recondite

We have both a Model Y (late-2020) and Model 3 (2022), and the 50-60% estimate definitely reflects my experience with the MY. Not so much the M3.

I chalk it up to doing most of my driving (90%) on California freeways going 70+ mph most of the time. Understandable that the range is reduced since the batteries are being expended more, but this issue is definitely the biggest complaint I have with our Teslas so I'm tracking this story closely.

Obligatory mention of Asimov's "Last Question"

https://astronomy.org/moravian/C00-Last%20Question.pdf

Are you me? I have the exact same symptoms, especially the left arm pain and panic attacks. Full heart checkup and nothing was found to be wrong but I always suspected it had to do with my nervous system.

How has Airbnb not been sanctioned by more local governments seeking to curb this behavior? Just like Napster, Uber, and all of the other "sharing economy" apps that have popped up in the past 20 years, Airbnb's profit model hinges on the ability of its users to skirt local laws and operate in this very gray area.

It seems like very short-sighted planning by city councils who impose some nominal license/approval fee in exchange for the long-term health of their own communities. I don't see how this is sustainable.

I'm all for some implementation of UBI, or more broadly, less inequality in society, but the numbers just don't add up to support it (yet).

Even if you took all of the US Federal transfer programs (Social Security, Medicare, etc...) AND taxed the top 1% at a 90+% rate, you'd still fall short of the amount needed to distribute a basic income to reach the minimum poverty level for the masses.

Surprised this isn't higher given the demographics of HN. Another one that felt similar to me, but more focused on mass media specifically and its effect on society, was Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Be warned, you will have a very dim view of the future of humanity if you read all the way through.

Don't forget California also has one of the higher population growths rates in the country. There's still no serious long-term plan for how California is going to handle droughts in the future proposed by any lawmakers, and the gridlock between farmers v population centers, norcal v socal will continue.

But we did vote for a $64 billion high-speed rail project that will probably end up costing $100+ when all is said and done. http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/13/confidential-report-ca...

Amazing metaphor. I'm going to use that :)

Interesting take, but isn't this also the motivation for companies to automate as much of their workforce as possible? Nobody really wants to take orders at McDonald's for $9/hour and Ronald McOwner doesn't want to pay his workers $15+ when the minimum wage gets raised so he installs automated kiosks to take customer orders. Theoretically, those workers who lost their jobs to the machines are "freed" to pursue more productive ventures, but what we've actually been seeing is the 1% capturing that capital even more (as the poster above noted).

I think we're getting to a point where society is going to have to accept that vast swaths of the population are simply not necessary or otherwise employable, in the modern labor force, and hopefully, treating "labor" as an expendable market resource becomes an archaic concept, similar to how we view human slavery.

The problem is, the 1% will not change on their own, that has never been the case. The incentives are just not there for them to want to.

Having attended school in California at a community college, UC, and finally an elite, private university I couldn't more agree with your characterization. I don't know how much I would agree with the claim that the stratification was purposefully constructed (I'd argue it's more of a reflection of American society writ large - i.e. successful parents have more resources to ensure their kids are successful), but otherwise this rings very true.

Don't believe the reviews.

I was considering a position there, and did some research into the company culture (because everything else about them just seemed impossibly awesome, with the exception of pay). Apparently, they had a fairly low review rating about a year ago which was hurting recruiting efforts, so company leadership "asked" employees to write reviews and a bunch of 5-star reviews popped out in a very short period of time. They all sound like PR copy, all cut from the same mold, and the "cons" of the company aren't really negatives but disguised positives. If you click on the "rating trends" next to the overall star rating you'll see when this happened.

Totally creepy and a bit cult-ish if you ask me. Some of the other reviewers actually called them out about this, but since they're an "engaged employer" on Glassdoor, it appears those reviews are getting buried in favor of the ghost-written ones. You can still find them fairly easily though because they'll have 20-50x more helpful tags than the kool-aid reviews. Turned me off completely to them, and makes me think there are some serious issues going on underneath the surface.

