sebleon

Ah right on - didn't realize Instacart would be taking a portion of it... and it looks like it would be taxed, effectively making every dollar into a $0.70 tip...

Seems like Google/Waymo has known about this for a while, funny how they timed this lawsuit announcement during the Fowler blog post uproar

Pooling tips is quite common place in the restaurant industry, this isn't exactly a new way to f* over workers. While this move will reduce the pay for some shoppers, it will help many shoppers that earn less in tips for structural reasons. Ie. servicing low-income neighborhoods, racism & sexism from the tipper, etc

this is actually pretty interesting, thanks for sharing. didn't realize that upfront CAC represented the lion's share of E[cost] in renter's insurance...

There's always non-zero work involved with open-sourcing stuff. How would Apple benefit from this move?

As someone that has dabbled in Android development, I have to say that Xcode is light years ahead of its competitors re: developer friendliness. It's realistic from a complete novice to setup their environment and create a full app in a few hours. Just getting your environment setup for Android can take a whole day or more.

I'm surprised by how few of these comments actually touch on the suggestions in this letter. Overall, they seem like small improvements that won't really move the needle on Xcode's effectiveness... Breaking up targets to make 15sec compilation times to <1sec would be nice though

Things I do with every project: -Don't use the interface builder, easier to do all UI work programmatically - Use Pods

Ha, classic straw man argument

Ha, this is part of a well-known phenomenon where people are promoted until they're bad at their job. Decoupling pay from title definitely makes sense!

What do you guys think Google Cloud's margins are like? Presumably, Google is able to run a data center more efficiently than Snap could, meaning that the savings of running their own data centers will be strictly less than GC's margins... thoughts?

Agreed, education is probably the most high leverage investment out there for society. That being said, I'm highly skeptical that it will be fixed by a profit-driven, venture-backed business.

Much like healthcare, education's goals dont fit capitalisms mold.

This is cool!

On a related note, someone should make Sketch files collaborative in real time =D

This seems like technology for technology's sake, with zero consideration for ethics.

I love how this article focuses on the challenges faced by an individual. It's really great to see this perspective. Sometimes it's hard to grasp how policy change will affect everyday life when we're presented by simply stats and facts.

Was it ever?

"When William Prout isolated the big three macronutrients, scientists figured they now understood food and what the body needs from it; when the vitamins were isolated a few decades later, scientists thought, O.K., now we really understand food and what the body needs to be healthy; today it’s the polyphenols and carotenoids that seem all-important. But who knows what the hell else is going on deep in the soul of a carrot?"

Ha, I'd love to hear what the soylent folks would say about this passage.

More likely: subdermal implant that monitors nutrients in your blood.

Ah, looks like you're right:

USDA: "Wages, salaries, and contract labor expenses represent roughly 17 percent of total variable farm costs, and as much as 40 percent of costs in labor intensive crops such as fruits, vegetables, and nursery products." [1]

[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/back...

> You keep throwing the phrase "petro-chemical fertilizers"...

Given that most fertilizers are composed of chemicals derived from petroleum, it's accurate. I don't use the term "conventional farming" because these techniques are extremely modern.

> Can you please elaborate on how fixing nitrogen on industrial scale is "disastrous"

To be clear, fixing nitrogen is fine, bacteria do this already naturally. The problem with fertilizers used at the industrial scale is that they end up ruining local water supplies + killing local ecosystem of bacteria and insects [1]. After a few years of using industrial fertilizers, famers end up ruining their soil and end up being dependent on fertilizer suppliers for future crops.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-fertilizers-h...

Right, I've heard the Western narrative on Norman Borlaug and the "Green Revolution".

I'd highly encourage you to read through the work of Vandana Shiva. [1] She'll provide a well-researched, critical view as an actual stakeholder in India's food system.

I look down upon petro-chemical fertilizers because of their disastrous effects on the environment and food security. Happy to elaborate, but Dr. Shiva work does it better.

[1] http://vandanashiva.com/?p=291

He's pointing out flaws underlying the question. Definitely relevant.

This comment is spot on. There's good reason to believe that the low-hanging fruits in improving agriculture are non-tech changes in farming. For example, a province in India was able to improve rice yields by 45% by transplanting seedlings earlier in a grid pattern [1].

I doubt that eliminating human labor costs would move the needle, automating farms seems like a low ROI move.

If you follow the money, it's easy to see why the US has focused its research on high-tech petrochemical fertilizer farming and GMOs. You can sell proprietary fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, and seeds, but it's much harder to monetize new farming techniques.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/feb/16/i...

Unlikely that we'll see improvements in Fabric services for a while... presumably, engineering resources will be focused on integrating with Firebase :(

Anyone recommend alternatives for Crashlytics & Digits?

Unlikely that we'll see improvements in Fabric services for a while... presumably, engineering resources will be focused on integrating with Firebase :(

Anyone recommend alternatives for Crashlytics and Digits?

No surprises here. Sad truth is that science isn't driven by the search for objective truth. Rather, research funding determines which way the scientific literature will sway.

They likely won't, but would be awesome if someone here on HN did!

At the end of the day, it comes down to trusting WhatsApp. Even without a backdoor in their protocol, they can easily do all kinds of things.

For instance, it could instruct specific clients to encrypt and send each message twice: one for the recipient, and one for the WhatsApp server. As long as this was off for 99.9% of users, it's unlikely that security researchers would ever detect this.

Ha, that's interesting, what caused this shift in perception?

Interesting, your app store description mentions previous launches from before June 2016. Seems like you got some solid attention on previous launch(es), what kind of traction are you looking for on your definitive launch?

Big fan of the Airbnb approach of launching until someone notices!

http://www.businessinsider.com/top-17-startups-launched-in-2...

Yes, definitely feasible, but challenging.

Some ideas: a) Focus on a niche, like the best search experience for hackers, or best search experience on mobile for high school students, etc.

b) Do content-based ranking, ie. figure out the good-ness of a website based on an automated analysis of what it's about, instead of depending on the link-graph that powers PageRank.

This is awesome, really happy to see them release such valuable data!