drubio

There's a larger issue at play with all the API drama, and its not with the end-users, but users of these APIs: indie devs and start-ups.

Free (or cheap) APIs have been a way for whoever makes them to discover new segments/markets with low risk/investment. If its good enough, its an opportunity for an indie dev or start-up to get acquired and make an exit, if it isn't, then all the risk was on the indie dev or start-up to begin with.

If you go back years into these API ecosystems, you'll see stories like this Apollo/Reddit one aren't new, since the API owners aren't required to buy anyone out, they could either cancel your access or simply clone the way you're using their API and be done.

What is new, is how these API dramas are accelerating, either APIs are no longer free, they are putting more locks on how the data can be used or they are getting so expensive you can't make a business case waiting to get acquired or noticed. Simply search for stories about APIs related to Youtube, Reddit, Bing in the past months.

My suspicion about this dynamic, is the bigger elephant in the room is ML/AI. For many sites, their lifeblood is their data and they're not going to part with it as easily, since a couple of API calls can mean they're going to get passed over entirely in this ML/AI era. Its do or die for many sites, even if it means pissing off the symbiotic relationship many had indie devs & start-ups.

I'm also honestly perplexed how many people didn't think it was a threat.

I initially even thought the outrage at Reddit's CEO was because he got caught on tape asking for $10 mil to 'skip off into the sunset' like a mobster, only to realize it was the Apollo dev LOL

Wow, I thought I was taking crazy pills, THIS

I expected this to be a top comment, instead its buried 1000 comments deep, posted by a new account and down voted, just wow.

Its been years since I've used Reddit and never heard of this Apollo app, so I'm not rooting for anyone, but c'mon, what's the deal with the Apollo dev audio and mob'esque "deal you can't refuse" skit: 'you cut me a cheque for $10 million dollars and we can both skip off into the sunset', this alone sounds legally actionable even in a banana republic.

And yet, they're rallying for the Apollo dev on this entire thread and trashing Reddit's CEO. As despicable as they want to frame Reddit's CEO present and past actions, this dev sounds just as -- if not more -- despicable.

So looks like OpenAI top brass is aware of the moral hazard of using someone else's data to train their models and profit, interesting times. Let's see if they pull a "Google" and say "they're just ______ and don't need to pay for data"

Right, the people have spoken, but not with their money, just yet.

Last I looked ChatGPT is a loss leader, so users might love it, but the judge is still out if people are willing to pay what it actually costs to produce the experience. It seems Google is betting on an ad-supported ChatGPT experience, which seems like the natural step to keep up.

But then there's the data side to all of this. Case in point, this Google search, https://www.google.com/search?q=chatgpt+losses, awesome I got a snippet and didn't have to sift through a bunch of sites to get the $540 million figure. Great, but who fed this data to Google ? Many sites of course, and what's their incentive ? To make money through ad clicks & sign-ups or some other form, so what's their incentive going to be now if Google keeps users to themselves like ChatGPT ?

There's going to be little to no incentive for news orgs, consultants, developers, cooks, trainers, you name it, to publish the most recent story/analysis/algorithm/recipes. If the data is going be commoditized by Google/ChatGPT or whoever, they will need to feed/pay for the most recent data themselves.

"Search will keep evolving to answer any question in any format"

I can't help but think who/what is going to pay/feed the training data for all this innovation.

As a content creator, this feels like the bottom in the race to the bottom. Google was already keeping users on their site as long as possible (e.g. snippets), this will only worsen the bounce ratio from content creators like local news sites & niche blogs (worse ad performance, less sign-ups) who fuel traffic. It also feels like an extinction event for sites like StackOverlflow and Quora, gamification to get users to write 'free' content will die-off if Google keeps front-running sites like this.

I feel Google will eventually need to go into the content creation/syndication business to keep all this going (and pay up vs. Google News), because the incentives for everyone else are just not there, if they want to keep everyone on Google.

Talk about famous last words, 3 month ago before this hammer came down, wow! Wonder if it crossed his mind if this also applied to his own crypto deals

And more importantly than letting you register, it avoids a .com, .net domain getting one of these on a landing page https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/styles/width_12/...

This has been the story for many sites, where domains are seized even if owned by a non-US person/company, with an order to the TLD that operates in the US. With a distributed DNS system like Handshake, 'in theory' this shouldn't be possible, since it would require multiple nodes to alter a domain's DNS records vs. a central TLD authority which has to abide by US law.

