npizzolato

"Those two companies in particular" were Uber and AirBnB, the only two companies I named in my comment. I never said Amazon flaunted the law.

That's not what you said. You said no one on HN doesn't bat an eye at Uber, AirBnB, etc. I personally think the way those two companies in particular flaunt laws is unethical, and I think they should be punished until they start following them. That's not the same as thinking they shouldn't exist.

If the autopilot couldn't safely handle going 55-60mph, it should have slowed down to speeds that it could handle. If it couldn't safely handle those conditions, it should have safely slowed to a stop. Failing ungracefully is completely autopilot's (and Tesla's) fault.

> I haven't encouraged locking anybody up, or fining anybody.

Well, you encouraged "consequences," which usually means one of those two things.

> But we encourage this behavior every time we allow it to happen with no consequences... There need to be consequences, but how do you discourage someone who has nothing? They're almost inherently unpunishable.

So, there need to be consequences, but you don't agree with locking people up or fining them? What consequences were you referring to then?

I half expected the final paragraph offering condolences to end with "but remember, this really wasn't Tesla's fault!" The third paragraph reads like Tesla is trying to wash their hands as much as possible. "Remember, he clicked all these buttons. He knew what he was getting into!"

> The autopilot doesn't drive the car, the driver does. The autopilot is a help just like cruise control. Tesla are very clear (apart from the naming of the feature) that the driver must still drive the car.

I'm sorry, but that's a cop-out. What's the point of an autopilot if you have to avoid every single obstacle and react to every single thing as if the auto-pilot didn't exist? You can't say "autopilot is safer than normal humans" (heavily implied by the blog post) and then turn around and say "but it's really the driver who's responsible for everything!" anytime there's an accident.

Unlike autopilot, cruise control has very limited functionality. No driver expects it to do anything other than keep their speed, so they are still actively engaged with the road to respond to anything that takes place.

Is it really shoehorning when Thiel's lawyer is threatening Gawker with a lawsuit about an article they wrote about Donald Trump?[1] Seems like that's very relevant.

[1] From the article, http://gawker.com/now-peter-thiels-lawyer-wants-to-silence-r...

According to another comment thread, those clauses are not enforceable.

That's really easy to say behind a throwaway account on the internet. It's a much harder choice when it's your life and freedom on the line, and I don't know if anyone can truly say it for sure until they're in that position.

He said, in 209 characters.

You need to remove all nuance to fit any reasonably complex idea in 140 characters . And so we're left with soundbites and absolutes, the backbone of all good discussions!

> The fact that you're tired of people complaining about Google discontinuing products tells me that Google may have a problem convincing people to adopt new services.

Or there's a very vocal minority of people here on Hacker News that are really upset about Reader being shut down and use any opportunity to mention about it. I highly doubt it's a majority of people who distrust Google products because they might get shut down at some point in the future.

Reddit has a lot of active, helpful communities hidden away in smaller subreddits. It's really only the default subreddits and other huge subreddits that are bad.

My point being, if you can be made to agree to submit to a breathalyzer when driving before you get a license, why can't you be made to agree to submit to this text-analyzer when driving before you get a license? I'm not saying this would be a good thing, but they seem very similar to me.

Couldn't the same be said for a breathalyzer? Forcing someone to breathe into a machine could be seen as forced "speech" in the same way giving up a password is. That seems to be allowed since the only penalty for refusing is losing your license (as opposed to some kind of criminal charge).

Honest question btw.

I don't think it's a lot to ask for a readme to contain the full name of the acronym it's implementing and maybe a link to a wikipedia page.

I mean, it already has a link to the golang website, but no mention of what BGP actually is.

I don't think it's pedantic. It changes the meaning of the map drastically. Most major cities in the US are not capital cities. In the top 10 states by population, only one is a capital city (using 2014 numbers).

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

Wow... No one said lawyers can't be wrong, but the law is complex, and if you haven't studied it, it's a pretty good bet you don't really understand all the details. It's pretty funny to see you belittle lawyers in the same paragraph you say any lawyer's mind would melt by the complexity of software. Having a PhD in CS doesn't make you an expert in the law, the economy, or any other field unrelated to CS.

