hncommenter13

The Learning Company acquisition by Mattel was one of the worst deals ever. There was strong evidence at the time that the financials for The Learning Company were overstated.

And yet Kevin O'Leary's various opinions on business and political matters are, for some reason, widely reported even to this day.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2016/01/26/news/real-and-sh...

One correction. It's not $8B per year, it's $8.4B in the last quarter--which is over $32B annualized, especially considering the last quarter's revenue grew over 20% from the same time last year. GCP's profit margins are low (for now) but positive. [1]

Moreover, per its filings, Google had almost $65B of contracted backlog representing customer commitments for future purchases (over multiple years), primarily related to Google Cloud. That is not to say those can't ever be unwound or delayed, but it's a pretty meaningful amount, even to a company the size of Google. [2]

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204423...

[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204423...

edit: formatting

There's a great book by CS professor Steven Skiena about the automated betting system he built (using early 90s-era technology!) to place bets on jai alai.

The Book: https://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~skiena/jaialai/

2008 presentation: https://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~skiena/tmp/oreilly.pdf

Odd Lots Podcast: https://news.stonybrook.edu/facultystaff/computer-science-pr...

I'm not sure lack of compensation is the problem, in California anyway:

https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=Police&...

https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/your-sfpd/careers/sworn-j...

Per this post, spending on police has increased faster than population in Vallejo specifically: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/84950dbe341d4d59ac3d6ef...

https://www.ppic.org/blog/how-much-do-california-cities-spen...

I'm not defending all of Getty's business practices, obviously. But my understanding of what Getty is selling is both convenience and a degree of legal protection for media buyers. If you buy an image from them, they will, in writing, guarantee you that it is legally permissible to use, provided you follow the terms of the agreement.

https://www.gettyimages.com.au/eula [Australian terms], Section 9 reads in part:

Representations and Warranties. Getty Images makes the following representations and warranties:

Warranty of Non-Infringement. For all licensed content (excluding content marked “access only”), Getty Images warrants that your use of such content in accordance with this agreement and in the form delivered by Getty Images (that is, excluding any modifications, overlays or refocusing done by you) will not infringe on any copyrights or moral rights of the content owner/creator. Additional Warranties for Certain Content.

RF: For licensed royalty-free content (excluding content marked “editorial” or “intended for editorial”), Getty Images warrants that your use of such content in accordance with this agreement and in the form delivered by Getty Images (that is, excluding any modifications, overlays or refocusing done by you) will not infringe on any trademark or other intellectual property right, and will not violate any right of privacy or right of publicity.

RM/RR: For licensed rights-managed and rights-ready content where Getty Images specifically notifies you that a model and/or property release has been obtained, Getty Images warrants that your use of such content in accordance with this agreement and in the form delivered by Getty Images (that is, excluding any modifications, overlays or refocusing done by you) will not, where a property release has been obtained, infringe on any trademark or other intellectual property right and/or will not, where a model release has been obtained, violate any right of privacy or right of publicity.

Here's a another story (2011) of a medical source of radioactivity showing up where it wasn't supposed to be: https://www.wired.com/2011/10/ff-radioactivecargo/

I worked for an ecommerce startup in 1998/1999 that was founded in 1997. The app was built in Perl with (by 1999) a MySQL backend.

But there were definitely applications for building larger websites, including ColdFusion[1] from Allaire and, infamously, Broadvision[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_ColdFusion [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadvision

Obviously not the same level of detail, but there's a dataset from the Federal Highway Administration that has basic data (at least what's available publicly) on many bridges and their condition.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi.cfm

Someone turned it into a website and cleaned up some of the data issues: https://bridgereports.com/

Interesting piece. But speaking as someone who was formerly a very junior VC through the dot-com era, there most certainly can be a negative spiral.

The public and private markets aren't as distinct as they might appear to be. A VC buying shares in a private company at valuation X must believe that a sale is possible at a big multiple of X, and soon. Some VC will be the last investor before the company goes public or is acquired. And that last private investor has to sell to another buyer, either a strategic acquirer with cash (or highly-valued stock) or an investor making a purchase in an IPO. And if those exits don't look as rosy as they used to (seen the share price movements of publicly-traded tech stocks lately?), the whole thing runs in reverse.

Worse, if the companies needing financing aren't cash-flow positive or profitable (and few are), existing investors' stakes will be diluted as prices drop. Investors might want to slow the pace of investments to reserve cash to fund the needs of their existing companies, rather than take bets on additional companies needing cash.

Also, while speed is good for startups, "time diversification" used to be considered a good thing for VC investors, who really are playing a portfolio game. The worst-performing funds from the dot-com era were those raised and invested in 2000, just before the peak of the bubble. Of course, at the time, no one knew it was the peak.

