aclimatt

But this is what almost every other economy around the world dreams about -- a large amount of new highly-paid workers increasing the tax base and dumping buckets of money into the economy. Municipality after municipality has tried to create such an environment (Amazon HQ2 being a great example), and in almost all other municipalities, developers would absolutely jump at the opportunity to build housing and other infrastructure to accommodate this new industry (and profit).

And in most other locations with land and/or lax building policies, this isn't a problem. This is a feature. But in California (and NYC to some extent too, back to the HQ2 example), developers can't soak up the demand. There's no land left, and upzoning isn't an option.

So yes, it IS California's fault. The money is there -- the article being the most absurd example of it, but the land use policies aren't. Free up the land, let people build up, and you'll have 5x the housing in a matter of years.

California can't even build an In-N-Out, let alone multi-story dense housing.

https://reason.com/2019/11/01/california-nimbys-sue-to-stop-...

I don't believe they're going door to door and knocking on random doors. It's not said explicitly but it's implied that they're sending postal mail and following up with people who respond for in-home interviews.

The methodology is outlined here:

https://oxis.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/methodology/

Let's fast forward a few years from now to the point where we determine that e-cigarettes contain some sort of cancer or lung disease-causing product / additive, just like we figured out with cigarettes decades ago.

What I don't understand is why the FDA will not outright ban them immediately. (Well I probably do, and the answer is lobbying.)

Regardless of your stance on whether or not the FDA _should_ ban ingredients that pose health risks (government intervention on liberties et cetera), the fact is that this is the FDA's policy. It bans harmful ingredients (usually).

So with that policy in place, what's the deal here? If and when e-cigarettes are found to contain a chemical that is directly linked to cancer or lung disease, will the FDA ban it? Or will it conspicuously let it slide, and just slap a warning on it, like it did cigarettes?

https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetics-laws-regulations/pro...

https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/food-addit...

I agree that its real-time inventory and pricing availability has been a total game changer in the UX department. Presumably their acquisition of ITA gave them the ability to respond to queries in real-time which enabled all of the (quite excellent) features you pointed out above.

There's just one problem -- because a ton of the data is cached, or precomputed, or however it's done, a substantial and frustrating amount of the data is simply wrong. As in, an unbookable flight. I spend probably an unreasonable amount of time searching for flights, and anecdotally I'd say about 5-10% of the results I get (not even for complex itineraries) either have a completely incorrect price, or are wholly unbookable on any website. Calling the airline doesn't count, because if their website doesn't have it, 99% chance neither will the call center.

For example, one from a few hours ago: https://www.google.com/flights/?f=0#f=0&flt=/m/01lfy./m/02_2...

It's not just amongst your friends, but Google already offers this in the latest versions of Android. It says "Suspected spam call" below the number during the incoming call.

https://support.google.com/phoneapp/answer/3459196?hl=en

At least NYC is finally fixing that with Omny. Full rollout won't be for a few years but it'll support the entire regional transit system like Clipper in the Bay Area does.

https://omny.info/

SEEKING WORK - San Francisco / New York City / Remote

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Hi! I'm the co-founder of Bitmatica. We build cutting-edge web and mobile products for enterprise and fast-growing startups.

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Our clients:

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Our skills:

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That's right, we put them right here.

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Well, that's not entirely true, Apple can't exactly do what it wants. As other comments point out regarding Microsoft, Microsoft were forced to allow IE to be debundled and other competing browsers installed, because having a monopoly on a platform and using that platform to enforce anti-competitive practices is illegal under anti-trust law.

So given Apple's marketshare (not a monopoly per se though pretty substantial), and given they both control the platform that people pay money to access, and promote preferential treatment of a first party service at the expense of any third party services, it sounds pretty ripe for an anti-trust lawsuit.

The same I believe has recently been applied to Google in the EU for using its monopoly to promote its own product search results above other online stores.

The only difference now is, the teeth of anti-trust regulators are a lot more dull than they were in the 90s, for various reasons.

SEEKING WORK - San Francisco / New York City / Remote

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Hi! I'm the co-founder of Bitmatica. We build cutting-edge web and mobile products for enterprise and fast-growing startups.

