noego

If someone could magically build a system that allows for the communication to be eavesdropped only by the allowed government agency, my objections would be dramatically reduced. But that's not the way tech works. Building one backdoor makes the entire system, and all users, vulnerable to a whole host of other malicious actors, including hostile foreign nations and unscrupulous hackers. We live in a world today where anyone can be hacked, even major institutions and corporations like NYTimes, Yahoo and Sony. We desperately need systems that are more secure, not less.

I'm not surprised that there are vast numbers of latent low-probability race conditions in the linux kernel or any major software project. Having seen the testing process in both hardware and software projects, the two are not even comparable. The testing process in most software projects is dominated by fully deterministic unit tests that are very simple in nature, and make large numbers of assumptions about the behaviors and interactions with other components. Low-probability race conditions between different components is exactly the outcome I would expect from this testing process.

https://software.rajivprab.com/2019/04/28/rethinking-softwar...

We're conflating different things here. The point we're discussing is that investment-income should be treated the same as labor-income. From your last comment, you presumably agree that labor is also a good thing that should be encouraged, so I don't see why investment-income should be taxed so much lower than labor-income.

Is labor not a good thing that should be encouraged?

You've already been taxed on the investment principal. Not the returns that you're getting on the investment. By your logic, the capital-gains-tax should be eliminated entirely because its double taxation, which is a ridiculous idea.

The main problem seems to be that startup employees are being asked to pay taxes simply to exercise their options, even though the stock they now own is extremely illiquid. This problem exists here in America too. The best solution in both countries would be for employees to be taxed only for cash income/dividends, or when there is a liquidity event such as IPO or acquisition.

I highly recommend doing away with the lower capital-gains tax entirely and treating investment income the same as labor income. However, it seems ridiculous to ask someone to pay taxes when they literally don't have the money to do so.

If this is the intention of any of my candidates coming in and they call this "real commitment" to work for my company they would not pass the phone interview

There is a very easy way to filter out candidates who want to leave in 1-2 years. Structure your equity vesting so that there's minimal vesting for the first 2-3 years, with a sizable severance package to protect against involuntary termination. I don't understand why you would give someone 30% equity after 2 years, if you're then going to begrudge them leaving.

equity without commitment

The guy was perfectly willing to stay for the long-haul.

weeks of remote work without formal agreement

Taking people at their word is "entitled"?

a quick cash out over adding value to the company

The guy was faithfully performing all the duties assigned to him. Is he drinking the company kool-aid and devoting his life to his company? Thankfully no. Your employer is not your family, nor is it a cult.

Is the author naive? Maybe. Opinionated? Definitely but with good reason - the director was later fired, how often does that happen. Entitled? I see nothing of the sort.

In the video, the protester who was shot is first seen joining a black-clad mob of people who chase a riot officer and tackle him to the ground. They kick him and beat him with what appear to be metal pipes.

At one point, the protester approaches a second police officer who is standing nearby with a handgun drawn. Just after the protester hits the officer with the pipe, the officer fires at the man at point-blank range.

I'm just as pro-democracy as the next guy, but I can hardly fault a police officer for shooting someone in the shoulder when they are being hit with a metal pipe.

I hope the pro-democracy movement in HK returns to its origins of peaceful demonstrations. I don't think its good for the movement's long-term sustainability to turn violent.

This is a conflict of interest, which should erode the trust that anyone would have on twitter. The man is simultaneously responsible for editorial decisions, while also serving in a brigade that "uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook ... to wage what the head of the UK military describes as “information warfare”.

Imagine finding out that the executive in charge of editorial decisions for Twitter in Hong Kong, is also serving in the Chinese military's department of "information warfare". As a Hong Konger, you'd have to be an idiot to continue trusting twitter at that point. The fact that Twitter is well aware of this, and didn't see a conflict of interest, makes me question their neutrality and effectiveness as a platform for online discussion.

I had a unicorn's VP-operations try to convince me that my job-offer isn't below market - I should be valuing their stock at 10-100x the valuation used in their most recent round (a few months ago), because this company is sure to become the next big thing.

