Re: Seattle becomes first in U.S. to protect gig worke...
When I was in college, I used to work Uber as a side gig. One day, while working, my account was blocked, and I would couldn't pick up any more passengers. I was 2 hours away from home. Apparently, one of the customers had filed a complaint about a missing item (gloves or some bs like that), it was not in my car. My account was blocked until the case was "reviewed". So I had to drive back 2 hours without picking up any passengers. (The passenger later found the item in their bag)
abaymado, 6 hours ago
When I was in college, I used to work Uber as a side gig. One day, while working, my account was blocked, and I would couldn't pick up any more passengers. I was 2 hours away from home. Apparently, one of the customers had filed a complaint about a missing item (gloves or some bs like that), it was not in my car. My account was blocked until the case was "reviewed". So I had to drive back 2 hours without picking up any passengers. (The passenger later found the item in their bag)
abaymado, 6 hours ago
Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve it...
I'll just assume you neglected to read TFA, because if you had, you would have discovered that it links to an official Google source that states CNET shouldn't be doing this.[1]
[1] https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1689018769782476800
bagacrap, 9 hours ago
I'll just assume you neglected to read TFA, because if you had, you would have discovered that it links to an official Google source that states CNET shouldn't be doing this.[1]
[1] https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1689018769782476800
bagacrap, 9 hours ago
Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve it...
This is some bullshit. It’s bad enough that a lot of sites with content going back 10-20 years have linkrot or have simply gone offline. But I am at a loss for words that they’re disappearing content on purpose just for SEO rankings.
If this is what online publishing has come to we have seriously screwed up.
jzb, 14 hours ago
This is some bullshit. It’s bad enough that a lot of sites with content going back 10-20 years have linkrot or have simply gone offline. But I am at a loss for words that they’re disappearing content on purpose just for SEO rankings.
If this is what online publishing has come to we have seriously screwed up.
jzb, 14 hours ago
Re: GPT Unicorn has drawn a unicorn
It has become common knowledge that GPT4 (and also 3.5) have problems with deterministic outputs (even at T=0). So what we're seeing here is just the effect of random sampling, not any actual change to the model itself. If you scroll down, you'll see other close attempts by the exact same model that could already be counted as a win depending on who you ask.
Edit: This comment section is a super fascinating case study on the inherent flaws in human cognition. Especially when it comes to seeing patterns in random noise. The fact that some people believe that the model really has to have changed in the past few days is amazing, because if you've kept up with the GPT architecture and the way OpenAI does things (especially on the API), it is incredibly obvious that nothing has happened. But people who want to believe that something has happened will definitely also start to see something.
sigmoid10, 4 hours ago
It has become common knowledge that GPT4 (and also 3.5) have problems with deterministic outputs (even at T=0). So what we're seeing here is just the effect of random sampling, not any actual change to the model itself. If you scroll down, you'll see other close attempts by the exact same model that could already be counted as a win depending on who you ask.
Edit: This comment section is a super fascinating case study on the inherent flaws in human cognition. Especially when it comes to seeing patterns in random noise. The fact that some people believe that the model really has to have changed in the past few days is amazing, because if you've kept up with the GPT architecture and the way OpenAI does things (especially on the API), it is incredibly obvious that nothing has happened. But people who want to believe that something has happened will definitely also start to see something.
sigmoid10, 4 hours ago
Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension dev...
Maintainer here. My extension is pretty much unmonetizable so any offer I receive would require some degree of a moral sacrifice. The least intrusive offer I've seen so far is to put a reciprocal link to somebody else's extension inside of mine, kind of like DarkReader is doing on their website. Even though it won't compromise any of my users data, the reason I'm not doing this is because it indirectly endorses that other extension and I don't control what they do with their users data.
extesy, 19 hours ago
Maintainer here. My extension is pretty much unmonetizable so any offer I receive would require some degree of a moral sacrifice. The least intrusive offer I've seen so far is to put a reciprocal link to somebody else's extension inside of mine, kind of like DarkReader is doing on their website. Even though it won't compromise any of my users data, the reason I'm not doing this is because it indirectly endorses that other extension and I don't control what they do with their users data.
extesy, 19 hours ago
Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve it...
