sonnyblarney

Egress (primarily) and also S3 costs are the primary reason we look away from AWS for alternative.

If you're comparing Xianjiang and what's happening at the border then this is not eve remotely 'equal opportunity' criticism - it's classical Chinese moral relativism.

In Xianjiang people are being rounded up for their religion or ethnicity, thrown into concentration camps, made 'non-persons', tortured, killed, if they die on trumped up charges their organs are harvested. It's Nazi-Germany level stuff.

The US is not 'putting children in prison' - the US (was previously) holding people who are trying to enter the country due literally to the prosperity of the nation. They are well treated and are free to leave any time.

Now that the rule has been discarded, migrants bring their children specifically on the dangerous journey because they know if they bring their kids, they don't have to go into detention.

This year there there has been a massive upswing in illegal migration precisely because migrants now know the golden legal loophole: bring a child - and they won't have to be held, they can immediately enter the country. And of course, the irony of the fact these people are desperately trying to get in to the country should not be lost on anyone making morally relative claims comparing that situation to Xianjiang.

"USA steals a lot of stuff too. But of course the American press won't tell you about that. Or if they mention it, they will put phrase it like "America liberated the population of Irak "

This is complete rubbish.

The US is not in the business of industrial espionage for commercial purposes - either on a corporate or governmental level, where China is.

Second - geopolitical issues have nothing to do with theft of IP, and usually not even resources (at least not in Central America).

'Central American countries' or 'Iraq' definitely have nothing to offer the US or anyone else in terms of the kind of IP theft one might be concerned about in China.

America did not 'steal' anything from Iraq - their Oil is their own, they receive 100% of the revenue, not only that, they are free to partner with any company they use, in fact, they ended up going with entities like Total (France), Statoil (Russia) etc. instead of US companies. (I guess as a 'thanks' for the fact they are now free to do as they please, and the Oil belongs to the people of Iraq instead of Saddam Co.)

"China is bad" because they steal IP, there is no rule of law, there is widespread corruption, pollution, there is total control of the people by the state and people dissapear of the street for no reason.

Literally, as we speak, China is incarcerating 100's of thousands, possibly millions of people due to their ethnicity or religion, and harvesting their organs as they are killed on trumped up charges. [1]

When we use the term 'Nazi' or 'concentration camps', usually it's hyperbole - but it's not: we now have a major power rounding up people by the millions due to ethnicity and culling their organs. This is actualy Nazi level stuff.

The level of moral relativism implied here is repulsive.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/asia/china-organ-harvesting/i...

This is not very relevant.

Snowdon is not in 'hiding' - if the Russians wanted to hide him, they probably could. But they are not, ergo, the US knows anything they want to know about him.

"every interference in elections and claim moral superiority while doing the exact same hoping no one finds out "

No, the West does not claim 'moral superiority' over Russia due to any kind of ostensible 'non participation' in espionage.

There is no 'hoping they don't find out' because it's accepted that it's happening. We only 'hope they don't find out' about specific activities.

No, that's not even remotely an extension of the 'logic' of my comment.

"What does hacking into Yandex give us"

Russia does not need this or any other reason, they are already doing this to the extent they can. The public nature of this will provide some political cover, but that's it.

As to 'what it gets' it entirely depends on the kind of information that was obtained, the inherent risks and cost, the targets etc..

Maybe there were specific targets, a specific needs, maybe they were casting a net - who knows.

"And you also rely on them for information as to who is truly terrible."

No, not at all. Thankfully we have many people in press, innumerable sources of information, and a lot of public discourse on these things.

Unlike in some regions, where journalists are murdered, sometimes by the state.

It's definitely not 'extra-legal'.

Espionage against a country that has 1000 nuclear warheads pointed at you, and practices using them, is a very responsible thing to do, and very much sanctioned by government.

The reason they gave you might be an excuse. If they were worried about '6 integrations' they could limit you to one.

My bet is they are trying to position themselves as a 'luxury good' of software.

Given there's no unit cost for software, that's always going to be a weird one. It makes more sense for supposedly 'exclusive' social networks (remember those?), but email doesn't quite have the same network effects.

Their 'laser focus' maybe going to be on people for whom $30/mo is an irrelevant expense, but more importantly they want 'status' individuals, who will personally market the product to those within their 'status' circle.

There's a class of higher-net-worth individuals who almost define themselves by specific things: their school, their car, their address, their job title, their activities, the club they belong to. To be fair, in some ways, it's important they do that because in some career trajectories, appearances are everything.

