Hacker News Reader

wankerrificon The account of realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours

“Industry” is the key word. It’s all about making money from the fan base

wankerrificon U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

Twitter and Facebook need to be held accountable. It appears that fomenting an insurrection is good for (their) business.

wankerrificon A former Uber engineer's disaster story

This 100%. From the tweets it sounds like the problem they were trying to solve was to make the app more modular so it would scale better to more devs. There were/are well established patterns for doing so in ObjectiveC. The Swift rewrite was not necessary and probably took a very difficult project and turned it into the death march that the OP describes.

They should have solved the architectural problem incrementally without adding a 1.0 language rewrite to the mix and then slowly rebuilt the app using Swift.

This is so obvious to anyone with experience it seems pretty evident that the decision making process there at the time was deeply flawed.

wankerrificon Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.

I challenge your assertion that the report found no collusion. You have not read the unredacted report nor has anyone outside of a select few in govt

wankerrificon Uber and Lyft competitors ready if service is suspended in California

Well they’ll definitely be more profitable if they leave the state. In fact they’d be way more profitable if they shut down all operations everywhere.

wankerrificon WeWork’s Adam Neumann Steps Down as CEO

No. Its a “We” Too situation

wankerrificon A Message about iOS Security

I know. What Apple should do is setup a crack privacy team to expose and publish all the ways the Android platform allows Google and third parties to collect data and generally invade privacy.

wankerrificon Facebook failed to block 20% of uploaded New Zealand shooter videos

Facebook and YouTube would sure as f--- fix this problem if, you know, it was the law that they hold liability for any and/all content that was hosted on their platform that they were, you know, profiting off of by displaying ads next to said content.

But that would require regulations which is bad for job creations or something.

wankerrificon Uber and Airbnb Alumni Fuel Tech’s Next Wave

No its not. I want the same things you do - good city services, shorter commutes, etc. Allowing runaway building without properly developing infrastructure is long term negative for everyone involved.

Most of those you label "NIMBY" are just looking to maintain an existing community and civic service level.

The people you should be directing your ire towards is not your strawman "NIMBY" but the city planners and commercial developers who overzone and overbuild office space and under-zone housing.

wankerrificon San Francisco median one bedroom apartment rent hits a new peak of $3,690

Really? At what income level in California are you paying half your income in taxes?

wankerrificon Uber Revenue Growth Slows, Losses Persist as 2019 IPO Draws Near

Still on track to allow SoftBank and the Saudi’s to foist this steaming turd on to the retail investor.

wankerrificon Can a new mayor fix San Francisco’s housing and homelessness problems?

Right on cue - YIMBY/SFBARFers respond to any HN headline with the words San Francisco and Housing with their strawman argument "NIMBY'S".

Nevermind the fact that the question here is about homelessness which is exacerbated when you lobby to mow down affordable SROs and rent controlled housing so some developers can rebuild luxury condos in their place.

How exactly will that help the homelessness problem?

wankerrificon Stripe to donate $1M to California Yimby

Agreed. Prop 13 is also the reason municipalities zone more commercial. Ever wonder why so many hundred thousand sq ft office space is going up around transbay terminal without a balance of housing? Don’t think that’s the dreaded straw man”NIMBY”. Its the city trying to make sure the services are financially solvent 20 yrs from now.

wankerrificon Open Letter to the Airbnb Community About Building a 21st Century Company

Didn't Airbnb just have something like 5000 units yanked off their site where the owners couldn't prove they were legit "sharing"? Seems like it's their issue now.

wankerrificon Much ado about iOS app architecture

I feel like this guy lifted the thoughts from my head and wrote them on his blog. I agree 110% on everything here.

wankerrificon Bob Lutz: Kiss the good times goodbye

There must be a fairly good margin on auto-as-a-service else this guy wouldn’t be hocking it.

I just hope they crash less than my smartphone...or smart tv...or smart refrigerator... or...

wankerrificon The Cult of the Costco Surfboard

Wave storms are the best - especially as a "Saturday morning special" when a billion people are out. Grab that and a helmet and yer good to go

wankerrificon Despite money and effort, homelessness in SF as bad as ever

I'm not sure how the homelessness issue in SF has any relationship to housing costs.

