Hacker News Reader

rodigeron Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

Seems like that's what Lyft was hoping would be sufficient compromise. Per the release:

"We’ve spent hundreds of hours meeting with policymakers and labor leaders to craft an alternative proposal for drivers that includes a minimum earnings guarantee, mileage reimbursement, a health care subsidy, and occupational accident insurance, without the negative consequences."

rodigeron Rideshare operations are being suspended in California

Will be interesting to see how this plays out. Doesn't seem like it would be feasible to maintain all drivers as employees.

rodigeron Tampa teen accused of being ‘mastermind’ behind Twitter hack

Dump it through some mixers and it becomes a lot harder to tell who is who.

rodigeron ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

Fate similar to Snap? $SNAP is doing just fine and is up 38% this year. 17% DAU growth in the past year. I'm sure TikTok would be thrilled to have 17% user growth and increasing revenues 9 years down the line.

rodigeron Obese politicians signal corruption, study finds

More representative, but difficult to draw any "real" predictive power

rodigeron Ask HN: Is it possible to sell a startup, but also keep a small stake in it?

As I understand it, they'd buy 90-something% of your shares and you'd keep the rest.

rodigeron How objectivity in journalism became a matter of opinion

Facts without the corresponding counter are incredibly powerful at being "accurate" but still swaying opinion towards a bad take. Modern media abuses this.

There are facts to support most viewpoints, but most can also be readily attributed to other factors. However, when presented in certain lenses it's near impossible to tell who is correct (without going off and doing independent research).

rodigeron Live BTC transactions in Twitter hack

...no, you aren't going to get access to all these high profile accounts at the same time with sms porting. This is almost definitely internal.

rodigeron Blackballed by PayPal, Sci-Hub switches to Bitcoin

There's nothing stopping trusted 3rd-parties (e.g. mastercard/visa) from building wrappers to hold the btc in the meantime and mitigate end-user risk (full circle woo!). Definitely fewer protections from bad-actors with direct btc transactions, but that's by design (e.g. no requirement for a third party)

rodigeron Hundreds arrested as crime chat network cracked

In case you aren't being sarcastic he likely means $385k in BTC.

Edit: I was wrong holy shit that's a lot of money.

rodigeron Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

As unjust as the results/motivation of this are, the law itself does not vary based on the person committing it.

rodigeron Blackballed by PayPal, Sci-Hub switches to Bitcoin

"Tap-and-go" is an illusion, and like I said the payment is not fully processed for 1-3 days. Low-risk merchants (e.g. under $100) can accept crypto on 0 confirmations (just checking wallet balance) and accept the double-spend risk. This is similar to the chargeback risk merchants take by accepting credit cards (albeit with fewer protections on the crypto side).

I agree BTC fees are high, but for even moderately large transactions (>$25), it is cheaper than credit card/ApplePay/GooglePay/Paypal/AmazonPay fees.

Edit: and even after processing, chargebacks are often viable for up to 60 days.

rodigeron Blackballed by PayPal, Sci-Hub switches to Bitcoin

Processing != complete. A credit card transaction generally takes 1-3 days to process. Bitcoin is start -> complete in < 10 mins on average.

rodigeron Boston bans use of facial recognition technology

Do you think the news is designed to provide an accurate representation of reality? I don't necessarily disagree with you, but pointing to the news isn't exactly convincing.

rodigeron Patagonia joins growing list of companies boycotting Facebook ads

Probably more room for the smaller players to get their ads seen. Idk if pricing or visibility is realistically affected by market saturation though.

rodigeron California bans private prisons and immigration detention centers (2019)

Yeah important to note the article is from 2019, and not in response to any recent events as you might assume.

rodigeron Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site

Enjoy the multi-petabyte full node :)

rodigeron The Cities Taking Up Calls to Defund the Police

Having done work as an EMT, people get violent on their own volition more often than you may think. Completely anecdotal but I've seen dozens of drunk/high/mentally ill etc people attack others and zero incidents where the cops escalated the situation.

It seems to me that cops/no cops each has its own pros and cons and neither is a clear "right" solution.

We definitely need more mental health support and less frivolous prosecution for things like drug possession and homelessness. Social programs would (hopefully) go a long way in addressing some of these at their root cause.

rodigeron The Cities Taking Up Calls to Defund the Police

It's a hard question because many "social services" calls are violent. Do we expect a social worker to protect a child from an abusive parent? Do we send both an officer and a social worker? How do we know the people calling 911 were accurate in their description of the situation or that it won't escalate?

Regardless, I agree that the dialogue is important and overdue.

rodigeron The Cities Taking Up Calls to Defund the Police

"Whole" reason seems a bit naive-- that probably plays a part in many of these instances but there are many others where it does not.

rodigeron Facebook’s TransCoder AI Translates Between Programming Languages

"When translating from C++ to Java, 74.8% of TransCoder’s generations returned the expected outputs.

When translating from C++ to Python, 67.2% of TransCoder’s generations returned the expected outputs.

When translating from Java to C++, 91.6% of TransCoder’s generations returned the expected outputs.

When translating from Python to Java, 56.1% of TransCoder’s generations returned the expected outputs.

When translating from Python to C++, 57.8% of TransCoder’s generations returned the expected outputs.

When translating from Java to Python, 68.7% of TransCoder’s generations returned the expected outputs."

Probably beats standard models but at first glance still seems far from useful for any sizable project.

rodigeron If you see the cops, start recording

The number of defensive instances of gun use are at least equal to the number of criminal use (some studies say it dwarfs it but that's been questioned). If defensive is even 1 greater than offensive, wouldn't guns have made us net safer?

Edit: After thinking about it a bit more I can see how the average outcome is deadlier with guns regardless of who "wins"

rodigeron What Is Environmental Racism?

It seems to me that there is a higher correlation with living in poor densely-populated areas than there is with race. E.g if I move to one of the areas more harmed by pollution I wouldn't be exempt because of my lighter skin color. I've always thought it's odd to call it environmental racism when race isn't the causal factor.

rodigeron US Jobless Rate Fell in May as Hiring Rebounded

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23428340

Dupe

rodigeron Ask HN: Who is working on visual search?

Computer vision would probably be the term that would get you best results

rodigeron Revolut staff claim they’ve been told to quit their jobs or be fired

And asking about your GPA? With 10+ years experience? For a head of engineering?

rodigeron I'm resigning from my job at Facebook

Or they'll just ask him to leave. If you quit on bad terms they likely won't want you anywhere near the building- you aren't fired you just aren't allowed in the office anymore.

rodigeron I'm resigning from my job at Facebook

Flags are generally from user votes- so probably too inflammatory/political to some here.

Per the guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

rodigeron Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz Is Out

I mean that is the state of Nintendo as a productivity tool, which is likely the point OP was trying to convey.

rodigeron Hijacking the Verified Knowledge Panel

these hyper-specific TLD's are likely quite cheap.