Almost no one working in VC now would remember it, but there was a short recession in the early 90s that greatly affected the VC industry. The fund I worked for had been founded in the mid-80s, and reading the old investor letters was fascinating. Admittedly early stage tech was a far smaller industry back then (the dollars thrown around now make the deals I worked on in the dot-com era look positively quaint), but so were the burn rates.

I'm not sure what stage of company we're talking about here.

I'd argue that for ALL companies, in any industry, working capital--measured on the balance sheet--is a critical data point. That is, you may be booking revenue but not collecting cash from your customers (in an extreme case, the "revenue" may be fictitious, if the software doesn't work and the customer refuses to pay). And while you might have $x of cash on the balance sheet, you could also have a huge and looming payables balance because you're waiting to pay your bills until you're N days past due.

Also, revenue is just what you can actually book per the accounting standards, which has lots of specific tests for software companies. For most SaaS companies, a key number is also deferred revenue, a balance sheet item that records the difference between the cash you've collected (say, up-front for 12 months) and the remaining performance obligation to deliver software over the period. Or, if you have a big service component as part of your offering, a number to watch is the amount of revenue you've booked but not yet billed.

As an investor, I'd also be curious about the future obligations of the company that will consume cash, such as big leases, debt, and other liabilities (eg, legal judgements against the company).

Investors are free to ignore whatever information they'd like, I suppose. And a tiny two-person company probably has a very simple set of financial statements, if any. But those two founders have the ambition to build a big and successful company, I'd argue that understanding how to read financial statements with some mild degree of fluency just isn't that hard and is a very useful skill.

The Financial Times has occasionally written articles pondering some of the odder financial decisions at Keyence (eg, hoarding cash, world-beating margins vs. competitors, low relative R&D as a % of sales, etc). Doesn't seem to have hurt the stock price, though.

FT Links: https://archive.md/bFfLI

https://archive.md/58bio

https://archive.md/kn6oY

Edit: formatting

Not a lawyer, but I'm not sure that's correct.

Per the CFTC's Enforcement website, they can bring civil enforcement actions in court--without the other party present aka ex-parte--seeking to freeze and enjoin the operations of a person or entity they can convince a judge is violating the Commodity Exchange Act.

From [0]: "At the conclusion of an investigation, the Division may recommend that the Commission initiate administrative proceedings or seek injunctive and ancillary relief on behalf of the Commission in United States District Courts around the country. Administrative sanctions may include orders imposing civil monetary penalties, suspending, denying, revoking or restricting registration and exchange trading privileges, and orders of restitution. The Commission also may obtain temporary restraining orders and preliminary and permanent injunctions in Federal court to halt ongoing violations. Other relief may include appointment of a receiver, a freeze of assets, restitution, and disgorgement of unlawfully acquired benefits. The CEA also provides that the Commission may obtain certain temporary relief on an ex parte basis (that is, without notice to the other party). When those enjoined violate court orders, the Division may seek to have the offenders held in contempt. When the Division obtains evidence that criminal violations of the CEA have occurred, it may refer the matter to the Department of Justice for prosecution.

[0] https://www.cftc.gov/LawRegulation/Enforcement/OfficeofDirec...

Here's an example: https://www.investmentexecutive.com/news/from-the-regulators...

That is how the law works after it was amended in 2012.[1] From the time of adoption in 1994 until 2012, even relatively minor crimes could result in a life sentence.[2]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/27/us/california-convicts-ar...

[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-archives-steven-bell-the-bic...

Some additional background on the reciprocal rights they enjoy with St. Andrews in Scotland:

https://www.espn.com.au/golf/story/_/id/13173734/st-andrews-...

I believe your reading is incorrect. The police are not allowed to order journalists to leave the area or to "round them up." The police were given a legal order by a judge not to do this. They did it anyway, issuing an unlawful order as applied to journalists.

If the police can't themselves operate within the law they're sworn to uphold, why do they deserve any deference or respect?

This is obviously very impressive, and far better than I could ever do myself.

But I must say it bears more than a passing resemblence to the version below, first uploaded to YouTube in 2009. Including the specific appearance of the robot and the graphic design of its eyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mWHVvKb1hM

Perhaps worth acknowledging that prior effort? (I have no relationship, just feels like that effort--with 2009 technology--deserves some credit.)

Hi, I'm not sure I follow this idea that passive investors don't lend their shares. Is that meant to describe the hypothetical world of no active traders, as discussed above, or is it meant to describe the present situation in the investing world today?

In the world as it stands today, passive ETFs and index mutual funds are a huge source of shares to lend. It's one of the ways they can lower the cost of the passive fund (or slightly increase returns above the passive benchmark), as the proceeds from lending shares are returned to investors in the fund. (Not always, but the good ETF operators do this.)