In my experience SEO experts are the most superstitious tech people I ever met. One guy wanted me to reorder HTTP header fields to match another site. He wanted our minified HTML to include a linebreak just after a certain meta element just because some other site had it. I got requests to match variable names in minified JS just because googles own minified JS had that name.
SahAssar, 15 hours ago
In my experience SEO experts are the most superstitious tech people I ever met. One guy wanted me to reorder HTTP header fields to match another site. He wanted our minified HTML to include a linebreak just after a certain meta element just because some other site had it. I got requests to match variable names in minified JS just because googles own minified JS had that name.
SahAssar, 15 hours ago
Re: Temptations of an open-source Chrome extension dev...
FWIW, and since a few of you probably use it… I own the JSON Formatter extension [0], which I created and open-sourced 12 years ago and have maintained [1] ever since, with 2 million users today. And I solemnly swear that I will never add any code that sends any data anywhere, nor let it fall into the hands of anyone else who would.
I’ve been emailed several tempting cash offers from shady people who presumably want to steal everyone’s data or worse. I sometimes wish I had never put my name on it so I could just take the money without harming my reputation, but I did, so I’m stuck with being honourable. On the plus side I will always be able to say that I never sold out.
[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/json-formatter/bcjindcccaagfpapjjmafapmmgkkhgoa
[1] low effort tbh
cal85, 19 hours ago
FWIW, and since a few of you probably use it… I own the JSON Formatter extension [0], which I created and open-sourced 12 years ago and have maintained [1] ever since, with 2 million users today. And I solemnly swear that I will never add any code that sends any data anywhere, nor let it fall into the hands of anyone else who would.
I’ve been emailed several tempting cash offers from shady people who presumably want to steal everyone’s data or worse. I sometimes wish I had never put my name on it so I could just take the money without harming my reputation, but I did, so I’m stuck with being honourable. On the plus side I will always be able to say that I never sold out.
[0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/json-formatter/bcjindcccaagfpapjjmafapmmgkkhgoa
[1] low effort tbh
cal85, 19 hours ago
Google
JSON Formatter - Chrome Web Store
Makes JSON easy to read. Open source.
Re: MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device nam...
This is most likely due to those names not being allowed for files or folders in the Windows file system. MS Teams channels create a matching folder in SharePoint where file attachments are stored.
conscion, 3 hours ago
This is most likely due to those names not being allowed for files or folders in the Windows file system. MS Teams channels create a matching folder in SharePoint where file attachments are stored.
conscion, 3 hours ago
Re: The Future of the Vim Project
My brother passed away very suddenly a few years ago, and I was put in charge of wrapping up and archiving his "digital" life. We were very lucky that we had access to a recovery email for his main gmail account (as well as a couple of passwords that his partner knew) and was able to access and archive virtually all data we could think of (services like Google Takeout were invaluable). I realized that if this had happened to me, it would have been virtually impossible to do, as all my passwords and credentials are in my password manager, and the password to that was only in my head.
It's a good thing to plan for this eventuality, to make it easy for your family and friends to wind up your "digital life" after you've passed. 1Password has a very good solution for this, with a "recovery document" you can print out and write down your password on, which contains instructions anyone else would need to access your 1Password account. I gave a copy of this document printed out to a small number of people I trust implicitly.
You never know when something sudden can happen to you. For the sake of those you leave behind, it's a nice gift to plan for this eventuality, even if it seems far off at the moment.