Need an award-winning app built but can't because of resources, expertise, politics, etc? We're like a secret management consultancy hidden inside a dev shop.

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That's right, we put them right here.

- Design and Discovery: Turn concepts into a fully-executable roadmap and rollout strategy, managing risk and exceeding expectations. Starting at $23,000

- Prototyping: Fully-functioning versions of new concepts within weeks to demonstrate value, validate with customers, and gather stakeholder support. Staring at $138,000

- Engineering and Launch: Production-ready, user-validated, scalable product. Starting at $184,000

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The article provides a very light history and technically shallow description of OAuth and OIDC so it can advertise Okta. Essentially, "these two protocols are complicated, and you probably don't care, so you should buy Okta."

Except this is Hacker News, where caring is fundamental. I'll pass on the Okta advertisement.

It looks like this opens a copy of WhatsApp Web and instruments it as its client. And it uses compiled class names like `._2EZ_m` to interact with the DOM. Unless I'm missing something, this will probably break weekly or every time they release a new build of the frontend. Not sure if there's a better way?

For what it's worth, I have the exact same skill as you down to all of the details. I can remember many songs in their original key, sing them / whistle them within a few cents usually, identify the key of many notes most of the time, but by no means 100% of the time perfectly. It's probably something that could indeed be trained to be more "perfect", but as someone who does have "pretty good" absolute pitch, I still consider it a parlor trick. It's fun now and again, but it doesn't really help much with my music. Perhaps that's because I don't transcribe Bach concertos.

On the other hand, I completely agree that relative pitch has to be on point. I don't see how it's possible to be an effective musician without it. Being able to intuitively know intervals, certainly if you're a singer, is indispensable.

Of course, and if you're delivering work and that's working out all well for you, then great. And it appears that you can go that route instead on UpWork, agree on milestones, and no tracking required.

But, if like many people you are getting burned by non-payment, then turning this feature on seems like a pretty good route to go for stability in your wallet.

I'm a consultant and have been for a long time, and I know this business. I don't think counting keystrokes and in many cases screenshots make any sense, so I think the implementation of this is totally bogus, but the concept makes complete sense.

"I've never had a client expect to be able to look over my shoulder"

Right well UpWork isn't your client. I don't think your clients should, and to another person's point, yes your clients should trust you.

But this is in the case of when you do the work and the client _doesn't_ pay. This is UpWork covering your ass, when they really have no obligation to. They want a way to prove that you are least did some work, so likely they can go after the client later and recover costs.

This seems absolutely reasonable and honestly a heck of a bargain. Again, I think the implementation of counting keystrokes seems like a stupid way to do it, but coming up with a tracking method to _optionally_ guarantee payment even in the case of client non-payment is the deal of the century in the freelance world. Don't believe me? Try freelancing for a while and see how many clients stiff you after you've completed the job. There are literally advertisements in the NYC subway about it.

(Yes, retainers, payment up front, et ceteta -- no the world does not always work that way.)

Correct. However one of the key differences is that when the Republic was established, per the Constitution, States' Rights were a primary aspect of legislation. The federal government had very little power and very few laws compared to today. Most laws existed on a state-by-state basis. The USA of the late 1700s was really more like the EU than it is today.

And that's why New Hampshire needed senators. New Hampshire needed to ensure that it could still get the things it needed from the federal government (presumably money in most cases) to make New Hampshire a good place to live. That's why land has voting rights -- New Hampshire (using it as an example for all less-populated rural states) used to be a lot more sovereign.

Now things have changed. New Hampshire isn't just ensuring that it gets the resources it needs. Because most laws in the US are now enacted on a federal level, New Hampshire is deciding implicitly how /other/ states behave. And this is the problem, and is clearly against the intent of the Constitution ("any power not explicitly granted to the federal government will be left to the states").

So, the bicameral legislature as designed made sense. But in its current context, it's fundamentally broken. If we want to return it back to its original intent, then it's time to get back to a period of States' Rights.

