Hacker News Reader

bdroolon Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

I'll just leave this here:

http://chicago.suntimes.com/opinion/laura-washington-uber-so...

bdroolon Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

Uber did the world a favor by breaking the back of the taxi monopoly. But now they need to either clean up their act or go away.

bdroolon Facebook flooded with 'sextortion' and revenge porn, files reveal

https://www.iwf.org.uk/become-a-member/services-for-members/...

bdroolon Uber to engineer: Return stolen docs, or swear you didn't steal them

Here's the official letter:

https://www.scribd.com/document/348851011/Uber-2017-05-15-Lt...

It's weird in the digital age to say information needs to be "returned" (although they did also say "and all copies"). Still, I'm reminded of the old "getting my song back fucker" quote:

http://www.bash.org/?104052

bdroolon Sam Altman Considering Run for CA Governor

The facts are very clear-cut and I provided sources.

> the chances of the publicly known story being accurate are pretty slim

That's empty speculation. If that's the only defense for his actions then there isn't any.

It's going to take a lot more than that to convince people to vote for him.

bdroolon Magic Leap Could Be Looking at an $8B Valuation

I don't find that very hard to believe considering it's sometimes possible to use something as simple as a mirror to trick the brain into correcting phantom limb pain:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_box

bdroolon Sam Altman Considering Run for CA Governor

Reminder that this is the same person who attempted to publicly shame[1] Jeremy Guillory out of fighting for his fair share during GM's acquisition of Cruise. This attempt failed, and Cruise ended up having to publicly acknowledge the opposite:

"As part of the settlement, Cruise and its founder Kyle Vogt now acknowledge that Guillory was a cofounder of the company."[2]

On top of that, Sam's post originally included the statement "it’s important to the way Silicon Valley works that such behavior not be tolerated" in reference to Guillory fighting for his recognition, which he later removed.[3]

This is not someone I would support for any sort of public office.

EDIT: He's not above criticism, folks. If you disagree with me, how about replying and explaining instead of down-voting?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11490188

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/car-startup-cruise-settles-le...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11491011

bdroolon U.S. Census director resigns amid turmoil over funding of 2020 count

> It's been known for a long time that Trump and the FBI director didn't see eye to eye, and the former employs the latter. Still significant, just not surprising.

The president firing the FBI director is huge news. The story is currently at the top of every single message board and news outlet except this one.

bdroolon Nick Sand, Orange Sunshine LSD chemist, has died

> The mother of his godson Aidan remarked, "Nick didn't care about the stupid politics shit, he'd just laugh at it." Jon Hanna said Nick "became a criminal as a matter of principle and as an act of civil disobedience."

https://youtu.be/_Wy0k3j_a7E

[Note: that's actually him (Nick Sand) in the video clip above.]

bdroolon BART takeover robbery: 40 to 60 teens swarm train, rob weekend riders

I realize that, but vigilantism is not always driven by a rational view of crime statistics. Fear can be a very powerful force. If people fear crime and feel they are being ignored and not protected by the state, they may take matters into their own hands, quite often irrationally. See for example the reaction to terrorism, despite the vast statistical unlikelihood of being a victim of it.

I notice that several people are responding to me as though I am advocating vigilantism even though I am doing the opposite, so I feel I must reiterate once again that I am fully opposed to it. Instead, I am trying to raise the alarm that if highly visible crimes like the one described in this article are not addressed sufficiently, the public may react with vigilantism. That is an outcome I want to avoid.

bdroolon BART takeover robbery: 40 to 60 teens swarm train, rob weekend riders

> that basically says "The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is that it works", without backing it up

That's a quote from me, not from the HuffPo article. The article says "The crime rate in the dangerous subways plunged dramatically…", as I quoted originally.

> I've actually spent the last hour looking for statistics to back or not back you up. I've wasted my life.