OskarS, 8 hours ago
My brother passed away very suddenly a few years ago, and I was put in charge of wrapping up and archiving his "digital" life. We were very lucky that we had access to a recovery email for his main gmail account (as well as a couple of passwords that his partner knew) and was able to access and archive virtually all data we could think of (services like Google Takeout were invaluable). I realized that if this had happened to me, it would have been virtually impossible to do, as all my passwords and credentials are in my password manager, and the password to that was only in my head.
It's a good thing to plan for this eventuality, to make it easy for your family and friends to wind up your "digital life" after you've passed. 1Password has a very good solution for this, with a "recovery document" you can print out and write down your password on, which contains instructions anyone else would need to access your 1Password account. I gave a copy of this document printed out to a small number of people I trust implicitly.
You never know when something sudden can happen to you. For the sake of those you leave behind, it's a nice gift to plan for this eventuality, even if it seems far off at the moment.
OskarS, 8 hours ago
Re: Was Y Combinator worth it?
You know, I've been reading Hacker News for god-knows-how-long, and it never occurred to me to look up what Y Combinator even was.
electricduck, 4 hours ago
You know, I've been reading Hacker News for god-knows-how-long, and it never occurred to me to look up what Y Combinator even was.
electricduck, 4 hours ago
Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License
Pulumi Founder/CEO here.
The blog post is disingenuous. We tried many times to contribute upstream fixes to Terraform providers, but HashiCorp would never accept them. So we've had to maintain forks. They lost their OSS DNA a long time ago, and this move just puts the final nail in the coffin.
Thankfully over time, they already pushed responsibility for most Terraform providers back onto their partners, so I'm hopeful the ecosystem of providers can still stay vibrant and open.
We are deep believers in open source---heck my last project at Microsoft was to take .NET open source and cross-platform, our CTO helped found TypeScript, and Pulumi is an Apache open source project---it seems HashiCorp no longer is.
joeduffy, 7 hours ago
Pulumi Founder/CEO here.
The blog post is disingenuous. We tried many times to contribute upstream fixes to Terraform providers, but HashiCorp would never accept them. So we've had to maintain forks. They lost their OSS DNA a long time ago, and this move just puts the final nail in the coffin.
Thankfully over time, they already pushed responsibility for most Terraform providers back onto their partners, so I'm hopeful the ecosystem of providers can still stay vibrant and open.
We are deep believers in open source---heck my last project at Microsoft was to take .NET open source and cross-platform, our CTO helped found TypeScript, and Pulumi is an Apache open source project---it seems HashiCorp no longer is.
joeduffy, 7 hours ago
Re: HashiCorp adopts Business Source License
All that I get from this is that HashiCorp is no longer an open source company.
> However, there are other vendors who take advantage of pure OSS models, and the community work on OSS projects, for their own commercial goals, without providing material contributions back. We don’t believe this is in the spirit of open source.
This is 100% in the spirit of open source. If this is a problem for them, why not adopt an open source license that compels developers to open source their code instead, like the AGPL?
This is purely a way for HashiCorp to ensure they are the only ones who can commercialize these formerly open source projects. Which is fine. But just go closed source, then, and own that, instead of trying to have it both ways.
jamestanderson, 9 hours ago
All that I get from this is that HashiCorp is no longer an open source company.
> However, there are other vendors who take advantage of pure OSS models, and the community work on OSS projects, for their own commercial goals, without providing material contributions back. We don’t believe this is in the spirit of open source.
This is 100% in the spirit of open source. If this is a problem for them, why not adopt an open source license that compels developers to open source their code instead, like the AGPL?
This is purely a way for HashiCorp to ensure they are the only ones who can commercialize these formerly open source projects. Which is fine. But just go closed source, then, and own that, instead of trying to have it both ways.
jamestanderson, 9 hours ago
Re: Firefox desktop extensions coming soon for the upc...
There's a lot of hate any Firefox and the "blessed apps." But come on, chrome and Safari don't sorry add-ons at all!
I know there are other apps that support add-ons but the fact is that Firefox is __the only__ "mainstream" browser that does this (quotes because it's 0.25% in the US, as the 4th most popular, behind Samsung fucking Internet).