I'm not sure that anybody is against the ruling itself, but more that a company would decide to institute that policy in the first place. It was well within Mylan's right[0] to raise the price of EpiPens an egregious amount for no real reason other than to increase profit, just as it's well within Monsanto's right to have you sign an agreement prohibiting you from using new seeds for re-planting, but that doesn't mean people aren't pissed off about those business practices.

Fundamentally yes, some are also angered by the fact that current IP law / court rulings allow those types of agreements to be legal, and there's potentially an argument / opportunity to change the law to prohibit that type of agreement, but primarily it's just a BS move by a company that makes people mad. To your music point, many also consider it a BS move to prohibit saving the music you "buy" on iTunes to more than N devices. It's completely legal, and you definitely agreed to those terms when you bought it, but that doesn't make it any less infuriating.

[0] However they may have gotten in hot water for that being considered anti-competitive via deals they signed with public schools. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/06/epipen-pric...

I'm not sure how that's relevant. As others pointed out, even if it's very niche, it still exists. Yes, there are a number of articles fetishizing all of the "weird" aspects of Japan and perhaps in some way making them seem pervasive to people who haven't visited, but this article is doing absolutely none of that. (And even if it were, that's not the point.)

I'm going to gather you didn't make it past the first few paragraphs, because the entire point of the article, particularly in the last third, is an analysis of reality and what constitutes real relationships. The author tries to use this subculture to evaluate the context of families, unconditional love, and how money may or may not change the equation. For that reason, I think it's one of the best articles I've read recently, as it's a thought-provoking insight into human needs and the realities of modern relationships.

Give it another read. Just because the story takes place in Japan, doesn't mean it's about Japan.

Just overlay a map of median temperatures and you'll have some interesting insight.

A little late to the game, but the NYT-accepted wisdom among other things is "repeated, unplanned interactions". That's how most strong friendships work.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-...

It's really not. It's actually a surprisingly livable and automobile traffic-free city for being literally the largest in the world. (Obviously the train system plays a huge role in that.)

Not the crux of the article, but:

> This doesn't mean that they, or the even higher-cost, more congested coastal metros, will adopt Manhattan or Tokyo-style density and transit patterns. Instead, Austin and San Antonio might be the new Houston and Dallas.

My goodness, can we /please/ stop this false dichotomy that a city either has to be a Tokyo megalopolis or a suburban sprawlfest?

I don't think any reasonable person is advocating to turn San Francisco into Manhattan, even though that seems to be what everyone is scared of. Clearly the OP has never left the US.

Average density in Paris: ~6 stories. Barcelona: ~4 stories. Most cities in Germany: 3-5 stories. Moscow: maybe 6-7 stories.

Maybe those aren't perfect by a story or two, but point being, there IS a sustainable growth model, and it's a lot more than SF and LA's paltry 2 story average height, and certainly less than the skyscrapers of Midtown Manhattan that everyone is so scared of. You only have to look across the ocean to see it, and until the US realizes this, Boise et al. will just become another congested, sprawling, expensive suburb with an increasingly poor quality of life. If you want to live in the not-countryside, then density is the only sustainable model.

EDIT: And to respond to what I think the crux of the article actually is, that we'll never invest in sustainable urban planning because there will always be another inexpensive 100k population town that we can ruin instead, well that sure is a losing attitude. There probably is some truth there, and it makes me sad. Sure, it'll take a while for the coasts to get their act together, but let's continue to promote a vision of what a viable and sustainable solution looks like for America's cities. Any comparisons with Tokyo or the next Manhattan is just furthering a destructive narrative which, for the record, is what got San Francisco in this mess in the 1980s in the first place.

And there's actually a great article about this that was on HN in January -- the history of the term jaywalking:

https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

Basically, automobiles were killing people in the streets, so manufacturers lobbied to get people off the streets and turn them into car-only thoroughfares, and invented a new term for their campaign -- jaywalking, where "jay" back then used to mean "hick" or someone from the country.

I think it's the natural evolution of frameworks. About 5 years ago, we had the Cambrian explosion of front-end frameworks -- Angular, React, Ember, Meteor, Backbone, even jQuery was still hot back then, and certainly dozens more. Technology had advanced enough that we finally were seeing new innovative ways of building web apps, and everyone had their own opinion on how to do it the Right Way.