Randolph writes that he'd been closely watching Antioco during this conversation. Throughout, the Blockbuster CEO appeared as a polished professional, leaning in and nodding and giving every indication of someone who was listening attentively. Now Randolph observed as an odd expression crossed Antioco's face, turning up the corner of his mouth. It lasted only a moment, he writes. "But as soon as I saw it, I knew what was happening: John Antioco was struggling not to laugh."

Great article but it seems unnecessary to accuse Antioco of being arrogant just because he turned up the corner of his mouth for a moment. There are tons of investors who pass up on great investment opportunities every year. Most of them aren't arrogant, they are simply normal people who don't have the benefit of perfect hindsight.

Why do you think that your anecdote should trump someone else's? I know a large number of people working at Amazon, and they have had the opposite experience as what you're describing. Making vast generalizations like "They worked everyone hard as fuck. Even principal engineers worked nights and weekends" are so ridiculous, they just make you sound silly to anyone in the know.

Everyone I know at Amazon works 8 hour days, completely disconnect when they finish with work, and have tons of flexibility for working from home when family related issues arise.

I don't doubt that you know specific people who are having the opposite experience - Amazon culture varies a lot based on which vp/director you work for. But your friends' experience isn't indicative of all tech employees.

The argument made by most economists and Bill Gates is that divestment does not drive down the stock price, unless it is practiced by a overwhelming majority of all investors. The reasoning is that anyone not participating in the divestment scheme will simply bid the share price back up to near the market value.

If divestment did indeed drive down share price, it would succeed in hurting the company. The company would have to issue more shares when raising capital in future. It would also have to issue its employees more shares to remain competitive in compensation.

The article is disappointingly misleading and buries one of the key details

"Amazon’s lawyers rejected the overt addition of contribution profit into the algorithm...

They turned to the metrics Amazon uses to test the algorithm’s success in reaching certain business objectives, said the people who worked on the project.

When engineers test new variables in the algorithm, Amazon gauges the results against a handful of metrics. Among these metrics: unit sales of listings and the dollar value of orders for listings. Positive results for the metrics correlated with high customer satisfaction and helped determine the ranking of listings a search presented to the customer.

Now, engineers would need to consider another metric—improving profitability—said the people who worked on the project. Variables added to the algorithm would essentially become what one of these people called “proxies” for profit: The variables would correlate with improved profitability for Amazon, but an outside observer might not be able to tell that. The variables could also inherently be good for the customer."

Tldr: some people in Amazon wanted to give a boost to Amazon-products. The search team fought them vociferously and refused to budge. The lawyers came out against it as well. Amazon's internal A/B testing framework measures a number of metrics, including both revenue and profit, when determining whether a specific feature/change should be deployed.

The fact that the A/B testing framework measures the profit impact of any change, is hardly earth shattering. This is one of the core features that any A/B testing framework attempts to accomplish.

This also doesn't tell you anything about what the search algorithm is actually doing. An A/B testing framework can only help you evaluate the relative effectiveness of different algorithms. It doesn't actually create/influence the algorithm in any way. As WSJ themselves reported, Amazon's search algorithm does not take profitability as an input.

WSJ has done a fantastic job in unearthing this very interesting internal-debate that's happening in Amazon. But they have reported it in a way that is very misleading and gives laypeople the impression that they have a smoking gun. In reality, the only thing they have produced is the fact that Amazon's A/B testing framework is profit-aware.

Any word on whether using Google-Voice would be a good safeguard against this? Presumably, because your google-voice account is so intrinsically linked to your Google account, which is much harder to hack, that should mitigate this threat tremendously. Especially if you're using google-voice to forward all calls to a number that no one else knows about.

Microsoft has a directly competing product, so I don't see why they would ever want to sell Wunderlust. They would essentially be creating their own competitor, in return for a fraction of the money they had paid to acquire Wunderlist earlier.

Still, cars without reception become vulnerable in a few scenarios: ... when the vehicle battery dies. That last scenario was the one my family and I found ourselves in

This seems like a major detail that should have been mentioned near the headline. Even if they got into the car, they would still have been stuck because the car battery was dead.

Every new technology comes with its own unique foibles and failure scenarios. One can easily imagine the very first automobile drivers getting frustrated by how their car becomes a useless lump of metal within minutes as soon as they run out of gas. "If I just had my trusty horse, this would never happen!" Fear mongering around these new failure modes makes for a fun pastime, but fundamentally pointless, unless we also consider the benefits they bring to the table.