It's all interesting, but it still seems we are ways off from the DNS backbone (& my browser) operating with this kind of DNS architecture. It even appears it's becoming easier to take down a domain, not at the TLD/registrar level, but more so at the hosting level (e.g. Parler)

Interesting, I had no idea they were letting anyone register data, I had initially thought the idea was for registrars to provide nodes & data to eventually phase out the current DNS architecture, ensuring no single TLD org could wipe out a domain.

The Handshake design still seems like a step in the right direction, but even with sound data, it's probably years away (if ever) for DNS resolution to "flip the switch" to use this kind of architecture.

In more recent news, this tech https://handshake.org/ is aimed at this kind of jurisdictional issue. Limiting the reach of a US court or any other central org for that matter at shutting down a domain .com, .net or other.

This looks like a giant variety of 'Pachyrhizus erosus' or Jicama, which is also a street snack widely sold in Mexico. I'v never seen ones as large as the one in the article, but the watery texture and how it's condimented (lemon, sugar, salt, chili powder) is exactly like Jicama. Seems wikipedia has a reference to ones as large as 2 meters and 20 kg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachyrhizus_erosus so it may be like those tree trunk sizes in the article.

It's not Agave. Agave roots are very fibery and dry, there's almost no moisture in them and you wouldn't be able to cut such thin slices like the article points out, agave roots are mashed up to start the Tequila process, here are some pics http://www.todomezcal.com/Elaboracion/molienda.html

Source: I've cut open both Agave and Jicama plants, I grew up in Mexico. You can find Jicama/(fruit) street vendors in most Mexican cities main streets or outside Mexico a mexican market is also a safe bet. They have rough peel, like a potato but rougher, and they're about 90% water.

I found it more interesting that while the story focuses on the positives of social media -- even the dog owner says so in the interview. The HN comments are mostly on dog instincts, genetics and breeding.

It looks like the story got upvoted for other interesting reasons and not the original intent as a feel good social media story.

Or the one in charge of testing. You'd think this is a day one unit test.

duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22464246

Ray Dalio* is a good source, his articles on these issues are always backed by data and historical trends.

One of his latest ones: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/three-big-issues-1930s-analog...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Dalio

Add ?mod=rsswn to the end of WSJ urls

(e.g. https://www.wsj.com/articles/always-on-work-culture-creating... )

> In this case, the paper is suggesting that seaweed grows much faster in response to raised CO2, and then sequesters some of that carbon underwater.

Makes you wonder about news like this seaweed deluge in the Caribbean and how it's related to an increase in CO2

"In 2011 it was the first time we'd seen it...says Professor Hazel Oxenford, an expert in fisheries biology and management at the University of the West Indies...It came as a complete shock and no-one had a clue what to do with it."

"For us, the worst year we had for sargassum still remains 2015'..says Carla Daniel of Barbados Sea Turtle Project"

"Now it is happening again and everything suggests 2018 could be the worst year yet."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-45044513

https://www.riviera-maya-news.com/first-seaweed-barrier-to-b...

Kirkland sources their products with regional/national producers and rebrands them. So the contents of your Kirkland water depend on which Costco you purchase it from.

Source: A friend of mine brokers deals with producers to rebrand them as Kirkland products. Perishables like 'Kirkland' Ham, 'Kirkland' Cheese, 'Kirkland' Ice Cream are packaged by different companies depending on the Costco (Costco Canada, Costco East Coast, Costco West Coast). Where as other stuff like 'Kirkland' jeans are brokered globally. Water likely falls at the national/regional level with one of the major brands, so 'Kirkland' water in Canada is likely a different kind of 'Kirkland' water sold in California.

If you find it odd an interesting, there was a similar coincidence in Mexico, two quakes hitting on the same date, but 32 years apart:

- On Sep 19, 2017 - 7.1 magnitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Central_Mexico_earthquake - On Sep 19, 1985 - 8.0 magnitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Mexico_City_earthquake

They don't ignore cryptocurrencies, they just don't recognize them as 'currencies'[1][2], since they're not backed by a central authority (government or bank).

And by their very definition, don't expect either party to fully recognize each other. Central banks operate on the premise of centralizing, cryptocurrencies operate on the premise of decentralizing.

[1] A rather old post, on ex-Fed (Central Banker) Alan Greenspan take : https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-intrinsic-value-alan-greens... [2] A recent post, on current central banker of Mexico take: https://www.coindesk.com/bank-of-mexico-governor-bitcoin-mor...

Google isn't an engineering paragon anymore, it's too large.

I speak from what I've seen in how they handle their development & releases for Angular 2, which is a fairly large project with an equally large community.