I was going to respond to the wikipedia article, but I'm realizing that would be a waste of my time. Good luck with your crusade against the almighty lawyer-priests.

You're giving a lot of strongly-worded advice/opinions on legal issues in this thread. Are you a lawyer? Can you point to any case-law to back up what you're saying?

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't really know who's right in this thread, but I'd find any citations you have really interesting to read.

As someone ignorant of accounting law, it's not obvious to me why he's being obtuse, and just saying he is doesn't add anything to the conversation. In the other article, he goes on to say

"The people who say that this is due to the fact that they are investing in building up their business are showing their ignorance. Reinvesting and profits are two separate issues. Profits reflect the difference between revenues and costs on current business operations. These can all be used for investment in expansion (as opposed to being paid out as dividends and share buybacks), but they should still show up as profits. Amazon doesn't show profits or at least not much. This means that it costs them as much to run their business as they are getting from customers in revenue. That is not viable as a long-term model even if they are always expanding."

Both statements seem like reasonable statements to me (who is, again, ignorant of the law). Is he wrong? Could you expand on why he's wrong?

Typically, I think it would mean "I would like this issue/request to be fixed/implemented."

That's only true if businesses act with perfect rationality towards long-term thinking and have perfect information, which is obviously not true. The middle manager with numbers to hit for the quarter probably doesn't care to do the research to see if the company would benefit from being more accessible. The project manager who doesn't really know have any disabled people may not even think about accessibility when designing the main initiatives for next year. And on and on.

> I bought an Echo a couple of weeks ago, and I love controlling my Philips Hue lights with it. If I'm on the couch watching a movie, I can just tell Alexa in the kitchen to dim or turn off the living room lights. Setting a timer and having the lights blink when it goes off is neat too. My kids love asking it questions and playing music.

Every time I hear about the Echo I can't help but think it's a solution looking for a problem. A light switch costs $0 and really isn't any effort to use. If I'm sitting on the cough, I'll... get up, turn the lights off, and sit back down. I can't imagine spending $180 on a glorified light switch, weather app, and a kitchen timer. To each their own, I suppose.

So you're basically just arguing that their webpage doesn't have a good layout. If you want to dismiss the product because of that, that's your choice, but I wish people would keep complaints about website design to themselves. They're so boring. I come to HN to read insightful commentary about articles and projects, and complaints about the websites themselves just make me roll my eyes.

Apple isn't questioning the legality of the request based on 4th amendment concerns. Most requests from law enforcement ask a company to give up information they already have. What makes this unique is that the request is for Apple to decrypt the device -- an ability they do not currently have. Further, there is no law requiring Apple to have the ability to decrypt the device.

So this request is really a request for Apple to develop a way to break their own encryption, which brings up a lot of slippery slope concerns. If Apple can be forced by the government to develop a way to break into this version of their OS, what would stop them from being forced to develop cracks for other versions of their OS?

TIL what an initialism is and how it differs from an acronym :)

Funnily enough, Chrome is flagging it as a misspelled word, but googling for it brought up its definition in Google's usual definition box.

Looking at Paypal's Q4 2015 statement, they made $500 million in profit on $2.5 billion in revenue, up from $400 million in profit on $2.1 billion in revenue from Q4 2014. If that's what a sinking ship looks like, I'd love to be on board!

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-4BS3R8/148031109...

Continuing the analogy, if it was originally 60-40 men-women, and the allegation is correct that only women are allowed to appeal their results, that's more like tipping the balance 40-60, which is a negative outcome for men. Allowing both genders to appeal their results would be a more balanced 50-50.

> This doesn't make using their apps a "non-starter".

I don't think the parent meant a "non-starter" in general. This app seems really awesome, but I primarily develop on Windows, so it's a non-starter for me, which is really too bad. I was really excited looking through the page until I noticed it was only on OS X.

That and I'd prefer my electronic notebook to be available on my phone as well, so that's another reason I wouldn't use it. But if this ever comes out for Windows/Android, I'd definitely be excited to try it out.

/r/bestof would disagree with you.

That's not what you were complaining about earlier. Shifting the goalposts is always fun.