MegaButts

What's the definition for engineer? Anything that isn't software; ie electrical, mechanical, nuclear? Or does it just mean you passed the FE exam?

AirBnB first announced profitability in 2018, followed by 2019.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/airbnb-sa...

That said, I'm not sure how many asterisks are attached to the definition of profitable. Likewise, the fact that a company that holds no substantial assets while operating in the face of most regulations only became profitable in 2018, while clearly being the market leader, makes me wonder what is going on with their financials. It should not take 10 years for a company like AirBnB to become profitable, it should take closer to 5.

I know they had a disagreement with their CFO in 2018, and it took them the better part of a year to find a replacement. Admittedly, the replacement seems incredibly qualified.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/26/airbnb-hires-cfo-dave-stephe...

> That level of resolution doesn't matter at all for driving. People can drive just as well through a video feed, like Starsky was doing.

I can tell you from experience this is false. It usually works, but when it doesn't you're fucked. People wildly underestimate, by orders of magnitude, how many and how complicated the edge-cases are for self-driving.

It's true, but it ignores the fact that human eyes have orders of magnitude more dynamic range than even very expensive specialized cameras, and it obviously ignores the fact that we haven't invented general AI yet.

It's a pithy response that undermines the challenge of a problem nobody has been able to solve even with years of effort and billions of dollars.

Tesla makes their money selling cars, and Autopilot sales are non-refundable. They get paid even if they don't deliver, so I'm not sure how much they care other than keeping the hype alive.

> Having cultural capital to call on is invaluable.

How similar is the culture today compared to 75+ years ago?

You are referring to the examples where we found out about the message. But it's impossible to know about the times we did not find out about the message, because we never found out! This could be because it never happened, or because the message was contained.

It's theoretically impossible to know. This is just a fun thought exercise though, not trying to have a real argument.

Supposedly, but we'd never actually know about the times where the message died with the messenger, would we? For all we know it's incredibly effective.

I don't believe this is true, I'm just pointing out we'd have no way of knowing.

Facebook has always given out bonuses, that's not news. The news is giving every employee $1000, and I'm saying that's a horrible decision on Facebook's part and they should be shamed for it. They should use that money to help those in need, or just not do anything at all.

Facebook has always been known for its unethical decisions, but this is just dumb - unless their goal is to get some incredibly superficial PR for what is a very small amount of money to them (tens of millions is a rounding error compared to their quarterly revenue).

Sure, but the vast majority are. This is basically targeting the group that includes mostly engineers to give them more money, instead of giving the money to content moderators or other lowly paid employees.

Again, this is basically the worst use of the money Facebook could have considered for anything with a remotely philanthropic angle. It reeks of a PR grab to me, and even if not it's just a horrible decision if their goal is to help those in need.

I'm cynical because I still don't see how this is helpful. It's giving more money to people that already have money, instead of spreading it around to people that don't have money. Facebook employees are about the least economically vulnerable population you can find, apart from people who inherited their wealth.

Why not actually do something useful with the money, like donate it to a charity in need that's trying to help those suffering from the epidemic?

Yes - I genuinely think this is a bad move, as in they should have not done it at all. As someone who does make a stupid amount of money, I wouldn't care about an extra $1k, but I know people that would. This is just trickle down economics.

Why? It's a fraction of a percent of most employees' annual pay, which presumably they are still receiving. If anything, it's like giving everyone a tiny bonus for some PR. At least that's how I read it.

If they gave that money to contractors, that would actually be a gesture of good will. Honestly I feel like they'd be better off only giving it to contractors and ignoring their employees, who are already extremely well-paid.

While it's more expensive, headlights can also reorient themselves dynamically. You tend to see it on mid-tier vehicles and up, but it's a really great feature. So there is a technical solution to this problem, although I'd rather have a simpler approach that's also cheaper that works for most people (as much as I love my headlights, I realize it's one more thing that can break).