I also found this blog post written a while back about their business model which I found quite enlightening: http://kellblog.com/2011/06/27/why-palantir-makes-my-head-hu...

It's a little dated, but I think he hits the nail on the head in a few places.

Privacy is dead. Not just as we knew it, but every dystopian prediction of the future where we are ID'd, tagged, and tracked at every action has already come true.

Not for the sake of some vast government surveillance apparatus (while they are one of the factors behind this movement, the US government is too bloated and largely too incompetent to be effective at this even if they wanted to) but because there is money to be made in knowing our every detail. In our consumer society, marketers/retailers and the companies that cater to their businesses find great value in this information, and as consumers, we largely benefit from having the efficiencies of amazon product recommendations, facebook/twitter suggestions, tailored advertising, etc... at the cost of some loss in privacy. And people have largely silently accepted this, unknowingly or otherwise.

I have a facebook, linkedin, google, github, multiple handhelds, multiple email accounts, I'm a former federal employee, I've had the same phone number for the past 15 years, and countless other retail/online accounts. If you know my name and middle initial, you can find most of my personal information - age, former/current addresses, relatives - through a quick google search on Intelius. I've requested they take down my information several times, and it seems to disappear from their public listing for a while, but reappears after a couple years or after I've moved again.

I accepted long ago that any/all information I post online (and even locally on my Macbook in some cases) is being scraped, compiled, and stored in some DB somewhere. It would only take a little focus and some link analysis to build a comprehensive profile of nearly every detail of my life using some basic selectors - primarily my email and phone. I assume every link, website (yes, including every porn - pornhub has an analytics team!!!), email I write/send, emails I draft but don't send, fb picture I stalk, youtube video I watch is being tracked/stored/compiled somewhere. If it's not by default made public information or being used by the company in question for their profit motives, I assume it will be in the future when the information is hacked/sold/"leaked" for whatever reason.

As I sit here on my school's public WiFi, I know my IP/MAC address/cookies are exposed to those with the know-how, but I've since given up trying to avoid that. Encryption protocols have been broken too many times to count, and while we continually fight for better security methods, those with enough motivation will find ways around - e.g. NSA firmware hacking. I've decided the only information that is truly private are the thoughts in my head, but it seems that even that is subject to debate (look up memory transplants).

It's alright though, because as we head towards the singularity, my consciousness will be assimilated somehow into some Borg-like meta-consciousness anyway. I just hope they have micro-brews available.

You're totally missing the point of what I'm saying.

They are putting themselves at a significant competitive disadvantage by incurring a drastically higher yearly operating expense, expenses which their competitors (in a very saturated market) don't have. They were already operating at <1% margins, and this cuts into that even more.

Dan's bet is that they can make up for this by the PR and goodwill they are getting from this story, but in credit card processing, fractions of percentages matter to the customer.

Look man, your math is still off:

You are assuming too many things and you HAVE to account for the fact that the minimum wage is going to be $70k, so the minimum average wage possible is $70k (i.e. everybody is making 70k). Thus, there is a net increase of at least (70k-48k)*120 = 2.6m

This assumes everybody will be brought down to $70k salary, which we know is not going to happen.

Also, 5.5% for total payroll taxes is wayyy low. Did you include FICA/medicare/SS/unemployment insurance (federal and state)?

Yeah, I get the sense that it's just Dan too. Which means this is even more likely to fail.

Don't get me wrong, I totally support this from a moral perspective and wish more companies would follow suit, but the economics of this move are just not favorable.

The system is structured in a way to dis-incentivize this behavior (paying above-market rates for labor), and I'm skeptical what one man/company can really do to change the system. They will have to make up the increased expense/opportunity cost of having less money for re-investment & new employee hiring somehow, while their competitors will have a significant marginal advantage.

