Who is this woman and what is this "prestigious" award?

umm... how does this help the US technology scene? If India gave go ahead, and they launched from India, what is the issue? if they get complaints about operating in India, wouldn't they just move to another country? I mean Vancouver is less than 2 hrs from California, if they want to be "close".

"While an effective ratio of 3.82 to 1 is still not a fair split that we might achieve in a free market, it is the best songwriters have ever had under the compulsory license...".. How is this not a free market? So many streaming services, where some are even illegal streaming services. The song writer / singer is free to use whatever platform.. No? Or choose not to use their own platform. Didn't a bunch of music producers even create a platform just to give more money back to the artists? How is that going?

"a reward for having to deal with the buses that carry Google employees." Some of these uneducated bums that are scattered around Mountain View, simply b/c they or their families moved there a few decades earlier, should be more appreciative of the high tech workers. If Google and other companies (including from 80s and 90s) didn't adopt the valley as "the valley" their houses won't be worth as much and they wouldn't be sitting on millions due to their "accidental" real estate investment. Also these bums don't pay anything for their property taxes (tied to the original house price) and the "Google employees" who are new to the area pick up the slack and pay their share of property taxes too, given the houses have gone up so much in the meantime.

Excellent! We are in a bubble! Hopefully with this and Trump's tax plan, property values will correct in California to a more reasonable point!

More VC subsidized taxi rides for me!

He would have cleared probably over $200K if he retired normally. Now he is in the poor house with only $90 million.

Yup, I went to the site and it asked for name and last 6, and I was like "GTFO"... Are you kidding me? How can these imbeciles NOT know that this looks like a classic phishing site.

Yes, taxing on revenue can be accomplished by sales tax. What's the problem? Or do these countries want to charge sales tax AND also double tax the corporation again for the same sale as an additional "revenue tax"? First would be ok. The second clearly not.

If Uber driver is taking a client and crashes into someone (or someone crashes into his car), does the Uber driver expect his "regular non-commercial" insurance company to pay for this passenger's injuries or will he pay out of pocket or will Uber pay for the passengers injuries? Alternatively, do people think that as long as the Uber driver is driving within the number of KM that he specified he would drive within / year to the insurance company (his regular non-commercial insurance), then the nature of the passenger (personal OR non-profit ride-share OR for-profit ride-share) does not matter and the insurance company "should" pay? Serious non-rhetorical question - would like to hear peoples' thoughts.

What Paul Graham says is absolutely true. But further to any H1B reform, you need a bit more fundamental attitude change as well. Speaking as someone who is closer to the US than most (Canada), I think the Silicon Valley powers that be are way too hung up on American institutions. In my case, I went to the University of Waterloo in Canada. Not b/c I couldn't get into one of the top US schools had I tried (e.g. did well in math contests, including scoring 9/15 on the AIME), but due to various circumstances, going to Waterloo is what made the most sense for me and my family at the time. And there were many other students who "settled" for a local school instead of going to the US as well. Anyway, my point here is not to "talk about my self" - but to simply point out, there are people who "could have" gotten into the top US schools if the circumstances were different. Just b/c people from different backgrounds/schools doesn't mean they are of a lesser standard than someone who may have graduated from a MIT or a Stanford. They could be worse, or sometimes, they could even be better. But, as things stand now, if you try to make waves in the valley, someone coming from MIT, Stanford, etc. has a certain artificial "aura" that may not be shared by alumni from some of the foreign (but locally reputed) schools - at least for the first stage of the process. This attitude has to change as well.

I am torn about this. If you have a complicate problem to solve, and you spend a couple of months in a team of engineers laying out the different components and the APIs after researching what interfaces make the most sense, that IS pretty inventive. I mean, we all know many MANY programmers/engineers who write atrocious code and have no idea how to design a proper interface. They will "functionally" get something working, but it's just atrocious code. That being said, why SHOULDN"T someone who designs "proper" code get some kind of protection? I am not saying a 20 years worth of patent protection, but the limited protection (in terms of "scope" - not length) that copyright offers. Why should some other guy be able to come in, just take all the work that you put in in figuring out a well designed API and just be able to duplicate it? With all due respect given to all this "blah blah we don't want protection for software blah blah".. There is something inherently morally wrong about being able to coattail ride on someones hard work. Perhaps the compromise would be to ensure that "accidental" copyright violations would not be punished, but intentional copyright violations would be punished..

"I don't want to be driven in a bus or car that doesn't conform to safety regulations or by a driver that has been working so many hours that he is sleepy or otherwise not able to safely bring me from A to B." Well, then don't use Uber. But there is enough people who WILL want to use Uber. This is not one of those things where you need to "compromise" so that some people are disadvantaged SO THAT another group may be disadvantaged. This is simply about eliminating choice where the two systems (regulated taxi drivers and uber type system) can easily co-exist. People like you can overpay for your taxis and people like me can use Uber (and voluntarily be exposed to drivers that don't conform to safety regulations and may fall asleep).

For some reason, the first time I scanned over the title, I read it as "Toyota and Sony bring real life racism to the game world". I was waiting for an epic story - but instead only got a story about how some peeps are using GPS data in a simulation.

There is nothing elegant about this. It's complicating something much more readable. Granted, elegance is related to simplicity, readability, AND efficiency - among others.. However, efficiency should not trump the other attributes - that's the job of the compiler. It's best not to confuse the roles of the two: the programmer and the compiler.