Please share your data and calculations for this claim. I understand how exponential growth works, and I realize there is an incubation period, but this really just feels like unnecessary fear mongering considering we're at less than 6000 deaths worldwide as of now.

https://talksub.com/covid19

I'm curious if it will be adopted. I assume cost is a big issue. Hyundai considered it, but decided to roll their own (of course they were already pretty invested in their own technology, but Hyundai is known for reliability and Koenigsegg is not).

https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/a312246...

> That said, no car is really loud sub ~3000 rpm, at least not in the way I imagine you're implying.

As someone who loves cars, I wildly disagree. There are modded cars that idle across the street that wake me up through my double-paned windows. A very popular mod is to add a downpipe to some cars, which is illegal in California (for emissions reasons), but people still do it and holy fuck it is just so god damn loud. It's great at the race track, not so great when you want to sleep. Sometimes cars are just loud and obnoxious.

The new rules set the limit at 3 engines per season, which is 21 races plus testing. So it's a balancing act, but you definitely need to reuse the engine for more than 1 race.

And Formula 1 engines are only meant to last hours (yes really, most engines don't even last one season), albeit at ridiculously high stress levels.

If we extrapolate from this, where high performance drag cars typically last minutes (20 years ago they only lasted seconds), that would mean this engine might only be good for a couple of hours of driving around the track. Assuming this is true (I am not saying it is), this engine would be pretty worthless for anything other than being a collector's item or being used for 1 or 2 races before it had to be retired.

> Retroviruses include HIV and are the most beautiful viruses of all.

I honestly do not know what you mean by this. Can you please elaborate?

I obviously don't know the situation as well as you, but this feels more like being vindictive than greedy.

Whatever the case, I wish you luck.

> Some more detail: during bankruptcy, anyone that had business with the company can either file an adversary proceeding (essentially a lawsuit within bankruptcy court), and/or can do depositions/discovery (2004 examinations). They can also buys assets of the defunct company as well as legal claims to go after the company officers. Then after bankruptcy they can try to use whatever information, assets and claims they acquired, to sue the company officials personally.

What on Earth could make someone so angry to go through the hassle of doing this?

I've always hated how we don't create useful jobs for people that need work. There is so much infrastructure in this country that is deteriorating, why aren't we doing anything about that?

Instead we create jobs that inconvenience everyone and provide no real value. In fact, they're harming the airline industry, so you could argue they're a net negative on the economy.

The TSA was never really needed for anything other than security theater and creating bullshit jobs for politicians.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/6/1/8701741/tsa-screenings-hom...

> The Leap Motion comes in a really small, embeddable package and works over USB and can track hand movements quite accurately.

I've never tried one, but everyone I know that did said it was so bad they stopped using it after maybe 10 minutes of frustration.

I think a much more obvious question is why wouldn't they just write down what they meant instead of obfuscating their intentions?

You are literally looking for something that isn't there, because it is not written down.

I would love for a lawyer to chime in, because admittedly this is not my wheelhouse.

So what makes this different from the myriad other attempts to build a flying car?

IANAL, but the fact that it says nothing about an obligation (I don't even believe it's implied, but I'm not a historical legal scholar) leads me to believe you're inserting your own bias.

> And re applications - have you tried to google? No, I really mean it. You complain about me being condescending but you have posted an obviously unfounded comment, post another showing that you don't know much about the subject - and it is somehow my fault that I didn't spoon feed you with the information.

I stopped reading your comment after this, because you are being a condescending ass. If you want people to listen to what you have to say (and it's clearly a lot) you should try being more friendly.

> The Constitution requires that Congress setup laws for both copyright and patent

No it doesn't, it grants them the power but it doesn't specify they have to do it.

“The Congress shall have Power To…promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries….”

There is a big difference between having a power and being forced to use it.

> but it's not the truth

Unless you explain why, you're doing nothing to persuade anyone of anything other than employees at AirBnB disagree with the prevailing sentiment of HN. Having met the founders of AirBnB, I am incredibly skeptical of your claim, but I am willing to listen to what you have to say.