anonnel

The people in those offices look absolutely miserable.

Normally HN is not a place for memes, but I feel this is appropriate

https://m.imgur.com/JxH0lUT?r

This is great.

Where did you get the cool animation? It’s nice.

I absolutely expect they use EM radiation.

Another interesting question is if they are EM radiation.

It should be the most efficient way to travel. Going from Turing machine to Turing machine, a virus with a really advanced universal exploit, impregnating civilizations like ours around the time they develop both radio tech and computers.

Civilizations with the capability to travel in that fasion would be dominant.

Right, xenophobia.

Questioning why Chinese nationals are hired in tech is xenophobia. Period.

Whoa there buddy.

How about we be a little careful with the xenophobic talk, no?

LendUp is run legally as a licensed lender in CA.

Okay? ... every company has the same licenses. CashNetUSA, Quickloans, Captain America Loans, and hundreds of other companies. Including even most with the shady legal structures, based in Malta, etc. Google won’t list the Deleware ones either. Advertising platforms don’t like them. Cities don’t like them. Regulators watch them closely and frequently press charges.

I’m damn proud to have spent a couple of years trying to solve it.

Look this is probably going to seem uncivil, but given the poor ethics of what you are talking about, I have no qualms shaming.

I spent a few years founding a payday business. Ultimately, despite having the same “forgiveness” policies and “innovative” loan structures, and telling myself all the same junk you are telling yourself (CFSA PR propaganda) I couldn’t bring myself to treat poor people like a crop to be harvested. You know that forgiveness or not, the majority of borrowers are repeats, and that there is a huge incentive to maximize this. Essentially, people use you instead of a bank.

There is no escaping that this means you are in the business of siphoning 10% off of an already poor person’s wages on an ongoing basis, and that’s without compounding. (Sounds like 15% by your numbers)

Do you really feel good that you did this? You drank some silicon valley koolaid, worked as someone else’s employee and harvested poor people? And then acted as the company’s mouthpiece afterward? Because you want to feel congruent with your resume?

Before you say I don’t know blah blah about LendUp ... hear this: A great many Payday companies came before LendUp, attempting the PR of being “ethical” and “innovative”, with the same practices. And by far they have not been the last. They’re all still in the business of fleecing at least 10% off of the people who can afford it least. There’s always money in stealing from the poor. The only innovative thing they did was to con YC. (hi)

Do not deceive yourself or others. It is not an honorable business. It is a called a VICE INDUSTRY for a reason, and you guys didn’t do anything to “solve” it (by your own admission of the word “trying”).

I know ... you want to stand by what you did, but if I were you, I would put that one in the rear view.

To translate what was just said: payday lenders do, in fact, delude themsleves into thinking they are making an impact. It’s always the same material about “helping people in their time of need”.

But the point isn’t about the immediate impact on people’s lives at the moment of funding ... rather the longer impact during the time that they will hold the debt, and the high interest cost to those who can afford it least. Multiply that into man-years per your Steve Jobs anecdote! ‍️(smh)

There’s a reason usury is illegal, and why payday lenders have to pair with sovereign nations and shady legal structures, and why google won’t even list you, etc.

shame.

But oh no. I’ve just bad-mouthed a YC company on HN! Here comes dang!!

You mean I can rewrite several hundred thousand lines of VBScript for you for free? Sounds awesome. Do reach out.

Too. Late.

crickets from HN

Making neighborhood gossip easier is worrying on many levels.

A hack that has been used in the past to scale totalitarian social control is to employ what is essentially a viral enforcement mechanism: basically, getting people to inform on their neighbors. It only takes one or two visible instances of this behavior with a violent outcome and it replicates quickly, following an exponential growth rate until the population is saturated with informants.

Reporting on neighbors and peers is much of the glue which has held together the worst authoritarian regimes: DPRK, East Germany, Nazi Germany ... as well as being a primary strategy for causing the revolutions which put those regimes in place.

