Nostromos

Double down. Tell all competitors that USADA will be handling drug testing for any Olympic event held in the US and if there's any pushback, we won't grant a travel visa for it. WADA and the Olympic Committee can figure it out on their own.

I was an internal Tech Recruiter for almost 10 years focused on pre-IPO tech companies. Hit the lotto a couple of times but after the most recent company (which was an awesome place to work) IPO'd, COVID, and just general career trends in that role, I burned out.

Then I spent 6 months doing nothing and decided to learn to code. It currently pays nothing because after a year, I'm only just on the cusp of starting to apply. I enjoy coding a lot more than recruiting, but my educated guess is that I'd enjoy entrepreneurship more than working at a company. Either way, it's exciting and challenging in a way that recruiting never was.

Weird that they'd do this with so many SWEs out of work. There are definitely non-SWE STEM occupations that need this but hard to see this overly-broad definition as anything but an attempt to drive down wages.

Just saw this was already posted as I was typing my comment. Not sure if I should delete or let this filter out?

Rescheduling STEM occupations allows companies to skip attempts at finding domestic workers to fill openings before they're allowed to hire folks on visas.

There are definitely many non-SWE STEM roles that need foreign talent but this seems overly broad.

When I was a tech recruiter, I might have been more ambivalent about this but the market has changed so drastically over the last couple years. I'm sure leadership at many companies would prefer to hire cheaper foreign talent and drive down salary spend.

If you don't want your art to exist beyond you, destroy it. Once you die, whatever remains is fair game.

Elon is truly the genius that we deserve and I tip my fedora at him.

I don't know about what chips Tesla uses but if they're using the right chips and have enough storage on board, this might actually be the first time this idea pays off (other than the plethora of crypto miners).

I mean who hasn't come up with "what if we use peoples' phones, computers, etc. to do compute while they're not using it?!?" as a startup idea?

I just want to point out that there have been stop and start efforts to regulate tiktok for years. Also this exact bill (or verisons of it) has/have been kicked around the hill for at least 2 months so its not like it came out of nowhere.

There's also no "free speech at all costs" clause. I've always wondered why we allow Chinese companies almost unfettered access to our market when we don't get the same in return. It used to be part of the deal but China was a special case and we held out hope they'd moderate. They have not, so we no longer have to be the one playing by the rules.

That aside, we're not forcing Tiktok to shut down, just forcing them to find a new owner. We're not stopping anyone from posting online, nor are we stopping anyone from posting on tiktok. If anything, this will be good for speech on tiktok, surfacing topics that were banned or deboosted by a company that has to follow the CCP rules.

Tesla and Apple aren't social media companies. They're also American companies. I'd be against the bill if American companies had as much access and freedom to operate in China as we give Chinese companies operating in the US. Since that's not gonna happen, fine with forcing bytedance to divest.

Very interesting. I'd always felt that real-name policies made for more civil but less vibrant and dynamic discussion. Moderation seems to be the key for any platform that allows for pseudonyms but the idea of stable pseudonyms makes intuitive sense.

n9 does make some excellent points about this study. So what does this boil down to? Moderate heavily and put up barriers to discourage bad actors, which is what everyone knows and is kinda boring.

There's a degree of push/pull on government and industry as far as encryption is concerned. Government shouldn't be injecting vulnerabilities into algos but they also need a way to read messages from criminals and terrorists. Industry wants some way for customers to feel safe using their product to message or whatever their (legal) use case.

Without some local pressure, this cedes encryption commercialization to the US. Sure academics will still love their novel algos but until someone can make money from them, they'll sit in papers, ready for the enterprising american dev to turn into the next big encrypted chat app that is more secure than Signal or something like that.

Honestly, their hostility to pornography is hurting retention. I've been meaning to write an article about it but pornography is an incredible booster for VR tech.

Everyone watches it at some point, many multiple times per day. It's immersive and novel.

Even better, people are used to bridging perceived gaps in their head. By that I mean people care less about things like resolution or story or frame rate. As long as monkey brain sees skin the brain will do a lot.

There's also just a ton of content out there - professional, indie, and amateur content producers are (or were, last time I checked, which has been a while) pumping it out (no pun intended). Most of it can be found for free!