This was certainly good for technological progress, but if anyone recalls the arduous process of "which frontend stack should I choose?" back then, it was an absolute nightmare. I had no idea which framework was production-ready, which framework would be around in 2 years, and heck, which framework even worked as advertised (and I remember distinctly wasting two weeks of my life trying to get a-then-very-beta ember-data to even fetch correctly, and eventually gave up and apologized to the client that their project wouldn't be done on time).

Fast forward to 2018, as happens with basically every technological advancement ever, we are starting to standardize. Most of the evolutionary branches are dying out in favor of one or two of the strongest candidates (in this case, React, as far as I can see). This has resulted in huge maturity gains, performance improvements, library standardization, lower training costs, generally lower software maintenance costs, and overall stability in the ecosystem. And as someone who is generally a fan of the "more wood behind fewer arrows" philosophy, having suffered through the world war that was JavaScript in 2013, I am really enjoying the calm before the next storm.

Because, as always, the next wave of disruption will rise again. This current consolidation is at the expense of change -- there will be less paradigm shifts, there will be less new ways of doing things, and that both provides for stability and stagnation. But like clockwork, come about 2020, there will be a new catalyst for change (maybe our next Cambrian explosion will be thanks to WebAssembly?).

So in short order, don't worry, we'll get to play the "which of these libraries even works" game in no time.

SEEKING WORK - San Francisco + Travel Welcome

Hi! We're Bitmatica. We design and build beautiful web and mobile apps faster than ever thought possible.

Need an MVP built or want a free half-day design or engineering consultation? Contact us!

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Was Mobileye actually part of the implementation of Uber's self-driving technology and was somehow disabled or not used properly? Or is this just a piece of not-so-submarine PR? If the latter, I don't understand the point of this article.

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Original article linked from Gizmodo: http://www.pressdemocrat.com/business/7559762-181/hewlett-pa...

I think that's a fair choice for a number of reasons. The problem is, the need for an external workspace still isn't going away. This is a /huge/ market opportunity, and anybody who has gone to Workshop Cafe in San Francisco knows it. (Just try to find a seat there during business hours; it's impossible.)

The problem with the coffee shop is that the value they provide and their financial model are not aligned. Coffee shops make money by selling coffee. Workers go to coffee shops for the workspace, location, and ambiance of not working from home. Yes, people also go to coffee shops to buy coffee, but I'm not talking about those people. There is a class of person (freelancers, artists, even people just taking the day off from their normal office) who want a non-lonely place to work around people.

The only business I've seen who "gets it" is Workshop Cafe -- a coffee shop that makes its money by selling the workspace, not the coffee (but yes they do also serve coffee). They have power outlets at every seat, incredible Wi-Fi, and charge $2 / hour (at least last time I was there) for a seat, and even have phone booths for calls.

There should be a Workshop Cafe in every major city on Earth. There's already a WeWork for the more permanent class of co-working; why is there not a "coffee shop" that focuses its business catering toward laptop hobos, and actually provides amenities for that use -- no more scrounging for power outlets, crappy Wi-Fi, nowhere to take a call, et cetera. Workshop Cafe in SF will even deliver food from local restaurants to your table!

Then, finally, we will have two types of businesses for these two completely separate use cases: coffee shop-style drop-in co-working spaces, for people who want to get work done in a productive environment, and coffee shops. For you know, people who just want to drink a cup of coffee.

SEEKING WORK - San Francisco + Travel Welcome

Hi! We're Bitmatica. We design and build beautiful web and mobile apps.

Want a free half-day design or engineering consultation? Contact us!

