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EdJiangon We use our own hardware at Fastmail

I was a bit confused by the section on backups. How do they manage moving the data offsite with the on-premises backup servers? Wouldn’t that be a cost savings by going cloud?

EdJiangon Forced to upgrade

Isn't the iPhone SE basically that? Why didn't OP get the SE?

https://www.apple.com/iphone-se/

EdJiangon The gigantic and unregulated power plants in the cloud

Important to point out this isn't just theory, it's actually happened (in the SF Bay Area!) with a regular rifle.

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

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/05/272015606...

EdJiangon Power Consumption of JPEG, WebP, and AVIF

I’m in CA and got the same notice. But I checked the grid intensity and it’s emitting 146g/KWhr.

http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/emissions.html

So the data might be wrong as well which may mislead the user.

Tweeted at him here: https://x.com/edwardstarcraft/status/1695508531028566090

EdJiangon Tesla has a range inflation problem

Because the drivetrain is several times more efficient, other loads have an outsized impact on mileage. The Model 3 is rated by EPA to be 131 MPGe.

So yeah -- if your drivetrain is getting 131 MPG, your A/C that consumes the same amount of power is going to have a much larger proportional impact.

EdJiangon So, how do you refill an aquifer?

There's also this guy who purchased a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, West Texas who's trying to terraform it into a forest.

No idea how feasible it is, but interesting to watch! https://www.youtube.com/@dustupstexas

EdJiangon A Case Study on the Uber Alumni Network

Ask and you shall receive: https://www.uber.com/newsroom/uber-spike-lee-celebrate-brook...

EdJiangon UW Paid Out Six Figures to Keep Me from Reading Their Law School Syllabi

Huh. The link somehow changed after I submitted it. I wonder if you read the wrong article?

Here's the original link: https://cedarlawpllc.com/2022/10/12/uw-paid-out-six-figures-...

EdJiangon Ask HN: Slack shows a preview of private Google Docs?

It asks you to sign in and auth your Google account after sharing a docs link. So you give them permissions.

If you don’t want this behavior you can revoke Slack’s access.

EdJiangon Toyota unveils 8.7 kWh battery for residential applications

I'd love to see electric scooter / e-bike companies also adopt this technology too. My scooter has a 550Whr battery and I'd love to use it as a power station for some of my devices on the go.

EdJiangon Facebook’s Retirement Plan

Makes a lot of sense, esp when making events more public. Thanks for your feedback!

EdJiangon Facebook’s Retirement Plan

What sort of groups do you organize?

I've been working on an app inspired by challenges I had organizing hack nights and poker games. It's kind of a cross between Facebook events and Google Calendar, and allows you to send an invite link and send text updates. Would love to hear your thoughts!

https://regroup.app

EdJiangon San Francisco is one of CA’s most conservative cities when it comes to housing

10% is not correct, that's the max allowed by CA. SF is way lower, and set on an annual basis: https://sf.gov/information/allowable-rent-increases

Here's from the last 10 years in SF:

https://sfrb.org/sites/default/files/Document/Form/571%20All...

  Effective Period                  Amount of Increase
  March 1, 2020 – February 28, 2021 1.8%
  March 1, 2019 – February 29, 2020 2.6%
  March 1, 2018 – February 28, 2019 1.6%
  March 1, 2017 – February 28, 2018 2.2%
  March 1, 2016 – February 28, 2017 1.6%
  March 1, 2015 – February 29, 2016 1.9%
  March 1, 2014 – February 28, 2015 1.0%
  March 1, 2013 – February 28, 2014 1.9%
  March 1, 2012 – February 28, 2013 1.9%
  March 1, 2011 – February 29, 2012 0.5%
  March 1, 2010 – February 28, 2011 0.1%

EdJiangon Hospital employee fired for ‘intentionally’ ruining 500 doses of vaccine

The WashPo paywall is the worst -- it rewrites your address bar so you can't even bookmark the URL for later or copy/paste it to share. Really frustrating on mobile when you can be in an app that's not logged into WashPo. Why would the product team make that decision?