The root cause was losing a lot of funding for mental health services during the Gov. Reagan years.

But go ahead with your strawman.

wankerrificon A startup is filling SF's empty luxury rentals

I thought building tons of apartments and kicking people out of stable living situations was supposed to decrease rents.

Apparently the investors/builders have a price floor they cant go under else the situation becomes financially unviable.

Also - it would appear that several of these new builds are having a tough time filling units at luxury prices.

Who knew?! I thought if we just kept building the market fairy would magically lower prices everywhere.

wankerrificon The hunt for dollars to build the $64B bullet train

That money is being used to improve commuter rail. The first bits of spending are to electrify CalTrain and make grade separation improvements which will increase capacity.

That sounds a lot more tangible and useful than an imaginary hyper loop or putting more "self driving" cars on the road.

wankerrificon Google Maps On Mobile Gets Uber Integration

Great - just what the world needs.

Uninsured, automated gypsy cabs. No danger there.

wankerrificon Silicon Valley Billionaire Battles Surfers Over Beach Access

Even if it were for that, Vinod has been a bad actor here, so if this were the case the ends wouldn't have justified the means. First he fought to not reveal who had bought the land, and now he has been trying to overpower the people (represented by the govt) via his wealth and litigation.

For the record, its not that great of a surf spot, but this is more about letting someone establish precedent and thus leading to more beach access rights (Malibu...) getting chipped away at slowly but surely.

It would be great if we had Hawaii's right-of-way laws...

And to the original poster - not sure why you were down voted for asking a question.

wankerrificon Introducing Anonymous Login and an Updated Facebook Login

This. Facebook is a glorified user registration system on mobile. As a developer, I have no incentive to use FB anonymous login.

wankerrificon Results of the GitHub Investigation

I think its pretty telling that this an anonymous account and that no one is will to attach their name to the Medium post.

wankerrificon Results of the GitHub Investigation

Most corporate startup lawyers have founder's spouses sign release forms for to clearly indicate that they do not have some claim to ownership or equity.

wankerrificon Airbnb closes $500M round of funding at a $10B valuation, led By TPG

Left field thought but isn't there a business opportunity to work in the draft of all of AirBnB's legal wrangling. Basically, you just let AirBnB spend all its money dealing with all the legal hassles in each city, and then come in behind them at each of those cities and compete with them.

wankerrificon SF’s Housing Crisis Explained

> Are you kidding me? There are plenty of other cities in seismically active regions where they've built upwards with great success. All of you people who blame earthquakes for SF's inability to build upwards should put your money where your mouth is and get rid of all the red tape - then we'll see what really happens.

You mean the "red tape" meant to ensure that buildings don't collapse on you while you work, or in your sleep as the ground the building is built on turns into quicksand?

Or maybe the "red tape" that exists to ensure that there is adequate transportation and services to support increased density.

I think what would happen is a lot of shitty housing would be built that would kill a lot of people and bring the city to a halt during the next sizable earthquake.

wankerrificon SF’s Housing Crisis Explained

More anecdata.

If I had a dollar for every time I've heard this one. I refuse to believe that professional landlords are keeping units off the market when the current rental market may well represent the top of what they can get for the next 5 years. Most of the long term landlords who bought 20-30 years ago have gone through at least 3 down markets from the late 80s to now. The current employment gold rush in SF is just that, and I suspect long term owners recognize that and want to strike while the iron is hot.

I am willing to change my opinion if anyone could provide any tangible data, but I only see this argument bandied about with no actual proof.

So in my rebuttal, I would say that I guess that there are less than 100 units like that across the city. I have no proof, but I feel thats the case, therefore rent control not bad. See how that works?

wankerrificon Quora collects $80 million in funding

Oh look more value:

http://www.quora.com/Family/I-caught-my-younger-brother-watc...

http://www.quora.com/How-does-a-sixteen-year-old-get-a-girlf...

Look - I don't care if Quora wants to spam my inbox with link bait in order to generate AU and page views, but they could at least not try to take the high road and pretend to be anything more than the lowest common denominator, no-business-model, spam factory that they are.