But key to building any kind of luxury brand is scarcity (or, it usually is, there are some that defy this), and of course brand, so they want the 'right people' to be using this.

If regular plebs use this, well then it's not much of a status signal.

All of this seems very cynical, but the reason I believe this might be the case is that the marketing collateral doesn't focus on anything materially relevant.

Yes - it's fine for companies to talk about very high level things like 'getting things done faster' - but ultimately, there has to be some kind of material translation there: what features etc. actually drive that productivity?

I don't see anything at all.

In fact, the screen shoots that we can kind of see in the marketing collateral provide not much information at all. I don't see the 'there there' - at least not from those shots.

Many startups make the opposite mistake - tons of features which they don't map well to 'problems solved' (and sometimes it's not bad communications, it's often features that actually have no value) - but the article in a16z - and the Superhuman website are just way too limited in terms of any details, to the point where my 'red flag' is raised.

About 50% of office workers spend '3 hours a day' in email. Maybe more. And so yes, any 'improvement' in email is worth something, possibly even $30.

But my 'spidey marketing sense' is telling me this is all about selling a 'decent' and 'nice looking' email client to aspirational people who are desperate to signal their status.

Possibly not for HN types, possibly not even for true, email warriors.

Either this, or they could really trying to pull the exclusivity/insider thing to the max as a launch strategy.

Should note 'The Information' is a $50/month news site - which has really set the bar for this kind of stuff. But the difference there is 'The Information' does get really juicy 'insider' kind of stories. The $50/month is probably easily written off as expense by every subscriber, there's materiality there.

Anyhow - the level of curation going on here is a little odd.

They say 'Superhuman' - that's totally fine, good on them, but I'll wait to see it to draw any conclusions.

This is a little heavy on the advertorial.

Also - aren't we past the 'false scarcity' thing these days?

If you're going to talk about it publicly, why can't I try it?

"Ooh, you can use it sooner if you know someone who is using it"

Sorry that I'm not already in your club, but I was excited to look at it, now, I'm a tiny bit miffed, but most importantly I may not remember to come back.

...

The author lamented 'decision making' 'getting back to someone' etc. which we can all empathize with.

The marketing collateral of Superhuman talks about 'speed' i.e. not having to wait 100ms for anything ...

I'm not sure how the two are deeply related. Yes, a refresh and speed will be great, but I personally don't think that's the issue.

It's a rather difficult thing for orgs to try to magically organize information, Google seems to be trying a few things and while novel and impressive, ultimately I think they are futile.

Anyhow, I'm stoked that people are trying to re-invent old things, excited to try it. I guess when my 'klout' score gets high enough?

"The US and most European countries"

More likely European nations are still mostly ethnocentric whereby the clear majority of the populations identify with a group that is historically part of that territory.

Which is fundamentally different from US, Canada, Singapore and even Central/South American nations which have yet another aspect.

"Ancient Rome and Ancient China both prospered economically under these conditions. "

Ancient Rome invaded, plundered, occupied and demanded ongoing massive tributes from it's territories. Even most of the Italian peninsula were technically slaves.

The basis of 'prosperity' in Roman territories mostly boils down to physical security, i.e. 'Pax Romana'

"Nationalism in all it's incarnations has historically been an attempt to reassert tribal balance in favor of some formerly dominant but now sub-dominant group and it rarely ends well for that group."

Maybe you should offer some examples here, because I can't think of a single one.

- Quebec nationalism resulted in a 'quiet revolution' and an officially bilingual federal state.

- Scottish nationalism resulted in devolution.

- Nazi/German nationalism in both World Wars wasn't exactly the reassertion of a 'formerly dominant state' - moreover, now that France is weakened and the UK is 'out' - Germany's dominance of the EU is basically unchallenged.

- Russian nationalism has been fairly strong since the modern concept of nationalism.

- Nationalist movements throughout the post WW2 era resulted in the ostensible freedom of many powers from former colonial rule: Egypt, Libya, Algeria. (That list is very long.)

FYI the modern concept of 'Nationalism' is merely a civic orientation of that which existed before (and still does) i.e. 'ethnicity'.

Sweden and Finland do not share totally arbitrary borders.

The border between Finland and Sweden is such that the relative ethnic populations of Swedes and Finns are contiguous, i.e. Sweden is where the Swedish people live, Finland is where the Finns live - mostly.

