costs which seem to include Google and Facebook ads. What am I missing here?

<comment><USER43> Looking at their android app store page, Multi Brians LLC has built over a dozen Uber clones [https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=592351321420775866...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=5923513214207758667) . The UI is very similar between the apps and I assume the backend is shared so there's not much dev cost for an additional app.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can easily see then offering an opt-in protocol for their clients allowing users/travellers from one system to book rides in another system/city. Bingo!

Direct link: [http://taxistartup.com/](http://taxistartup.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> App looks pretty nice which makes a change. Here (Newcastle, UK) a lot of taxi companies have their own apps which are not even stable hence Uber is useful (the only reason I actually use Uber)

</comment><comment><USER45> I bet they didn't think they had to run and operate a business.

The common thinking of "oh, it's in the app store, now I can sit back and relax" is ludicrous.

</comment><comment><USER46> I am most curious about how the numerous seasoned VCs who have poured money into Uber, failed to recognize the thin barriers to entry for a would-be competitor.

</comment><comment><USER47> How is this different from any other taxi app? Why is this their "own Uber"?

</comment><comment><USER48> Add in Bitcoin for a lower barrier to entry for Uber-like services.

<comment><USER49> Bitcoin? Really? What kind of alternate reality do you live in that there are millions of folks out there with:

(1) bitcoins

(2) the technical wherewithal to use them

(3) actually would consider doing so in a cab?

Bitcoins are exactly the opposite of credit cards, they are far from instant and it's more then a swipe/touch/insert + a pin, signature or even nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> With blackjack, and hookers.

</comment><comment><USER51> Of course they did.

</comment><comment><USER4> The taxi drivers in Paris are much more likely to compete _if they think of what the customer wants_ which is lower fares and a quicker ETA in a reliable taxi. With the new app, since they are not paying the 20% fee of the Uber drivers, they should undercut Uber by 20% thus attracting more customers and making up in volume money they lose by having lower prices.

The VTC app should also implement the equivalent of Uber pool which is greener than regular taxis while being able to offer customers even lower rates while improving driver income.

NYC does have a taxi app for e-hailing called Arro which is able to compete with Uber when Uber uses "Surge pricing" since the taxis don't charge surge pricing.

<comment><USER25> Agreed. I was flabbergasted when I got to that point in the article and it was clear they were trying to compete with Uber by ... charging significantly higher prices?! Good luck with that. They aren't charging 20% on every fare, so if anything they should be lower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> And so goes the free market, in its most refined form .. how easy it is, after all, to simply clone a service in some other language, some other framework, and continue to deliver to customers.

What bothers me most is how the OS vendors are asleep at the wheel, again. These kinds of services - "I am [here] and want [blah]" \- are broadly applicable. "Word"-"Summoning" apps are a dime a dozen. Shouldn't this be a builtin by now?

<comment><USER53> Why would everything have to be built-in? That just kills competition and bloats the already large OSes.

<comment><USER52> Because users demand it, perhaps? I mean, stay with me, but I happen to think Dropbox is a calamity that only was possible because of the Browser wars taking out pretty much everyone, with the survivors basically going insane. Peer-to-peer service discovery, built-in, should be a major feature by now. I shouldn't need to worry about my Face-privacy; my portable computer has the capability to handle that for me. If only someone would program it so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> It's a non-profit => unfair competition

But they don't get the huge 20% commission on the ride? Well that's amazing.

Also looking at how much it cost them to maintain the app, if they have 1000 drivers subscribing for just a month they already have reached a turn over.

I just hope it offers the same kind of experience Uber does: drivers are ranked, and thus can't act like taxi drivers.

PS: in Romania the rate/km is written on the cab. Even similar taxis can have very different rates. Most people don't see that and get screwed afterwards. In Vietnam they use fake counters and increase the price x10. I welcome any solutions to these problems (and Uber is def. one)

<comment><USER55> "I just hope it offers the same kind of experience Uber does: drivers are ranked, and thus can't act like taxi drivers."

On Halloween, I saw this older Uber driver pick up/take home one groups of drunks, and idiots all night. This driver had a black Uber approved SUV. One passenger insisted on taking a 10 foot tree branch home to her destination. She tried to stuff it into his new SUV, and ripped the headliner. The driver offered her water. She then told the driver if he didn't get her home, with her light saber she would leave him a bad review. He let her hold the branch outside the SUV. Her light saber was scratching the new paint.

Passengers shouldn't be able to leave any remarks, unless their was a major problem with the ride. People have gotten way to finicky, and think they have a right to review every aspect of this sharing economy.