I hope they are wildly successful and I hope this becomes a trend because, in my opinion, income inequality is probably the greatest threat to social stability going forward, but I am not holding my breath. History has shown that anything short of real organized labor and government regulations (anti-trust) are just swinging at windmills, unfortunately.

Your numbers and math are wrong.

There are 120 employees total and you're only accounting for salary paid directly to employees (good rule of thumb is employer pays an additional 25-40% of your actual salary in employer taxes/expenses).

Under your scenario (assuming the 120 employees figure from the article is correct) a jump in average salary from $48k to $70k minus the CEO's old salary results in a net increase of $1.7mm (or about 75-80% of this year's profits as the article stated).

This scenario isn't correct though, because an average salary of $70k means there are still a significant number of employees still making below $70k. A more realistic estimate is the average salary will be well north of $70k, and if we include the additional cost of payroll taxes (let's say very conservatively 10%), then we're talking about:

($80k new avg - $48k old avg) * additional 10% payroll taxes * 120 employees = ~$4.2 million in additional wages

Granted, that's over 3 years, but this is a very conservative estimate assuming 10% payroll taxes, no additional employees hired, and the new average wage will be $80k which is also very conservative.

I commend the spirit of what this CEO is trying to do, but if I am an investor, director, or just even regular employee I would have serious reservations about this business strategy.

pay for the wage increases by cutting his own salary from nearly $1 million to $70,000 and using 75 to 80 percent of the company’s anticipated $2.2 million in profit this year.

I don't know what the financials for Gravity look like, but this really only makes sense from a financial standpoint if (1) the company can't re-invest the profits with a better ROI (rate of return) and (2) they aren't worried about competition - i.e. have a serious business moat. In addition, the company will have a higher payroll tax burden because of the higher salaries. (1) is somewhat justifiable as investing in your employees may garner loyalty/harder work which may raise the top-line, but (2) seems unlikely. There are a lot of credit card processing companies.

What happens if profits aren't as good next year? Are they going to slash wages to previous levels (or lower)? Or, if he's intent on sticking to the $70k minimum wage, this means he'll have to let go more people if the time comes. Did they look at alternatives - issuing more equity, special dividend, more generous bonuses??

I wonder how the conversation with finance went on this one.

Just don't forget, the primer is 3-dimensional: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgPSUer1ujM

There, I just saved us like a week's worth of effort.

Oh man, my fondest early memories with computers was modifying the autoexec.bat and config.sys files so I could play DOS games. I can only describe the feeling of finally figuring it out and getting a certain game to work as pure joy.

Conversely, the feeling when I changed something incorrectly (without backups of the original file, of course) and the system error'd out during boot - sheer panic.

Project Euler has something similar.

After solving each challenge, you're given access to the message board for that problem where people post their code and discuss how they solved it. The problems tend to become more focused on math implementations than programming after a while though, so this may not be the best example for you.

Haha, I love it.

There was a SIGBOVIK submission a couple years ago that looked at byte patterns within video game RAM (specifically NES) to automate the playing of. Pretty entertaining stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCurBYI_gY

I think Palantir is basically shit. Wait and watch.

That's a pretty bold statement.

I've worked with them as well, and definitely don't buy into the hype either. But when the latest financing round (~Jan 2015) has them valued at $15 billion, there must be something to it.

I don't know what kind of access their private investors have to the financials, but it's been reported they have 100s millions in revenue from USG alone selling their platform as enterprise software, which typically has a longer sales cycle but more "stickiness" once the customer has committed (i.e. they are less likely to purchase another platform no matter how bad the current one is). On top of that, the alternatives in this space just aren't very good, and sometimes hype and brand are all you need to make the sale.

That being said, I'm pretty skeptical of the valuations of all the tier 1 companies SamA mentioned, with maybe the exception of Pinterest, and think that category of the three has the most likelihood of losing him this bet.

Sounds like an equity refresh(er). Companies will grant refreshes to vested employees like you (i.e. past the 1-year cliff) to incent and award performance, and they are often given in lieu of a larger yearly cash bonus, which totally makes sense given the cash-strapped nature of most startups.