The ethnocentric nature of the nation state is still obvious today by the fact that many ethnic Swedes for example live in Finland, and are demarcated as a separate group - not just people who 'speak a different language', bur rather, they are of a different ethnicity than Finns, although technically of the same legal nationality.

Though nationalism is very different in a place like the USS or Canada, it's still forms part of people's natural identity.

Family, tribe, ethnic group, 'nation' (be it ethnic or idealist) are part of who we are; to ignore this would be to ignore the very nature of who we are.

That said, some things, like Scientific knowledge tend to be humanist, i.e. transcending ethnicities, and of course we often need to be reminded of this.

"A corporation is inherently an immoral actor"

This is not true.

And FYI big corporations are also stupid in many ways.

I'd argue they've operationalized some core things, everything else is wishy washy at best.

" was something like $15 more than in my cart!"

This is infuriating.

I think I would call them and wait on hold just to give tell them how I'll never shop there again.

It should definitely be illegal.

There's a wide gap between fake information and real information.

On Via rail (Canada's Amtrack) you can see that 'there's only 3 seats left' in that category, but in my experience I think it's legit information.

Frankly - it's kind of useful as I sometimes delay booking, but I know the cheap tickets will be sold at some point.

Maybe there are some question marks about the 'darkness' of that pattern, but it's different than those sites that categorically lie or misrepresent.

I suggest if airlines/hotels are outright lying about some kinds of information, they should face fines, legislation, regulation.

Yes, but there's always narrative driving the change of thought.

Once we go back and forth a few times, it strains the credibility of those driving the narrative.

So Vietnam War, 'Low fat' diets of the 1980's (which led to high carb/sugar) diets etc..

G is apparently losing a lot of product related search to Amazon, I suggest that the 'siloing' of the web, for better or worse, might yield some progress here.

i.e. when you search, you start in a relevant domain instead of Google so Amazon for products, Stack Exchange for CS questions.

Obviously not ideal either.

The Telegraph editorial position is 'Brexit' [1]

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/heres-where-britains-...

The plebs don't seem to be aware that he's disorganized and unprepared or lacking in knowledge - that's beyond the things they care about it seems.

Apparently, people 'like him' and his sheer popularity I think is most of the driving force behind his success.

Anyone who's paying attention (small minority in reality) seems to regard him as a complete idiot, however.

The Financial Times, his former editor at the Telegraph, obviously the Guardian - any serious writing about him is seriously derisive.

These are harsh words [1]

The thing I don't understand is what the Conservatives are thinking at this time? Are they simply looking at the polls showing him as clearly the most electable in an election? Because I can't believe that conservative MP's don't realize he's a fool as well. Maybe they think they'll be able to combine him with a solid Brexit negotiator, but I don't see that working. I just can't fathom Boris Johnson sitting down with Merkel, and whoever the new EU President is going to be, and doing anything material.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/boris-...

I think the point of the story was not that he was a 'good speaker' but rather, his foolhardiness is a populist act.

Which implies that his kind of bumbling attitude in popular politics might very well be calculated, i.e. he's not a fool, he's brilliant.

I'll buy that he's borderline genius with the populist bits, but I also believe basically everyone in international politics who say he's a clown, totally unprepared, never serious. Some of the things serious entities have to say about him are pretty bad.

If this is true, the man is obviously a genius.

That said, the 'act of the fool' mightn't work in operational reality, because if everyone believes he's an unprepared bumpkin, then that's the reality, and he won't be respected.

His former editor at the Telegraph had some very harsh words about him, along the lines of 'he only cares about himself, he's totally unprepared, has no idea what he is doing' etc. and I'll gather that rings true.

So maybe he is a populist genius, but I'm not sure how well this will bode for the current EU/Brexit crisis.

"having less kids and many less adults smoking cigarettes is such a huge win for public health."

It's not about quitting anymore though. It's way beyond that.

Vaping is incredibly addictive, and because it's 'not smoking' and Juul is marketing it as 'cool' - it's massively taking over.

While vaping is obviously better than smoking, it has odd side effects due to the fact it's not, for example, I found myself vaping all the time, as opposed to just 'smoke breaks'.

Understand a few things:

1) Marketing works 2) Trends are real 3) Young people are very impressionable 4) The earlier addiction happens, the more life-long issues it causes 5) Critical masses are real: 5 kids in a high school doing it may not flip the school, but 25 might be enough and flip it into 1/2 the school 6) Supply and Demand is real. Make things harder to get, more expensive, higher barriers, the less people do it, the less likely there is to be a 'tipping point' collective behaviour.