While I watched this guy smile, and open doors; I thought how would I handle these people. I think it would be along the line, "Get in this 4 door Uber approved chariot--that I'm still trying to pay off. Shut the F--- up, and I'll take your drunk a-- home. If you keep quiet, I won't throw the mineral water at you."

I guess I wouldn't get a good review?

<comment><USER54> > Passengers shouldn't be able to leave any remarks, unless their was a major > problem with the ride. People have gotten way to finicky, and think they > have a right to review every aspect of this sharing economy.

You're one time anecdote won't replace my manes rides with french taxi drivers who behave like thugs. I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in France people were pretty happy about Uber mostly because of the way taxi drivers behave.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. While there are obviously some decent drivers, as a group, they are a slimy bunch both in the car as well as outside the car.. Committing violent assaults during the Uber protests, throwing bricks, setting fires and just being altogether distasteful.

On several occasions in Avignon, I pre-paid for taxi service to the train station and during the first instance, the guy never showed, the second instance the car arrived 30 minutes late. Still attempting to get the refund.

I've used Uber all over the world and never once have I had issues like this. I have no sympathy for taxi drivers. They don't care about me when a freelance client wants to underpay me, nor do I expect them to. I'm a big boy. If some business condition arises that affects my livelihood, I don't go set fire to the Prefecture, I adapt.

Driving a car for money is still a thing. Supply and demand exists. Thus the market can solve this. The taxi crowd wants to distort the market to protect their fiefdom. While that helps the special interest, it harms the overall public.

<comment><USER54> Well, I didn't say they should get underpaid though, everybody should be able to live a good life imo.

The problem is that taxi drivers bought their license for tens of thousands of euros thinking they could resell it for the same price or more later.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Taking Zero-Downtime Load Balancing Even Further - <AUTHOR> https://engineeringblog.yelp.com/2017/05/taking-zero-downtime-load-balancing-even-further.html <comment><AUTHOR> We ended up with a pretty different design this time around as we iterated on our highly available load balancing setup, so I figured that it was worth sharing out.

I think there are some useful lessons learned and tips/tricks in there even with the announcement that HAProxy will be supporting hitless reloads soon, but I look forward to the feedback!

</comment><comment><USER2> Awesome !</comment>


Automatic Index Recommendations in PostgreSQL using pg_qualstats and hypopg - <AUTHOR> https://www.percona.com/blog/2019/07/22/automatic-index-recommendations-in-postgresql-using-pg_qualstats-and-hypopg/# <comment><USER2> There was an interesting related talk on SIGMOD this year[1], at which Microsoft presented how they take db-level index suggestions from many MS SQL databases in Azure, apply most of them to the databases on hidden replicas, do A/B testing on them (replaying recorded workloads on replicas, etc), and push only the proven suggestions to production.

Seems like tools described in the article could allow doing something similar with PostgreSQL at scale.

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/automat...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/automatically-indexing-millions-of-databases-in- microsoft-azure-sql-database/)

<comment><USER3> I was recently looking into this exact topic and found Dexter[1], which also uses HypoPG.

[1] [https://github.com/ankane/dexter](https://github.com/ankane/dexter)</comment></comment>


iOS 7 Icons Reimagined - <AUTHOR> http://design.printexpress.co.uk/the-best-ios-7-concept-icons/

<comment><USER2> In a lot of iOS 7 icon redesigns, the designers keep each icon's detail small and centered in its respective tile. They're more gracious with the negative space. In my mind it feels like they're a little too frugal with the illustrations that give each icon its personality.

</comment><comment><USER3> If only the icons in iOS7 were more carefully designed as with these. I have a feeling that changing your icons is going to be a more popular thing in iOS7 than in previous versions of the OS.</comment>


Apple trying to stop sale of Steve Jobs action figure - <AUTHOR> http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/01/05/apple_trying_to_stop_sale_of_steve_jobs_action_figure.html <comment><USER2> It's funny to me that, with all the attention to detail, they used the wrong font for the "One more thing" backdrop. It should be Myriad Pro <https://www.linotype.com/partner/charmap/16785273> but I think it's Arial.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know the legal rights or wrong of this, but I'll just say "boooo". This action figure looks cool[1] and Apple are not cool by trying to stop it.

[1] Cool, modulo the fact that all the pictures are probably photoshopped and don't represent the real thing ...

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious -- how does a company come to own the likeness of their former CEO?

If anyone would be suing, wouldn't it be Steve Jobs' family? Or did Steve Jobs actually sign rights to his likeness over to Apple in perpetuity?</comment>


Teleprompter PRO - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/app/teleprompter-pro/id572401027?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> Powerful, professional and super versatile.