What we do:

+ Product Design

+ UI/UX Design, Branding, Visual Identity

+ Front-end Web: HTML5, JavaScript / ES.Next, Sass, React / Redux

+ Back-end Web: Ruby on Rails, Node.js

+ iOS and Android - Native and React Native

Latest projects include:

[1] Launched Autodesk's 3D Printer software + marketing site (http://ember.autodesk.com/)

[2] Redesigned and built Corax Cyber Security's product and homepage (https://coraxcyber.com)

[3] Built Nitro PDF's cloud dashboard (https://cloud.gonitro.com)

[4] Designed the UI for a Drone iOS Application

[5] Worked with a large US bank on two consumer mobile personal finance applications

Let's talk!

http://www.bitmatica.com/

hello@bitmatica.com

Can somebody please explain to me Google's messaging strategy? As a Voice, Talk, Hangouts, SMS user for what feels like the last decade, I am so incredibly confused that I want to walk into Google and fire all 18 of the 19 messaging teams. That way at least we'll have one singular group to yell at when things go wrong.

Here's the Google Messaging landscape as far as I know it:

- Google Talk in Gmail: I think this is what my work account has, and what they're shutting down: http://imgur.com/Z0v6Zjq This one is pretty useful because you can initiate a new Hangouts Video call right from this interface, as well as open up the Google Talk Voice POTS Dialer (?)

- Google Hangouts Messaging in Gmail: I think this what my personal account has, and perhaps what's sticking around? http://imgur.com/dBf7me2 This interface clearly got upgraded a bit, but removed the ability to create a new Hangouts Video call unless you're initiating it with a specific person (or I couldn't find the place to do it)

- Google Hangouts for Android: This is a dual Hangouts and SMS client that supposedly will send messages with the two services above ^, plus over SMS to your carrier contacts. This is also being discontinued?

- Android Messaging: Sounds like a new app that's coming out which will replace the SMS side of the above existing Hangouts app

- Hangouts Chat: This is the new app that's going to replace the IP-based messaging feature of the current Google Hangouts for Android, right?

- Hangouts Meet: This is the new app that's going to replace the video and screensharing portion of Hangouts for Android it sounds like. Why these two are now separate apps is beyond me. But it sounds like these two will interoperate with Google Hangouts in Gmail (the second screenshot), and the first one is disappearing and/or being converted into the second. OK, I think I'm staring to figure this out...

- Google Voice: Oh don't get me started on Voice. I've been a Voice user forever, and we finally got an upgrade! Which made no sense, because I thought they were killing it? But now they're not? So now Voice is purely for SMS-based communication, and would be an alternative to Android Messaging, just as it always was (with its new web client as well). But if you were one of the unlucky people who chose to integrate your GVoice SMS experience into Hangouts for Android, I guess you can still use that? Supposedly that's still supported, but I didn't, and I fear for whoever ends up with that experience...

- Hangouts Dialer for Android: This is / was the POTS dialer that integrated with Hangouts, and allowed you to dial any POTS number over VoIP. AND it lightly integrates with Google Voice, because it uses your GVoice number and balance for international calls. BONUS: It can also /receive/ inbound calls that are placed inbound to your GVoice number, OR from Google Talk, because "Google Talk" was considered a "forwarding phone" as as Voice was concerned. Is that part going away? Can you "call" people over GTalk now? Sounds like no, but you can still "Hangouts Meet" with them, and if you have the Android client, it will ring your phone? I guess that makes sense... What about inbound calls to your GVoice number and being able to answer them over VoIP? That works today, and it'd be a real bummer if it went a way.

- Google Allo: Hey remember this? Probably not even though it's only less than a year old. This is an entirely separate walled garden of a messaging app that allows you to Allo (text chat) other Allo users. But it also DOES have an SMS bridge (surprise!), and you can Allo non-Allo users, however the receiving SMS end is still a little questionable and is more meant as a user-acquisition funnel than a transparent GVoice-like experience. I believe this was meant to be a WhatsApp clone, but nobody uses it.

- Google Duo: And then there's this thing? I guess it's almost identical to Hangouts Meet now? Maybe Hangouts Meet is for Business® users and Duo is for your friends and family? Maybe Duo uses voice recognition to censor all business communication? (That was a joke, but...)

It's just that simple! Screw Google and whoever is running their messaging division. Except I think that's the problem: nobody is. Which is why this post exists.

I still think Wave could have solved all of our problems...