It's trivial to prove that naked short selling doesn't exist the way the author thinks it does.

a) Take my word for it. I am a former VC now working as a professional short seller (for the past eight years; my first really great short idea I found from a comment on HN). When I instruct our prime broker to short a stock, I must provide a matching locate id that corresponds to a specific block of borrowed stock. No locate id, no trade. Can't locate the stock to borrow to obtain a locate id? No trade.

Get a margin account and try it yourself.

b) Borrow costs. If I could short sell anything I wanted without having to borrow the stock, there wouldn't be such a thing as a borrow cost. I could short anything in as much size as I wanted for free. (And retail traders wouldn't get paid for lending their shares, which happens all the time.)

c) Recalls. If naked shorting were a thing, there would be no such thing as stock borrows getting recalled. Again, take my word for it, they happen.

d) Margin. Would I have to post cash collateral to our prime broker to borrow a stock if I could naked short? There's no stock I need to return, as I wouldn't have borrowed it from anyone. I mean, I guess I could still lose money short a stock and they'd want some protection against that, but I doubt we'd have Reg T margin rules if naked short selling were a thing.

And nobody could make me close the short, unless the company got sold. I could just stay short forever, as I haven't borrowed anything that ever needs to be returned.

So if interest rates were >0%, I could just naked short at no fee, let the cash from the short sale sit in my account collecting interest, and never have to cover the short. I'd also pay no dividends on the borrowed stock, as I presently must, as I hadn't actually borrowed it.

In other words, riskless profit for everybody. Let me know if you find one of those.

e) There are dozens of stocks out there that I (and lots of other people) believe will likely be worth zero one day, but it's uneconomic to make that bet as the borrow cost is 90%+. If I could naked short, I'd make a huge fortune shorting them to zero. Other people would make huge fortunes. Neither I nor other short sellers have such fortunes. If short sellers made fortunes, there'd be hundreds of short-only funds. There are barely a handful remaining.

More broadly, I've worked on hundreds of shorts over the past eight years. In some cases, the company was perfectly legitimate, just overvalued by an enthusiastic market. I've also helped expose companies that were screwing people and lying to investors, in several cases resulting in SEC investigations and criminal indictments. And I've lost money when companies got bought by other companies that later wrote off the entire investment. I've also been straight up wrong on plenty of them, and exited the position when that became clear.

An important function of the market is price discovery, and my job--like that of a long-oriented analyst--is to express the reasoned view that the current price is wrong. It's not a market if there's no way to express a contrary view.

Nothing I say or do can keep a company from raising capital or succeeding if the bull case is more convincing than the bear case. (Again, if I could destroy companies based on shorting them--even if I had to borrow the stock--I'd never lose money. So everyone would do it.) Netflix has had short interest forever and ever, and proved all the doubters wrong.

And if you don't believe that overly high prices lead to misallocated investment in nonsense projects, take a good look at the amount of money sloshign around Silicon Valley these days.

The fact is, it's a lot more fun and profitable to be a venture capitalist than it is to be a short seller, and there's a lot more VCs as a result.

Just FYI, people often forget that shorting shares creates synthetic shares that, conceptually, should to be added to the float.

Imagine a company with 1 share outstanding. I borrow a share from Person A, and I sell it to Person B. Person A and Person B now both own 1 share, and I own -1 shares. The total shares outstanding is still 1 share (2 + -1), but the float has increased. The short interest, as commonly reported, will be -100%. But it's actually only 50% of the shares that could trade. The effective float has increased by the size of the short interest.

I'm not sure this is quite right. I would have thought that most restaurants very much WANT to sell sodas, as the margins are enormous--much, much higher than the margins on cooked food.

This page [0], for instance, says the cost of goods sold for the soda itself is a penny an ounce for the syrup and CO2. Iced tea is apparently the margin champion, as the same page indicates it can cost as little as a penny per glass.

[0] https://www.restaurantowner.com/public/Restaurant-Rules-of-T...

Bronx Science was founded in 1938. It has graduated eight nobel prize winners, seven in physics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronx_High_School_of_Science

And, per Wikipedia, many of the faculty came from Stuyvesant, founded 1904 (which has itself had 4 nobel prize winners). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuyvesant_High_School

I'm not expert in this stuff. Is there a reason all of these domains are specified here?