I think there are a few good points made by Burry. When comparing across different market segments, today's climate of popular-index-funds can cause bubbles in some segments. For example, everyone and their grandmother invests in the S&P 500, whereas much fewer people are investing in the MSCI EAFE. Because of this, VOO can become over-valued relative to VEA.

I agree with this point and have wondered about it myself. I highly encourage everyone to diversify across all market segments, including the S&P 500, mid-cap, small-cap, developed markets and emerging markets. That mitigates the potential S&P-500 bubble that Burry might be warning against.

But that said, I don't think it's fair to accuse index funds of causing specific stocks to become over-valued relative to other stocks within the same index. By design, market-weighted index funds maintain the relative prices of different stocks within the same index. Ie, if a whole bunch of people sell their houses tomorrow and invest in the S&P 500, all the stocks in the index will get an equal percentage lift, and pricing ratio of GOOG to MMM will still remain consistent.

Note however, that equal-weighted indexes do not have this property. Imagine if the US government decided tomorrow that it was going to invest $10T in the stock market, using equal-weighting. This would translate to ~$20B for every stock in the S&P 500. The biggest stocks like GOOG would see an incremental boost, because $20B is still only ~2% of their market cap. Whereas the smallest stocks in the index would see their share price skyrocket because $20B would more than double their market cap.

ride-hailing companies would be responsible for half (6.2%) of employees' Social Security and Medicare (1.45%) tax, as well as the costs for administering any employee benefits (e.g., health care and 401ks)

The changes described in the bill seem surprisingly minor. As long as Uber isn't expected to pay its drivers a fixed salary, or control their work hours, I don't see how "better benefits" will fundamentally destroy their business model. It is fundamentally no different than raising the rates paid by riders, and passing those increased rates along to drivers in the form of better benefits.

As long as it is applied consistently to both Uber and Lyft, neither of them will lose market share. Ridership will decline incrementally when rates are raised incrementally, but the majority of Uber riders aren't going to take buses instead just because prices went up 15%.

I've long been a fan of the gig economy and of companies like Uber/Lyft, but the new regulations described above sound pretty reasonable. Saying they will devastate Uber's business model sounds like clickbait on the part of BI, and FUD on the part of Uber.

“The consumer believes that a discount has been his right, not a privilege”

It seems disingenuous to frame this "rebellion" as a moral issue. It isn't. It's a business issue. Business owners are free to evaluate their partnerships and pricing strategy on the basis of what is going to best benefit their revenue/profits. And consumers are free to evaluate potential restaurants/apps on the basis of many factors including price. Trying to argue that someone is acting immorally by wanting a discount, is nothing more than crying wolf.

"Another sore point is customer data. Neither Zomato nor Swiggy shares customers’ names and phone numbers with the restaurant that fills the order, citing privacy concerns. Restaurant owners said that left them with no way to market directly or build long-term relationships with their best customers."

Thank God for that. The last thing I want when I order food online, is for every single restaurant I order from to start spamming my phone/email. This fact alone has lifted Zomato a few notches in my eyes.

Should NYTimes also refrain from speculating on topics like climate change? Ie, until climate change actually happens, all mention of climate change should be omitted entirely from all newspapers?

For example, here is The New York Times for March 6, the day Dick Farson told me I was giving this talk. The column one story for that day concerns Bush’s tariffs on imported steel. Now we read: Mr. Bush’s action “is likely to send the price of steel up sharply, perhaps as much as ten percent…” American consumers “will ultimately bear” higher prices. America’s allies “would almost certainly challenge” the decision. Their legal case “could take years to litigate in Geneva, is likely to hinge” on thus and such.

You may read this tariff story and think, what’s the big deal? The story’s not bad. Isn’t it reasonable to talk about effects of current events in this way? I answer, absolutely not. Such speculation is a complete waste of time. It’s useless. It’s bullshit on the front page of the Times.

His argument is that the media should only discuss whatever has happened already, and should absolutely never mention any expert opinion on how today's events will impact the near future? Saying that steel tariffs will likely to send the price of steel up sharply, perhaps as much as ten percent, is now "bullshit on the front page of the Times"?