It's popular to hate on Firefox, but this is the nerdiest of nerd issues and if we're being honest, all this has accomplished in the last decade is a decrease in market share and keeping Safari and (more so) Chrome dictate the Internet and user experience. Firefox being so low puts no pressure on Chrome to add add-ons. Firefox being so low just means Chrome can continue pushing the ad first Internet.
Yeah, it's fun to complain, but which do you hate more? That Firefox only provides 80-90% of what you want (when major competitors provide __0%__), or Google dictating the Internet (like AMP)? Complain, but maybe tone it down a bit. This is not the holy war you want.
godelski, 7 hours ago
There's a lot of hate any Firefox and the "blessed apps." But come on, chrome and Safari don't sorry add-ons at all!
I know there are other apps that support add-ons but the fact is that Firefox is __the only__ "mainstream" browser that does this (quotes because it's 0.25% in the US, as the 4th most popular, behind Samsung fucking Internet).
It's popular to hate on Firefox, but this is the nerdiest of nerd issues and if we're being honest, all this has accomplished in the last decade is a decrease in market share and keeping Safari and (more so) Chrome dictate the Internet and user experience. Firefox being so low puts no pressure on Chrome to add add-ons. Firefox being so low just means Chrome can continue pushing the ad first Internet.
Yeah, it's fun to complain, but which do you hate more? That Firefox only provides 80-90% of what you want (when major competitors provide __0%__), or Google dictating the Internet (like AMP)? Complain, but maybe tone it down a bit. This is not the holy war you want.
godelski, 7 hours ago
Re: MS Teams channels cannot contain MS-DOS device nam...
Circa 1998 I was a teenage Linux zealot who would attend LAN parties carrying a Linux box. It actually worked -- at the time, WINE practically existed to support Starcraft, Quake 2 could run natively, and that covered like 95% of what people were playing.
One time I thought it would be funny to run a shell script that looped through every Windows share on the network and tried to open `CON/CON` on it, resulting in a prompt Blue Screen of Death for each machine.
For some reason my friends did not think it was funny.
kentonv, 21 hours ago
Circa 1998 I was a teenage Linux zealot who would attend LAN parties carrying a Linux box. It actually worked -- at the time, WINE practically existed to support Starcraft, Quake 2 could run natively, and that covered like 95% of what people were playing.
One time I thought it would be funny to run a shell script that looped through every Windows share on the network and tried to open `CON/CON` on it, resulting in a prompt Blue Screen of Death for each machine.
For some reason my friends did not think it was funny.
kentonv, 21 hours ago
Re: Browsers barely care what HTTP status code your we...
(I'm not sure there's any way to find the HTTP status code in a modern Firefox environment short of using web developer tools. It's not in places like 'Page Info' as far as I can see.)
I'm old enough to remember times before browsers showed 'friendly' error messages, and a 500 response from a server would display a '500 Server Error' message to the user. Users hated it. They'd panic and think they'd broken the website somehow. It was horrible from a support perspective, and if the user was new to the web it sometimes made them very anxious about using the web in the future.
Users have no business seeing error codes. Those are for devs. Hiding them away in devtools is a very good thing.
onion2k, 11 hours ago
(I'm not sure there's any way to find the HTTP status code in a modern Firefox environment short of using web developer tools. It's not in places like 'Page Info' as far as I can see.)
I'm old enough to remember times before browsers showed 'friendly' error messages, and a 500 response from a server would display a '500 Server Error' message to the user. Users hated it. They'd panic and think they'd broken the website somehow. It was horrible from a support perspective, and if the user was new to the web it sometimes made them very anxious about using the web in the future.
Users have no business seeing error codes. Those are for devs. Hiding them away in devtools is a very good thing.
onion2k, 11 hours ago
Re: YouTube-Dl Site Goes Offline as Hosting Provider E...