EdJiangon They risk their lives cleaning hospitals. Now, they are getting vaccinated

Is this a reference to this skit?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DqoQq1zME8

EdJiangon Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle – $550k (sunnyvale)

> * Update 7/18/06 * You have to give the California Department of Motor Vehicles (the DMV) credit for creativity on this one. A DMV insider has disclosed to me that the DMV has made a formal request to a federal agency to rule if my Beetle constitutes a threat to national security based on what could happen if it got into the wrong hands. This raises three questions in my mind: #1 Does this mean I’m the right hands? #2 If someone with the name "b_laden13" is the highest eBay bidder for my Beetle can I refuse his offer even if he has the prestigious eBay Red Shooting Star feedback rating (the highest)? #3 Would this affect my eBay rating?

EdJiangon When tipping was considered un-American (2015)

This is no longer the case as of two years ago!

https://www.eater.com/2018/6/12/17439694/tipping-laws-tip-sh...

EdJiangon Airbnb S-1

Uber and Lyft did give long-term drivers “appreciation awards” which they could use to buy stock in the IPO. So not unprecedented.

https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/11/uber-is-dishing-out-apprec...

EdJiangon Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

Good point. The amount of downtime definitely depends on local market conditions. For instance if you go online at 3AM in Tracy, CA, you might have way lower utilization than someone at 6pm in downtown San Francisco.

I see your point about locking people out of access once they get past a certain number of hours. I think there are two reasons why this is probably not realistic. (1) the hourly count is over a quarterly basis, so harder to track. If a user has 25 engaged hours in week 1, why lock the app if week 2 or 3 the user may have 0 engaged hours? (2) the apps commonly have "bonuses" for hitting certain trip count goals, and you don't see apps trying to lock users out before they hit that goal.

However, Uber has put out a proposal asking governments to establish a "benefits fund" that all gig-companies are required to deposit into, on an hourly basis. That way someone working 5 hours on one app and 20 hours on a second would get benefits partially paid from both companies, without an incentive for any company to shirk their duties.

See the following link, under page 12 - "we want to contribute to funds that workers can individually direct toward the benefits that matter most to them. We are asking states to require our industry to accrue such funds":

https://ubernewsroomapi.10upcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/...

EdJiangon Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

According to the Rideshare Guy, the proportion of drivers in favor of being an IC was higher pre-pandemic and higher outside of CA. You could make the opposite argument -- that political voices have influenced people in the other direction. I'm not sure which would be correct. I've personally seen a lot of misinformation in the other direction. The top post in this thread (which I replied to) is a distillation of general sentiment and misinformation from AB5/No22 voices.

Also, the "against" was not 40% even when "for" was 60%. It was 60% for, 24% against, and 16% undecided. I'm not sure where you got the number that 0% of journalists wanted to be employees but I doubt it's actually 0%.

Anyways, happy to get into a deeper discussion offline -- I think there's a lot of interesting philosophical arguments for both sides but with politics the way it is the Yes/No voices are currently talking past each other. Feel free to reach out to me directly!

EdJiangon Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

I do see the first link says 67-4, but the second link uses 71-4, which is the correct vote count. You can see on the ca.gov website:

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtm...

If you agree that the workers should decide, the majority of drivers also don't want AB5 to apply to them.

https://therideshareguy.com/california-proposition-22-2020/

In this blog's survey ~70% of drivers want to be independent contractors, and ~60% are a Yes on 22. In case you think it's biased, the writers ultimate argued for the No vote.

EdJiangon Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/save-local-journalism-...

https://www.courthousenews.com/governor-newsom-signs-newspap...

The CA legislature just passed AB323, which exempts journalists from AB5, with a 71-4 margin (94.7%) in the Assembly and unanimously in the Senate. So 87.5% is certainly doable!

Funnily enough, the website advocating for journalists to be exempt says the following. Sound familiar?

==========

* If forced to comply with AB 5, many community newspapers, including local, ethnic, urban, suburban and metro papers, will be unable to sustain operations. They will close their doors, leaving many communities with no local news source.

* For those that continue to exist, news operations will be forced to make deep cuts to both print and digital community coverage and offerings in order to survive.

[IF NEWSPAPERS ARE NOT EXEMPTED FROM AB 5, READERS WILL LOSE.]