However, what they won't tell you is if the company has gone through any recent rounds of financing, you as a common stock shareholder have been diluted, and getting a refresh often times only brings you back to your original ownership percentage, if that, so getting a refresh is really only bringing you back to square one in a lot of cases.

In your case, it sounds like your additional grants were substantially more than refresh level (5-20%) which worked out pretty great. In my (limited) experience at 2 larger SV companies - 1 public, 1 private - they both "awarded" refreshes, and I would be surprised if most companies didn't. It's a win/win for the company - they can continue to raise cash through financing and use the cash to fund operations vs. paying out employees, and they can also "incent" their employees to work harder and faster with the promise of future riches.

I really want to recommend (upvote) his post, but Medium requires me to sign in with Twitter or Facebook to do so. Great.

I find the rest of that specific comment particularly amazing:

How does this relate to politics? Well, I suspect that governments today are more concerned with the loss of their ability to control and regulate the behavior of their citizens than they are with their citizens' discontent.

How do we make that work for us? We can devise means, through the application and sophistication of science, to remind governments that if they will not be responsible stewards of our rights, we the people will implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights.

You can see the beginnings of this dynamic today in the statements of government officials complaining about the adoption of encryption by major technology providers. The idea here isn't to fling ourselves into anarchy and do away with government, but to remind the government that there must always be a balance of power between the governing and the governed, and that as the progress of science increasingly empowers communities and individuals, there will be more and more areas of our lives where -- if government insists on behaving poorly and with a callous disregard for the citizen -- we can find ways to reduce or remove their powers on a new -- and permanent -- basis.

Our rights are not granted by governments. They are inherent to our nature. But it's entirely the opposite for governments: their privileges are precisely equal to only those which we suffer them to enjoy.

We haven't had to think about that much in the last few decades because quality of life has been increasing across almost all measures in a significant way, and that has led to a comfortable complacency. But here and there throughout history, we'll occasionally come across these periods where governments think more about what they "can" do rather than what they "should" do, and what is lawful will become increasingly distinct from what is moral.

In such times, we'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.

I like his idealism, but I just don't foresee the substantial changes that he's calling for occurring any time soon. Frankly, most people don't give a shit, and there are just too many vested interests involved to ensure that can't happen (e.g. Koch brothers donating $1billion dollars in the next election cycle, Citizens United, etc). Sure, there will be some pandering by both sides of the aisle next election about how they're the only true candidate that will protect individual rights, but once they've been sufficiently elected and absorbed by the machine, they'll continue along the trend that started 50+ years ago. Obama was a constitutional lawyer ffs.

But hey, as long as gas prices are low, Netflix stays up, and I can get my $10 Domino's large pizza delivered to my front door, I'll vote for whoever sounds good and promises me the most shit. /s

This should read "why developed societies no longer..."

The population growth rate in developing and 3rd world countries is still pretty high, despite what the author claims in the first paragraph.

I just got done reading Tim Wu's Master Switch and it covers this theme. Excellent book on the future of the information age.

And how far along would Elon Musk and SpaceX be without the decades of research, development, testing, and real-world experimentation done previously by NASA and other government R&D efforts?

Your argument presupposes SpaceX hasn't benefited from the previous work done before. Which they have, immensely. Stop reducing complex systems into simple certainties. It's insulting to the entire community of scientists that have been dedicated to rocket and space research over the past 70 years.

It seems with all the media that's been produced about heroin addiction (movies like Requiem for a Dream, Trainspotting, Traffic, etc...) that the risks of shooting up are fairly well known.

Yet, people still continue to use and get addicted to the drug. I feel a great deal of pity for the people whose lives have been destroyed by heroin, not just because of their addiction, but because of the underlying pain that must have been there for them to get to that point.

Ah, I hadn't seen that. It looks like they've updated the post with links to actual news articles to satisfy Reddit's requirement of posting personal information.