As noted in the article, the project still has a page on github:
http://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/
I've moved on to https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp anyways.
But this is still an infuriating move. youtube-dl wasn't doing anything infringing on its site, was it?
skyyler, 3 hours ago
As noted in the article, the project still has a page on github:
http://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/
I've moved on to https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp anyways.
But this is still an infuriating move. youtube-dl wasn't doing anything infringing on its site, was it?
skyyler, 3 hours ago
GitHub
GitHub - yt-dlp/yt-dlp: A feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader
A feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader - yt-dlp/yt-dlp
Re: RFC 9446 Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden...
I havent read the full transcript, but I find it terrifyingly fascinating how the US has managed to turn Snowden into a pariah, owing in part to its own revoking of his passport while in transit through Russia.
Anybody who saw him speak knows he was doing everything possible to make it about the content, and not him as a person- only putting his name to the light to prove it wasn't false or the result of some disgruntled employee trying to stick it to his manager.
Yet the narrative very quickly focused on him; the content of his character, his upbringing, his connection to the government, the fact that he is in Russia and decidedly not on the content of the leaks which quickly got glossed over and to date I am unaware of single arrest due to it- despite clear evidence of lawbreaking (including but not limited to: deliberately lying to the Senate).
Lets not forget that diplomatic plane that was downed across international territories because they suspected Snowden was inside.
Despite posing no continued threat to the US, they sure spent a lot of effort making him as uncredible as possible yet anyone who has eyes sees it as completely transparent.
The scariest part of it all is that people actually are falling for that narrative, do not look at the leaks for what they are (proof of unconstitutional behaviour by a branch of government) and call Snowden a plant or a terrorist- ironically the kinds of people who would otherwise argue against government interference. Boggles my mind, and scares me to death how clearly susceptible the population is to disinformation.
dijit, 6 hours ago
I havent read the full transcript, but I find it terrifyingly fascinating how the US has managed to turn Snowden into a pariah, owing in part to its own revoking of his passport while in transit through Russia.
Anybody who saw him speak knows he was doing everything possible to make it about the content, and not him as a person- only putting his name to the light to prove it wasn't false or the result of some disgruntled employee trying to stick it to his manager.
Yet the narrative very quickly focused on him; the content of his character, his upbringing, his connection to the government, the fact that he is in Russia and decidedly not on the content of the leaks which quickly got glossed over and to date I am unaware of single arrest due to it- despite clear evidence of lawbreaking (including but not limited to: deliberately lying to the Senate).
Lets not forget that diplomatic plane that was downed across international territories because they suspected Snowden was inside.
Despite posing no continued threat to the US, they sure spent a lot of effort making him as uncredible as possible yet anyone who has eyes sees it as completely transparent.
The scariest part of it all is that people actually are falling for that narrative, do not look at the leaks for what they are (proof of unconstitutional behaviour by a branch of government) and call Snowden a plant or a terrorist- ironically the kinds of people who would otherwise argue against government interference. Boggles my mind, and scares me to death how clearly susceptible the population is to disinformation.
dijit, 6 hours ago
Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-of...
I understand the merits of WFH and in-person work. One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee, and more so, employers who have a delusion that their workplace is important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person.
90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" and have no chance at becoming some big world changing venture. Lots of employers like to delude themselves that their company is some big important, cutting-edge enterprise that's making a real impact in the world. People just work because they need to. Claiming that WFH is bad because you can't bounce ideas off other employees and get into the real world-changing "deep work" is silly because that's just the employer overvaluing the importance of their company. Those companies do exist, but they're in the minority, and employers smart enough to have founded/run those kinds of companies usually are smart enough to see the merits of a hybrid policy.
atleastoptimal, 3 hours ago
I understand the merits of WFH and in-person work. One thing that is however funny is the guilt tripping used by employers who have this straw-man version of a lazy WFH employee, and more so, employers who have a delusion that their workplace is important enough that people need to sacrifice a large portion of their lives just for the opportunity to be there in person.