* Limited home delivery.

* Fewer local news reporters and less hometown coverage.

* Loss of sports, comics, games and investigative reporting.

* Days of week eliminated from print.

More at: https://savemypaper.com

EdJiangon Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

The text I quoted is directly from the ballot measure. If you click my link then click on "Text of Proposed Law (PDF)" in the sidebar, you will find:

> 7454. Healthcare Subsidy. (a) Consistent with the average contributions required under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a network company shall provide a quarterly health care subsidy to qualifying app-based drivers as set forth in this section. An app-based driver that averages the following amounts of engaged time per week on a network company’s platform during a calendar quarter shall receive the following subsidies from that network company:

> (1) For an average of 25 hours or more per week of engaged time in the calendar quarter, a payment greater than or equal to 100 percent of the average ACA contribution for the applicable average monthly Covered California premium for each month in the quarter.

> (2) For an average of at least 15 but less than 25 hours per week of engaged time in the calendar quarter, a payment greater than or equal to 50 percent of the average ACA contribution for the applicable average monthly Covered California premium for each month in the quarter.

EdJiangon Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

Drivers providing services via Uber can do all three now in California. Drivers can choose a rate multiplier to advertise their services at, decline as many trips as they want, and can directly connect with riders for scheduled rides.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/06/ubers-s...

Disclaimer: I work @ Uber but I do not work on driver-related stuff

EdJiangon Uber: “Yes on Prop 22” popups shown to drivers

Your post has a lot of misinformation I'd like to correct. What you're stating about the current situation is factually incorrect.

1. Prop 22 gives app-based workers healthcare, minimum wage, and other protections and benefits. From the text: "For an average of 25 hours or more per week of engaged time in the calendar quarter, a payment greater than or equal to 100 percent of the average ACA contribution for the applicable average monthly Covered California premium for each month in the quarter." 15-25 hours would require a 50% payment.

https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/propositions/22/

2. The companies are exploring other options to stay in California, which is actually required as part of the appeal which happened recently. The current publicly proposed model is franchising out to local businesses: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/technology/uber-lyft-fran...

Disclaimer: I work @ Uber but I do not work on driver-related stuff

EdJiangon Section 230 Explained

If you haven't read Section 230, go do so now. It's enabled the development of the modern internet as we know it, and the meat is only 3 sentences. The rest is preamble or interactions with other laws.

> (c) Protection for "Good Samaritan" blocking and screening of offensive material

> (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker

> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

> (2) Civil liability

> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of-

> (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected; or

> (B) any action taken to enable or make available to information content providers or others the technical means to restrict access to material described in paragraph (1).

https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:47%20section:...

EdJiangon “I’ve been intentionally getting parking tickets for 2 years”

His analysis: https://twitter.com/lanpaje/status/1316760349744357377

EdJiangon How anti-trust laws are used to stop independent contractors from organizing [pdf]

This is a really interesting topic. If you go to conventions for different trades, they usually make sure to emphasize that the convention is not a venue to discuss specific pricing, as that could be seen as collusion and anti-competitive. You wouldn't want a plumber's convention to be a place where they collude to fix prices!

With technology enabling more peer-to-peer connections, the game changes. If you're a productive plumber, why join a company and work for a salary when you can work directly for the consumer and enjoy higher margins (and higher risk)? However, as time goes on, more plumbers will make the same decision and enter the market. This results in a more efficient economy: more people can get plumbing at lower prices, and more people can work as plumbers.

But what if some business owners cost structures (due to mismanagement, poor productivity) do not result in good wages? (eg, XYZ Plumbing struggles to stay in business while ABC is doing just fine). Or what if the market forces end up in a clearing price that's too low? In today's economy, it's considered normal for some businesses to shut down if they cannot make money (know of a restaurant that has closed due to COVID?). But do we as a society want individuals taking on that much risk? If not, how can we insure against that risk?

EdJiangon Apple to terminate developer account of Epic Games on August 28th

If you look into the court docs, Epic says Apple revoking access to their dev tools negatively affects Epic's ability to support Unreal Engine, which negatively affects many apps. Not that apps using Unreal will get kicked off App Store.