Meta has been spending a lot of money on VR, and I suspect a significant portion of that is getting mainstream content producers to do stuff in vr - NFL/UFC/etc. putting vr cameras at events, game studios spending time and money to port games to vr (i don't think bethesda would have done skyrim vr entirely on their own dime). With porn, you have tens of thousands of hours of VR content, growing daily, that most users are able to find for free. They'll come back daily for that.

The issue is the difficulty on quest. You can download one of the browsers and do it there, but last I checked firefox reality was dead and I couldn't get wolvic to work on my quest 2. Not sure if things have changed since I last checked but there just weren't a lot of options.

I get that they want to be the gateway to VR content on their devices so they can get a cut of it but it's not really helping. I'm also not gonna buy a VR device specifically for porn, so after having the quest 2 for a few years (and not using it for at least a year), I'm just gonna sit back and wait a couple generations. There are some good games but I feel like this is a field of dreams situation - if you build it they will come. Build a platform that lets people do non-illegal things in VR and they'll come.

Like right now no one is using VR for work. They're using it to 1. game, 2. watch porn, and a very far 3. is consuming other content like experiencing events in VR.

Embrace it! Unsure why this corporation has suddenly found morals but only for pornography. Think of how much money an onlyfans app would make esp. if they started selling VR cameras.

I used to tell all of my new lead or new manager reports to start with Rands. I even offered to buy them a set of my favorite books - a couple rands, High Output management, manager's path, etc.

There are some fantastic other suggestions in comments though, and it looks like all my suggestions already accounted for.

Did they though? The article says that the final text mitigated "pretty much all" of the issues. What wasn't mitigated?

It had an incredible run. JPL continues its streak of building incredibly long-lived vehicles. As an American, very proud of what that team and the NASA operations team have accomplished.

Why do you use a VPN?

A company I worked at did a stint of CTO approval for all hires after a period of significant scaling and while it was a PITA, it definitely helped calibrate recruiting, eng, pm, and design to what leadership was looking for. It also exposed leadership to the types of issues we were facing daily with hiring. It does slow things down (actually the CTO I'm referring to was awesome and turned things around in no less than 24 hours, avg of 4 hrs), BUT its a useful tool when its time-bounded and there's a commitment to quick turnaround.

Coinbase will be fine but I'll bet money they kill the cognitive testing after a year or two (or a lawsuit).

Anybody know what the internal definition for talent density is? The article is a bit vague on whether thats a reference to locale or having a lot of talented people on your team/in your company.

And after re-reading my first sentence, I apologize for suggesting you don't understand how large orgs work. That wasn't fair and I don't know your background. I'm gonna leave the post unedited for honesty's sake.

It's easy to describe this as self-inflicted when you don't understand how large orgs work and have never had to consider how a security team deals with a large org, each piece wanting their own version (or multiple versions) of this solution.

Qualification isn't the issue because we (the US, US tech, SF/NY, etc.) have a lot of qualified talent, both in eng and elsewhere. The issue you describe with competence IS an issue but not for this. Your final sentence is correct but not right.

Basically, you're right and you're wrong and I should probably write something longer form but won't get to it for months. I'll give you an upvote in lieu of that for making me think deeper about the topic.

Money is the only thing that actually matters.

ehhhh I think some customers would be ok with it if it meant discounts. If your software is good enough, you can tell customers to go elsewhere. The theory is that AI done well can be incredibly powerful ($$$) so you have to build it or risk being left behind.

Sounds good in principle because you're worked up and mad about your data (which is the correct reaction).

I just don't love the idea that my dinky little app has to ask every customer every time I add a new feature significant enough (debatable) or different enough (debatable) that uses their data in a way either I or they didn't anticipate (debatable). God forbid I try to monetize it (debatable). 'Control over your data' is meaningless in our current paradigm and I'll rue the day something like GDPR comes to the US in a meaningful way. No wonder the EU can't build.

As for this specific article, Zoom's (rightfully) getting heat for this but I don't blame them or any company for exploring how they can monetize every last morsel of data. In zoom's case (and many enterprise software companies), customers are paying a shit load of money and they didn't sign a contract and consent to give data for training an LLM.

I was like "fuuuuuuuuuuu its moving too fast gonna take all my good ideas and bring em to market first"

Even if they had them, what's the benefit of revealing them? It's a national security advantage. If anything, admit we have them and let our enemies freak out over it.