90% of jobs aren't people's "passions" and have no chance at becoming some big world changing venture. Lots of employers like to delude themselves that their company is some big important, cutting-edge enterprise that's making a real impact in the world. People just work because they need to. Claiming that WFH is bad because you can't bounce ideas off other employees and get into the real world-changing "deep work" is silly because that's just the employer overvaluing the importance of their company. Those companies do exist, but they're in the minority, and employers smart enough to have founded/run those kinds of companies usually are smart enough to see the merits of a hybrid policy.
atleastoptimal, 3 hours ago
Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-of...
I find it funny that when people were required to be home, employers talked about what great productivity they were getting with people at home. Then when it isn't required anymore, they want everyone back in the office for...productivity. My guess is that most employers really have no way to measure if an employee is being productive or not so managers are just reporting what makes them look good...and now we are back to where managers will look better with lots of people running around the office.
troupe, 12 hours ago
I find it funny that when people were required to be home, employers talked about what great productivity they were getting with people at home. Then when it isn't required anymore, they want everyone back in the office for...productivity. My guess is that most employers really have no way to measure if an employee is being productive or not so managers are just reporting what makes them look good...and now we are back to where managers will look better with lots of people running around the office.
troupe, 12 hours ago
Re: 80% of bosses say they regret earlier return-to-of...
> I find it funny that when people were required to be home, employers talked about what great productivity they were getting with people at home. Then when it isn't required anymore, they want everyone back in the office for...productivity.
The decades of evidence that open office plans are utter shit for productivity already proved that the emperor wears no clothes and they have no idea what makes for better productivity.
lamontcg, 17 hours ago
> I find it funny that when people were required to be home, employers talked about what great productivity they were getting with people at home. Then when it isn't required anymore, they want everyone back in the office for...productivity.
The decades of evidence that open office plans are utter shit for productivity already proved that the emperor wears no clothes and they have no idea what makes for better productivity.
lamontcg, 17 hours ago
Re: How a startup loses its spark
I really like the approach of Netflix of 10 years ago when it was still small. They hired mature people so they could get rid of processes. Indeed, they actually tried to de-process everything. As a result, things just happened. Non-event was often mentioned and expected in Netflix at that time. Case in point, active-active regions just happened in a few months. A really easy to use deployment tool, Asgard, just happened. The VP of CDN at that time said Netflix would build its own CDN and partner with ISPs. Well, it just happened in merely 6 months with 12 people or so. Netflix said it was going to support streaming and move away from its monolithic Tomcat app, and it just happened. And the engineers there? I can't speak for others but I myself had just one meeting a week -- our team meeting where we just casually chatted with each other, to the point that the team members still stayed close to each other and regularly meet nowadays. I also learned that the managers and directors had tons of meetings to set the right context for the team so engineers could just go wild and be productive. At that time, I thought it was natural, but it turned out it was a really high bar.
g9yuayon, 6 hours ago
I really like the approach of Netflix of 10 years ago when it was still small. They hired mature people so they could get rid of processes. Indeed, they actually tried to de-process everything. As a result, things just happened. Non-event was often mentioned and expected in Netflix at that time. Case in point, active-active regions just happened in a few months. A really easy to use deployment tool, Asgard, just happened. The VP of CDN at that time said Netflix would build its own CDN and partner with ISPs. Well, it just happened in merely 6 months with 12 people or so. Netflix said it was going to support streaming and move away from its monolithic Tomcat app, and it just happened. And the engineers there? I can't speak for others but I myself had just one meeting a week -- our team meeting where we just casually chatted with each other, to the point that the team members still stayed close to each other and regularly meet nowadays. I also learned that the managers and directors had tons of meetings to set the right context for the team so engineers could just go wild and be productive. At that time, I thought it was natural, but it turned out it was a really high bar.
g9yuayon, 6 hours ago