I've read almost every one of his books and loved them. But this is a great example of how expertise in one field seldom translates to other fields.

The lump-of-labor fallacy arises when people don't realize that increases in the labor, also cause a increase in labor demand. Hence why wages have been rising constantly, and unemployment being steady, despite America's population growing exponentially in the past 300 years.

Economists also believe in the lump of labor fallacy, which your comment perfectly exemplifies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

I've read a million "hiring is broken" articles about software companies, so I asked my sister (lawyer) yesterday how the legal industry does hiring. She told me that even at the most prestigious and exclusive legal firms in the nation, the interview success rate is ~50%.

That seemed staggeringly high, considering that Google's is less than 10%. So I asked her how these legal firms managed to pull off such a high interview success rate. Apparently, they only ever invite someone to interview, if they are already pretty sure they want to hire that person. And how does that work? They make no attempt whatsoever to judge your competency on the basis of interview performance. Rather, you are judged almost entirely by your resume - the "brand name" of the law school you attended, your GPA, and the "brand name" of the law firms you've previously worked at. If your school or previous law firms aren't prestigious enough, you won't even be invited to an interview.

In fact, not only is the above a convention, it's often a firm policy. My sister once got a job offer, through very fortunate circumstances, at an elite law firm. But their HR department blocked her hire, literally because she did not attend a top-15 law school.

Ironically enough, I've never heard anyone complain about legal hiring being broken. Perhaps that's precisely because legal firms don't even give most people a shot - they are filtered out entirely at the resume stage. I imagine people get far more agitated when they are rejected after an interview, as opposed to being ignored entirely from the outset.

I'm personally glad to work in an industry where even the most exclusive companies are willing to give everyone a shot at the interview, regardless of which school they went to. Is hiring broken in tech? Sure. But it's completely dysfunctional elsewhere.

The lawsuit said GitHub had an obligation under California law and industry standards to keep off or remove the Social Security numbers and personal information from its site. The plaintiffs believe that because Social Security numbers had a fixed format, GitHub should have been able to identify and remove this data

The lawsuit alleges that by allowing the hacker to store information on its servers, GitHub violated the federal Wiretap Act.

The lawsuit also makes a bold claim that "GitHub actively encourages (at least) friendly hacking." It then links to a GitHub repository named "Awesome Hacking." ... not associated with GitHub staff or management, but owned by a user who registered on the platform

This lawsuit is a natural extension of the calls for internet platforms to better police and accept liability for the content they are hosting. These complaints are usually directed towards the big corporations like Google, Facebook and Amazon. But if the rationale is accepted, it will need to be applied universally to startups and SMBs as well. As someone who thinks the world will be a far better place if we had decentralized dumb platforms, as opposed to very centralized platforms with heavy-handed top-down censorship and moderation, I sure hope this movement is turned back.

I just wish there was room in today's political environment to discuss pros and cons to unions and non-unions

I agree with this from both perspectives. Companies and business-owners should also be allowed to espouse anti-union arguments without automatically being tagged as "evil" or subjected to extra scrutiny.

That said, you're certainly not going to find a nuanced debate in a ... training video. The purpose of this video is literally for the company to train their employees, not to serve as a forum for debating the pros and cons of unions.

"Smart, wealthy shareholders love cash hoarding"

Any evidence to back this up? Activist investors generally pressure companies to not hoard cash, for exactly the reasons outlined earlier. Example: http://money.com/money/3484599/icahn-letter-apple-cash/

"Icahn controls 53 million shares of Apple, worth $5.3 billion, which gives him about a 0.9% ownership in the company. In his letter, Icahn lays out his reasons that Apple should repurchase its own shares"

Companies can return money to investors using share-buybacks - this avoids any taxable event for investors, while also not suffering from the downsides of hoarding cash.

There is one significant tactic where it makes sense to hoard cash temporarily - keeping it overseas while waiting for a tax holiday or a reduction in the tax rates. This only works as a temporary tactic though. If any company announced that they were going to hoard cash over a long period, it would depress the share-price significantly. This is exactly why activist investors like Icahn pressure their companies to reduce their cash hoards.