I'll believe it when I start seeing crypto companies try their best to play within the lines. The plea for "someone, anyone, please regulate us!" is totally PR. They get far enough in the process, realize that they'll have to do things they don't want to do (KYC, spend on compliance, not offer certain crypto) and they balk at it. It's a power struggle too! The regulators aren't used to attitude, and they don't love it. The big banks have learned how to toe the line and its time for cypto to do the same.

Every time there's crypto scam and/or collapse someone writes an article about the long and lasting and deep scars. I've yet to see any. Dumb money gets taken, esp. in an unregulated market.

They don't MANDATE vaccinations, masks, and social distancing for the flu. SAYING I DONT WANT TO BE FORCED TO DO SOMETHING IS NOT THE SAME AS SAYING ITS USELESS.

All true and second point is good.

We don't mandate vaccination, masks, or social distancing for the flu but we should consider it, given that the WHO estimates 250k-500k deaths per year.

If we assume 5.5MM COVID deaths from Jan 1 2020 onwards (https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/bda7594740fd402994234...), and 250k-500k flu deaths yearly, that makes COVID 5.5-11 times deadlier than the flu.

They delay the inevitable, but with huge cost. The lie is that they were to "not overwhelm the hospitals", they changed it to that because they utterly failed at stopping the pandemic. hospitals got overwelmed too.... and if that was your goal, you'd think they would build more hospitals and graduate more doctors instead of canceling classes.

It's not inevitable but it is difficult to tease apart cause and effect. Masks, vaccines, and other measures like social distancing definitely reduce the spread of COVID which reduces the burden on our healthcare system. Catching COVID isn't inevitable, neither is an overburdened healthcare system.

As much as I'd love to see us build more hospitals and graduate more doctors (I think it would reduce healthcare costs), we still operate based on capitalist principles and are fundamentally optimistic - COVID will go away one day and the excess capacity will end up wasted. No one wants to build today to lose tomorrow.

The reasoning behind cancelling in person classes in many regards wasn't mainly to protect the young, who tend to have better COVID outcomes than other groups (except for the very young and old). It was to prevent spread to teachers and other members of the household who were not young AND who were likely working or caregiving (or receiving care). I feel for all the parents during this time. What a nightmare.

Its strange you picked New York when New York has the 6th highest death rate. 44 other states have lower death rates. Some of the southern states with higher african american populations really suffered, for many reasons. There was also the oasis effect where northerners getting away from lock downs brought covid south. California had many things going on, lockdowns definitely lowered their numbers, but at great economic cost.

Mostly true. NY def has high death rate, but that's largely due to NYC. My theory (with no research to back it up) is that population density has an outsized effect on death rate, for fairly obvious reasons.

There's been a large economic cost born by everyone, but California has done remarkably well considering the circumstances. Huge surplus, record productivity, continued increases in household income, manufacturing growth, investment, clean energy, etc. As of April of this year, they added 1MM+_people to non-farm payrolls YoY. Despite the "exodus", they still managed to grow GDP near the top quintile YoY.

I don't really have the energy to respond to everything else you wrote and I question why I even spent the time to respond to this.

Ultimately, people who don't get vaccinated and have no valid medical or religious exception are acting irresponsibly and are likely to behave irresponsibly in other areas. I imagine opposition to masking and anti-vax attitudes are highly corelated. Your assumption that people sick with COVID know they're sick, stay away from others, and prevent spread is wrong. We all know you can spread COVID with very very mild symptoms.

Your idea to not mask/vax and instead isolate the elderly and ethnic would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. It also just would not work.

VAERS is not being ignored. It's being super closely monitored not just by US health authorities, but by the vaccine manufacturers and developers. Trust that they have their profit margin in mind and don't want to kill future customers or lose EUA.

Not trusting Facebook isn't favoring censorship and authoritarianism. Heck, I'd hope a Hn reader would understand that. I definitely do not trust science or analysis that comes from Facebook.

I get you're mad - lots of missteps, bad/wrong communication, horrible few years, etc.

Don't lose sight of the fundamentals - vaccines work to prevent serious illness, reduce mortality, and lessen mutation.

Masks work to reduce spread as does social distancing.

No one is holding a gun to your head to force a vaccination. "If you don't believe in driver's licenses you should simply not drive"

And after all that, I should have just never read the comments...

It's been studied extensively and the research overwhelmingly shows that more generous welfare policies are associated with lower levels of crime.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00472... https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1999-13463-002 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3509381 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/655778

What medication were you prescribed if you don't mind answering?