I replied to you here with a source that only took a few minutes to find:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14189548

You seem very emotional about this topic. I would urge you to look at it more dispassionately. As I already stated (but it bears repeating), I absolutely do not want vigilantism to be the result of crimes like this, but I fear unless there is an open and honest conversation, things may end up there anyway. I believe the best (and perhaps only) way to avoid such an outcome is to consider the possibilities that may result from various actions (or inactions), unpleasant as they may be.

bdroolon BART takeover robbery: 40 to 60 teens swarm train, rob weekend riders

I noticed you replied to me twice (once here and once in another subthread), saying you'd spent time looking and "wasted [your] life". You also seem to be going further down the road of ad-hominem, describing the author of the first article I wrote as an "NRA spokesman". You seem ideologically driven and therefore unlikely to listen. But here goes anyway:

"Vigilante Mobilization and Local Order: Evidence from Mexico"

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/522fc0aee4b06bf96fa60...

> Our empirical approach traces the sources of recent self-defense groups to the early twentieth cen- tury Cristero rebellion and, using an instrumental variables approach, we show that contemporary community mobilization has succeeded in reducing a broad range of crimes.

Also I note that you're pushing back against my statement regarding things being swept under the rug (e.g., your statements about "somehow" this making it to the news). Did you also notice that the link to this article is gone from the HN front page? My intuition is that the public in general is going to turn a blind eye to this topic, until they can't any more (that's usually when something really bad happens). Note again that I am very unhappy with that idea and wish it were not so, but it strikes me as unfortunately very likely. I'd love to be wrong, but I see nothing to indicate otherwise. There is always hope I suppose.

bdroolon BART takeover robbery: 40 to 60 teens swarm train, rob weekend riders

I already gave one, just a few sentences above.

bdroolon BART takeover robbery: 40 to 60 teens swarm train, rob weekend riders

An earlier version of this article said something like "BART did not immediately report the incident" (can't recall exact wording). This statement or any equivalent appears to be removed. It looks like newsdiff.org doesn't track sfgate.com, so I can't find the exact change. Regardless, the article originally indicated BART didn't report the incident to the public right away.

That leads me to say: sweeping this kind of crime under the rug will not help. Instead, it will lead to a repeat of the Goetz vigilante incident in NYC in the early 1980s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shoo...

http://nypost.com/2011/12/23/one-of-bernhard-goetzs-victims-...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-feldman/bernie-goetz-t...

That last link in particular contains a stunning statement:

> The crime rate in the dangerous subways plunged dramatically — so much so the authorities even held back the numbers — the truth hurt too much.

The ugly and frightening truth about vigilantism is that it works. Please note I hate the idea of vigilantism and hope with every fiber of my being that things do not come to that, but it at first glance appears that things are headed in that direction, which I am immensely sad and scared to see.

bdroolon Me and SVG

It really makes me sad to read the part about counting pennies and having to stretch such tiny advances while writing the books, especially when she describes her frustration at how much a framed copy that was sent by the publisher must have cost, compared to her frugal situation. It is a shame that writing down useful knowledge in a clear way is not better rewarded.

bdroolon Google’s Featured Snippets are often wrong, and also damaging to businesses

That's all well and good, but it doesn't really matter if individual cases get squashed. The larger issue is that Google has moved away from the stance of "we just give you what you search for, it's up to you to verify it" and is instead presenting some results as "this is the definitive answer". That's bad even if all the horribly wrong results are removed. Does anyone really think it'd be a good idea for a single company to own what is and is not considered "true"?

bdroolon Vanlife, the Bohemian Social Media Movement

But just think about the future when those RVs are all self-driving -- all those people will be nomads, roaming the land!

bdroolon Show HN: Zuck.js, a JavaScript library that lets you add Stories everywhere

Carthago delenda est! [1]

[1] http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/how-mark-zuckerberg-l...

bdroolon Instagram Stories hits 200M users, surpassing Snapchat

Same reason why so many people hated Microsoft in the 90s.

bdroolon Analysis of the Facebook app for iOS

> DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED

What could possibly be in there?

bdroolon The End of the Past

That was my first thought as well. Another thing that came to mind is that way manual work / craftsmanship was looked down upon has its parallels in the present day, particularly in the US. It's often said that other parts of the world see engineering in particular as a prestigious line of work, but the same cannot be said for the US. It's strange how the US lauds only the extremes: either very blue-collar manual laborers, or very white-collar 0.001%-ers (very often rent-seekers who don't actually add much value to society). People who actually engineer things and drive innovation are not looked up to.

bdroolon The Joel Test for 2017

He proposes removing the rule about "quiet working conditions" and even says "There is no right or wrong answer for which is correct." On the contrary, there is a lot of scientific evidence that quiet enhances concentration and productivity.

bdroolon Lyft raises $500M

GM, owners of cruise.ai, are investors in Lyft. It seems likely that relationship will be used to help both companies move towards an autonomous car future.

bdroolon Uber said to use “sophisticated” software to defraud drivers, passengers

Oh, come on.