Teleprompter Pro was designed for broadcasters, filmmakers, musicians, singers, business professionals, or any public speaking.</comment>


A History of Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.scaruffi.com/svhistory/silicon.html <comment><USER2> See also "The Secret History of Silicon Valley", by former tech executive Steve Blank: [https://steveblank.com/secret- history/](https://steveblank.com/secret-history/)

Post-world war II defense contractors, mentored and brokered personally by Stanford prof Fred Terman, have a lot to do with setting the stage, and get surprisingly little attention for having done it...

<comment><USER3> > and get surprisingly little attention for having done it...

One big chunk of people don't like to hear that the military had such a big influence in the tech industry, and another big chunk of people don't want to admit that government funding contributed to something wildly successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My favorite early history of Silicon Valley is still the 2013 PBS show ("American Experience: Silicon Valley" \- 82 minutes long). I found it to be quite well done:

[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/)

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2547530/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2547530/)

<comment><USER5> This was my first thought. I'm surprised how many people don't know the basic outline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One interesting anecdote: The Varian brothers, Russell and Sigurd [1], were "Born to theosophist parents who helped lead the utopian community of Halcyon, California". [0] Halcyon was an 'intentional community'.

They founded Varian Associates, an early influential firm, and a prototype for the Silicon Valley M.O. for creating technology companies: They were incubated at Stanford University.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halcyon,_California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halcyon,_California)

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

</comment><comment><USER7> there is also adam curtis' documentary _all watched over by machines of living grace_.

[https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799353](https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799353)

[https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799352](https://vimeo.com/groups/96331/videos/80799352)

[https://vimeo.com/channels/ciri/80799354](https://vimeo.com/channels/ciri/80799354)

it isn't an eplicit history of silicon valley, but it does cover related ideas and movements.

</comment><comment><USER8> > (1948: Claude Shannon founds Information Theory and coins the term "bit")

Shannon used the term in his 1948 paper, but IIRC it was Tukey that coined the term and suggested it to Shannon.

</comment><comment><USER9> "The Secret History of Silicon Valley": [https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo](https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo)

TL;DW: Unlimited debt-based government spending during WWII in R&D and electronics development like radar (which actually is a catch-all phrase for lots of very different technologies) provided the fertile ground for the later capitalistic growth phase.

> _Today, Silicon Valley is known around the world as a fount of technology > innovation and development fueled by private venture capital and peopled by > fabled entrepreneurs. But it wasn 't always so. Unbeknownst to even seasoned > inhabitants, today's Silicon Valley had its start in government secrecy and > wartime urgency._

<comment><USER10> > TL;DW: Unlimited debt-based government spending during WWII in R&D and > electronics development like radar (which actually is a catch-all phrase for > lots of very different technologies) provided the fertile ground for the > later capitalistic growth phase.

I agree with this with the caveat that the big beneficiary of this largesse in the wartime and postwar region was inside Route 128 in Boston; Silicon Valley really started taking off in the mid-late 70s. This is actually reflected in the timeline (though its parentheicization is buggy).

The then primacy of the greater Boston area is not a complete accident: Both FDR's science advisor, Vannevar Bush, and the head of the wartime NDRC were born and educated in Boston (both MIT grads; Conent was president of Harvard). As the article points out, the major SV academic institutions Stanford and UCB were still considered second tier at that time (despite UCB's atomic work and Stanford's having already produced a US president).

<comment><USER9> It is all mentioned and explained in the video I linked though. Those Boston developments were not in isolation, what happened there impacted what happened in SV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This profile by Tom Wolfe of Robert Noyce, the co-founder id Intel and so- called "Mayor of Silicon Valley", also offers up some interesting history for those interested.

[https://classic.esquire.com/article/1983/12/1/the- tinkerings...](https://classic.esquire.com/article/1983/12/1/the-tinkerings- of-robert-noyce)

</comment><comment><USER12> Scaruffi is an interesting guy. I've been following him since 2014. One of the most prolific polymaths of our time. This is a good book: [https://www.scaruffi.com/nature/purchase.html](https://www.scaruffi.com/nature/purchase.html)

<comment><USER13> Also see [https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/arts/15morr.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/arts/15morr.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for the post, I enjoy the format although why the decision to not include direct sources for each event on the timeline?

</comment><comment><USER15> Funny to see the world's biggest underground music critic meme star on the front page of HN!</comment>


Halting Problem Proves That Lethal Robots Can't Correctly Decide to Kill a Human - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/halting-problem-proves-that-a-lethal-robot-cannot-correctly-decide-whether-to-kill-a-human-7c014623c13f

<comment><AUTHOR> The preprint of the original paper, "Logical Limitations to Machine Ethics with Consequences to Lethal Autonomous Weapons", is here: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.2842](http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.2842)</comment>