I don't think they should have banned it, but they should totally ban all forms of advertising and promotion, there should be relatively high taxes on it, health warnings, and they shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a school. At least if the kids can go all day without vaping, they might not fall into a hole.

In Canada, vaping among teenagers has increased 75% in one year this is quite a substantial thing to worry about. [1]

[1] http://www.cancer.ca/en/about-us/for-media/media-releases/na...

Even though this is one step in the direction of 'free markets' ... they need to go further.

With healthcare, we fall into an entirely different domain of economics, especially because the leverage of those who have 'life saving' services over those who don't is basically existential.

A better solution would be: 'one price for everyone'.

The entire gambit of 'negotiated prices' is a fallacy in the end, it's just a matter of groups having collective power over another, it's not really economically efficient.

Either A) all Americans form a 'super powerful buying conglomerate' which is 10x more powerful than any healthcare provider, thereby forcing 'amazingly low prices' (which basically socialized medicine) - or B) we let the 'aggregate market demand' determine price, which is basically 'one price for all'.

America should probably follow one of the European examples where they have a public/private mix. I respect that some people just want full control and want to pay for that, it's fine, but there needs to be a socialized component more efficient than Medicare.

I'm not sure if Canada or UK are the best examples for America. Germany, Netherlands or Switzerland might be better.

" is China putting a gag order on world leaders? Under what authority?"

It's just power, that's how most of the world works.

How much is a 'ton'? 5 Million? 10 million? 100 million?

How big really is the market for a celeb sending a custom 10 second video talking about something, and can this entity really control that market? How do they maintain their margins.

Take Social Media for example, it'd seem there doesn't seem to be a massive player that controls how the sponsorship money flows into influencers, and not for a lack of trying.

Finding the 'technical value' of things can be tricky, as you say with all the special features of a deal.

But in general, it's actually fairly straightforward.

Investors are usually looking to take x% ownership, ballpark in a round, and they are all looking for at least a 10x return.

Technicalities of deals vary, but in the end, a 'round' of investors may get 10-30% and they have big expectations for returns, otherwise it's not worth it.

Given the paths to liquidity are IPO or 'get acquired', I'm hard pressed to see the logic on this one. How many pure media companies have done major IPO's based on hard, forecastable metrics lately? And what kind of 'big pockets' company would be interested in making a $500M-$1B acquisition of such a thing? Disney? I don't think so really.

I can certainly see the founders making some kind of 'big story' about what they are going to do, but the essentials of what they are doing is not great. I don't see how the experience will be protected, I don't see a lot of competitive advantage, I don't see how they get to the kinds of sales required for those massive valuations, and of course this has a lot of 'fad risk'.

Yes, Tylenol 3 with codeine was available until 2018 in Canada without a prescription, oddly. But that 'loophole' would eventually be exploited by those needing their 'fix' ... so it's now prescription only.

As far as I know the rule for ads is 'non prescription', beyond that it's hard.

I don't recall seeing an ad for a prescription drug in Canada in the last decade, though they might exist in some form.

We get American TV and those ads seem quite ridiculous, what with the senior citizens dancing away, and the narrator iterating through a huge list of symptoms, then listing off 30 or 40 side effects as fast as he can, as if people are remotely capable of understanding.

My family works in the drug industry, I should say one thing that people don't want to hear: a lot of doctors are lazy. Just because they're doctors, does not mean that they keep up in any way with current issues, trends. The level of power they have, and the relative lack of ongoing certification is ridiculous. Once they get their ticket, it's a golden ride for the rest of their lives if they want.

Many people complain about the 'free lunch' doctor's visits by the sales reps, but I don't see it as such a bad thing. It's intense and important information, I have no problem with Doctors getting a 'free ham sandwich' to entice them to go through the data on the latest trials.

Obviously, there are shenanigans there, misrepresentation, competitive issues, pricing etc. etc. - but frankly a 'highly moral sales/communication force' actually I think does add value - they get doctors to pay attention to the specific issues. Obviously, there are probably better alternatives ... but again, Doctor's guilds are very powerful and archaic, nobody can tell them what to do.

The more disconcerting problem is, even if it's a trend and not a fad ... there are still valuation problems with this.

$50M means a valuation at least north of $150M I just don't see how this gets to that sum.

How is this a sustainable business at the kind of scale needed to 10x a $50M investment?

Especially by KP?

#Bubblesignal

Yes, you can advertise Tylenol in Canada.

But not Oxycontin.