I doubt it's all that sophisticated.

bdroolon About the security content of iOS 10.3.1

As I mentioned here[1], it's more about the user experience than security, sorry, I should have been more clear.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14028693

bdroolon About the security content of iOS 10.3.1

> There could easily be an additional connectivity check that is http-based (that was blocked by the captive portal) before proceeding onto a standard TLS handshake.

Yes, I mentioned that in my comment.

> As 'klodolph mentions, there's a lot of layers of verification for software updates.

I realize that, but my point is that apps that mix HTTP and HTTPS connections have a tendency to provide strange and confusing feedback to the user in situations like this. Some operations work, some don't. Apple News for example will load text but no images on unauthorized captive networks like the one I was using. An app that I worked on had the same problem (API calls went over HTTPS, but CDN-served content did not), and it was always confusing to users when secure connections went through but non-secure did not (or vice-versa). From what I've seen, it's a much better experience and much easier for the user to understand if all connections are treated the same. Having a mixture can lead to confusing situations where some things fail and some don't, and it's very hard for a non-technical person to know why. It just seems broken to them.

For example: think about the experience I had. The device appeared to be online, even downloaded the system update just fine, but then suddenly the Settings app complained that I was not online, even though many network functions (such as email) were still working just fine. A natural response might be to say that captive networks are the problem, but I promise that non-technical users will not see it that way. They will not blame the network. They will blame the app. In their minds, they are either online or not, and if only certain things fail, those things must be the problem.

Captive networks suck, but they are a reality of the world we live in and are not going away. Writing apps such that they always treat connections in the same manner will be far more understandable for users in the long run.

bdroolon About the security content of iOS 10.3.1

Something I just noticed about the iOS update process: it appears that when it tries to "verify" an update (which requires that you be online), it does not do so over a secure connection. I was on a captive network (the kind where HTTPS goes through but plain HTTP does not, until you click through an agreement page), and while it was able to download the update just fine, it couldn't verify it until I opened Safari and tried to go to neverssl.com to click past the captive network's "I agree" button. Doesn't that seem wrong? Or perhaps it's just the "check to see if the user is online before verifying" step that is unsecured. Either way that seems like a bug.

bdroolon Uber’s Anthony Levandowski Invokes Fifth Amendment Rights in Waymo Suit

Oh my god:

Lawyer: <complains about proceedings appearing in the news>

Judge: "Okay. The public will read what you just said."

bdroolon Night Shift compared to f.lux

It happens when you play full-screen videos on a mac. The full screen mode displays in a more direct screen access manner (but only after any overlays, like video controls, have faded out). In this mode, f.lux's color profile changes can cause weird blooming issues, especially in bright ares of the video (like a blue sky). Apple seems to have built their solution in a way that avoids this issue.

It's likely f.lux cannot ever do anything about it. Until Night Shift was available, I've been in the habit of of creating "low color temp" color profiles and manually setting my display to them when it gets late in the day (a crude approximation of f.lux, but ultimately the same thing they are doing). It always produced the same artifact.

Incidentally, I find it strange that f.lux is claiming they output so much less blue light than Apple's Night Shift, since as far as I can tell, all they do is shift the color profile, just like Night Shift does. Anyone who has seen the video issues I'm describing above can attest that there is still plenty of blue light coming out of the screen with f.lux (and manual color profile adjustments). All three accomplish the same thing, it's just that Apple's implementation appears to be cleaner and work in more cases (not surprising -- it's their system, so presumably they know how to integrate with it better than anyone). I think perhaps at most they have a point that the default settings are maybe not "warm" enough, but that's the only flaw I can see.

bdroolon Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon's brand

You may not have had a problem (or at least not realized it), but plenty of other people commenting on this article have, and there is now a new article at the top of HN that shows how big the fake / counterfeit problem is getting:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13955981

Amazon is due for a reckoning. They've let this get completely out of control.