A platform like this:

- lowers the friction of informing

- is vulnerable to anonymity / spoofing / automation / remote manipulation

- allows for stories of informing to persist in the community memory as always-online posts, increasing their effect across time

- is connected to a de facto surveillance apparatus (the internet) to boot

Very cool. Where’s the patreon link!

And to think - if you didn’t have such a good memory, metaphors like this would be lost on you!

Let’s normalize our exploitation with humor.

It's more cargo cult for nitpickers.

Isn’t Selenium server (JAVA) required?

Or is there a way to run Se without the server?

There are many, the majority I would say. But I’m not defending dishonesty in the least.

It does seem supercilious though, declaring yourself to be so honorable while basically bragging (it seems to me) about firing people.

If you think your boss is lying to you, go find a new boss.

That statement seems completely disconnected from reality. Not the part about going to find something better, because that is (usually) possible. But managers regularly and transparently lie.

It sounds like you’re a boss, so I think you haven’t had to experience this for too long and have probably forgotten it.

Also, try not to be so gung ho on declaring who you fire and how little remorse you have / whatever the situation. It does not come off well.

- What [political figure] is doing is making ...

- I think [political issue] should be ...

- Children must learn that it is always ok to ...

- Society should be ...

- The best thing to do with protestors is to ...

- [ethnicity] are always ...

Serious question. What is supposed to happen for these cases?

What do you say to the idea that your posting is underhanded and passive aggressive? People involved will recognize your business based on the description you give. Everyone else will take your side of the story for granted and crucify the picture you paint of your co-founder.

There are plenty of avenues you could take to seek the advice of other entrepreneurs for this without doing it on a public forum. It seems you’re looking to create an effect upon certain people in your situation who you expect to read HN.

You don’t come off well in this, IMHO.

Right. I think a better question is how do you deal with a co-founder who posts something like this on HN, where they know you and other people you know will see it, as if the story doesn’t contain obviously identifiable info? Someone who attacks by attempting to frame public opinion? (not speaking as that person, just an observation)

The crux of this debate is that private companies aren’t currently subject to the First Ammendment and the laws which surround it (which grant as well as restrict free speech). However privately-owned online spaces have become the modern version of the “town squares” which are the intended venues of the First Ammendment.

Today we are repeating debates addressed by 1A and its surrounding laws, by virtue of the fact that private companies aren’t currently subject to 1A.

It’s a healthy debate to have, but we should be aware of the pitfalls - namely that the introduction of 1A upon the old “town squares” freed us from tyranny. Failure to do it again for the new town squares will invite tyranny, and would inevitably bring it back.

This includes the laws which restrict 1A (“shouting fire”, etc.) which cover the old town squares. For the new town squares these are the “content moderation” policy cases online venues struggle with.

The first thing which needs to be done is to bring 1A and the surrounding legislative framework to the new town squares. Then we have the task of crafting laws in that framework which address cases special to the information era: IP, impersonation, disinformation, incitement ...

Unfortunately, the law is behind the curve.

Is it Youtube’s job to enforce morals? ...

Wrong frame. YouTube’s ethical responsibility is dictated by their ethos and that of society.

It’s Youtube’s ethical responsibility to not have videos which promote academic cheating products.

Good data point. Yes, very few folks have it available. Especially younger folks who get talked into equity comp. Sure, you can get a loan or something. But it’s a lot to ask for most people.

The real truth is that equity is primarily used as a way for startups to pay lower salaries. 3 and 4 year vests further reduce the likelihood you will ever see the equity offered. Let alone that you will have usually a one month period to put up the purchase price of your options. So if you don’t have an extra 2-10 grand lying around (because you were given equity instead of salary, for instance) you will forfeit your equity. Founders and execs also get waay more equity than than the code monkeys, and exercise priority.

I’m not saying don’t think about equity, but don’t let someone sell you a bill of goods either.

Was going to mention this as well. Really fantastic book.

We know much more than the people before us, not the other way around.