[edit, formatting]

Content-Security-Policy-Report-Only: default-src blob: 'self'; script-src 'unsafe-eval' 'unsafe-inline' blob: https://*.50million.club https://*.adroll.com https://*.cloudfront.net https://*.google.com https://*.hotjar.com https://*.zoom.us https://*.zoomus.cn https://*.zopim.com https://ad.lkqd.net https://ajax.aspnetcdn.com https://apiurl.org https://appsforoffice.microsoft.com https://assets.zendesk.com https://bat.bing.com https://cdn.5bong.com https://cdn.jsdelivr.net https://cdncache-a.akamaihd.net https://code.jquery.com https://connect.facebook.net https://consent.trustarc.com https://extnetcool.com https://fp166.digitaloptout.com https://googleads.g.doubleclick.net https://intljs.rmtag.com https://pi.pardot.com https://px.ads.linkedin.com https://ruanshi2.8686c.com https://rum-static.pingdom.net https://s.dcbap.com https://s.yimg.com https://s.ytimg.com https://s3.amazonaws.com https://scout-cdn.salesloft.com https://sealserver.trustwave.com https://secure-cdn.mplxtms.com https://secure.myshopcouponmac.com https://snap.licdn.com https://sp.analytics.yahoo.com https://srvvtrk.com https://static.zdassets.com https://static2.sharepointonline.com https://tag.demandbase.com https://tpc.googlesyndication.com https://tracking.g2crowd.com https://translate.googleapis.com https://trk.techtarget.com https://unpkg.com https://www.comeet.co https://www.dropbox.com https://www.google-analytics.com https://www.googleadservices.com https://www.googletagmanager.com https://www.gstatic.com https://www.youtube.com https://d.adroll.mgr.consensu.org https://serve2.cheqzone.com https://*.ada.support 'self'; img-src https: blob: data: 'self'; style-src https: 'unsafe-inline' 'self'; font-src https: data: 'self'; connect-src * data: 'self'; media-src * blob: 'self'; frame-src https: ms-appx-web: zoommtg: zoomus: 'self'

One of the founders of ITA Software, which became Google's flight search, discussed some interesting issues in airline fare search [0]. I don't have enough of a CS background to fully understand all of this, but the message is pretty clear: it's complicated.

There was also an HN thread from 2012 discussing ITA's use of Lisp.[1]

[0] http://www.demarcken.org/carl/papers/ITA-software-travel-com...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4639490

I think the HN baseball fan crowd is the perfect audience for this paper, entitled "A Mathematical Analysis of Catcher/Pitcher Encryption Schemes."

https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2018/project/mlancast-sa...

Again, in the interests of historical accuracy, Crossrider did more than that. They actively provided monetization for traffic from installed apps.

I have in my email a post from longtime senior employee Yonatan Pesses to a LinkedIn group (then named "Downloadable Software Distribution & Monetization") for people working in the pay-per-install space. It is dated Dec 5, 2014, and it reads:

"Crossrider is offering an amazing monetization solution for your MAC traffic! Very easy implementation, with high user value!

Yonatan Pesses Crossrider"

I'd say that is pretty clearly more than just an SDK.

I also gather Pesses has recently left Kape: http://archive.is/QYtxD

This may be ancient history, but I believe this understates Crossrider's active role in the adware/malware that was being widely installed.

Per this research from Google and other academics [1][2], Crossrider was one of the largest "affiliates" of Superfish and other ad-injector malware.

To my understanding, Crossrider was essentially a distributor: they delivered installs, recruited advertisers, and brokered deals with software publishers, knowing that they would be adding malware/adware to the downloaded bundles that would persist on users' machines. And knowing that some users (most or all, really) didn't realize what was happening.

Rather than being a mere bystander, if the researchers are correct and per the HN thread below [3], Crossrider was an active--and essential--participant in the "Download Valley" ecosystem.

It may or may not be relevant to today's Kape, but we should at least be honest about what these guys were doing in the past. It was ugly. They weren't the only ones, but they were clearly not on the side of the angels. (Worse, YC funded one of their competitors called InstallMonetizer.)

[1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8914/94e6d2a9e96985ccca1c44...

[2] https://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2015/papers-archived/6949...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9120593

(edit: spacing)

FWIW, This American Life ran a great piece by Michael Lewis on John McCain's relationship with David Ifshin.

Ifshin was a prominent Vietnam war protestor (and Democrat) who later developed a relationship with McCain.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/41/politics/act-four

Wow, interesting. These [1] are some seriously long aerials.

In San Francisco, fwiw, the SFFD's largest aerial ladder is 100 ft fully extended. This is the mechanical one on the truck.

SFFD trucks also carry a 50-ft wooden ladder, but it's seriously heavy and rarely used, as it requires six firefighters to raise and lower.

For those interested, here's some data on high-rise fires in the US, including the prevalence of sprinklers [2].

[1] http://www.brontoskylift.com/en/hla [2] http://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/fire-statistics-and-re...

FYI, be careful what you do with it. Some of this sort of data--like federal contribution data from the FEC--cannot be legally used for commercial purposes[0]. They do actually enforce it, at least occasionally.

[0] https://transition.fec.gov/pages/brochures/saleuse.shtml#anc... (publication is from 1992, but still accurate per disclaimer at the top)

Someone is selling similar data to investors via Quandl. The source is confidential, however, so it's unclear if this is Unroll.me as well.

https://www.quandl.com/alternative-data/email-receipt-data