Take a look at this release candidate, which is in between other release candidate RC.5. It has over 100+ breaking changes with new features

https://github.com/angular/angular/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md#...

This is practically against against all definitions of what a release candidate should be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#Re... .

So this neatly painted blanket statement of 'at google' we do x,y,z for development, new features & reviewers isn't true. There are very messy projects & development practices, practically like at any other large company.

As much as I would like to bash Amazon for their draconian and insane interview loops -- which I've been put through once.

The post clearly states these clauses were part of an exam taken on https://proctorio.com/ for the Amazon interview. So it's doubtful Amazon HR is fully aware of these clauses.

I would happily bash Amazon interview loops all day long, but in this particular case, I would also need to criticize anyone else that uses https://proctorio.com/ for these practices.

It's pointless to be a contrarian on JavaScript. It's here to stay, but it does appear there's a big push to be able to write something other than plain JavaScript (that produces JavaScript) to bring more sanity to the development process.

That Microsoft is pushing a superset that produces JavaScript (https://www.typescriptlang.org/) and Google is also behind Dart (https://www.dartlang.org/) that produces JavaScript, should say a lot about JavaScript's stickiness.

I actually find it amazing all the effort that has gone into TypeScript and Dart, which just produces more JavaScript, instead of creating a new language from scratch. It really looks like even Microsoft and Google prefer to deal with JavaScript 'as is' going with language supersets and languages that output more JavaScript than launching a new language.

In a few years JavaScript will most likely be the 'bytecode' of the web, you won't have to use directly, but it will just be there, produced by higher level stuff like TypeScript or Dart that produces JavaScript.

"Junior level positions, which in Toronto translates to around $50k - $60k. I could make the same amount of money waiting tables if I really wanted to."

So the going rates in Canada are in that range. I interviewed for a remote senior position (5+ years exp) for a start-up in Toronto (that from brief research looked to be profitable, so I went ahead).

My jaw dropped when they said they were targeting $25 (CAD) an hour, with the exchange rate that's less than $19 (US) an hour. My sentiment was the same as yours, at $19 (US) an hour I could make the same amount of money teaching plain English anywhere in the world. It looks like they don't even do a cross-check for other industry rates, just fluent English can net you the same rates as an English teacher in practically any market.

Remote is insanity now a days, it was a reasonable market a few years ago but not anymore. There's a glut on both the supply and demand sides.

Many years ago there was a limited demand for remote work, which probably tapered the supply, but in my experience from every 3 leads you followed (granted you had the experience), 2 were promising and 1 was almost always an offer. Now a days it's more like you need to follow 30 leads to get one 'meh' answer. I don't feel it's an age issue, it's just a general market condition.

With more companies acceptance of remote work, mixed in with the "we can't find local talent" mantra, the hiring process has turned more hands-off which in turn is producing these insane hiring procedures and cycles.

To make matters worse, everything from the smallest start-up to the largest tech company is adopting the same 'exclusive hiring practices' while they sit back wait for the resumes to roll in and/or send in work samples. All of this is hands-off trying to get candidates to 'fill slots' costs them next to nothing until the final phases. But for candidates it's just a time consuming PITA.

My only advice is to treat the process as any business transaction. Try to gauge how much they are invested in the hiring process, if they are asking you for hours or days on end while they appear to invest a couple of minutes of 'human time' RUN! These are lottery-like odds of landing an offer and unfortunatly this is endemic in large companies as well as unknown startups.

I'm in San Diego, it started flaking over 3 hours ago (around 9:00 AM PST), then around 10:00~10:15 AM PST I just got "We're experiencing some technical difficulties..." message.

My account is being sent to us-mg4.mail.yahoo.com , perhaps not all sub-domains are down ? Weird some people are not having this problem.

Edit: Seems to be back now at 12:19 AM PST.

I experienced a very similar broken interview process, but with Amazon (AWS). It appears this is more common at the big tech companies than I thought , judging from your comment and all the others in this thread.

I was contacted three times for the same position, until I also had to tell the recruiter 'no thank you, remove me from all future positions'.

The first time I was scheduled to fly into Seattle, they even asked me what I wanted for lunch! Then 1 week before the flight, they cancelled everything, reason 'none given', just 'we will keep you on file'. A different recruiter contacted me a second time 3 months later, I thought to schedule the Seattle interview, but I was told it was 'a different hiring manager' and I needed to do the phone screens again. So I did, after the phone screens, I was given the canned email 'we cannot extend another interview..'. Then the same recruiter contacts me again a month later to see if I wanted to interview! At which point I just declined.