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908B64B197

6,125 karma · joined November 10, 2019

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908B64B197··on NYC food delivery gig workers score a big minimum wage victory
It's much better than what he would have made under the old medallion system Uber disrupted.

Pre-Uber/Lyft, either the driver rented the car from a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid). Sure back then the dispatch only took a 15-20% cut, but medallion payments took at least a 50% cut on every ride. That money didn't get re-invested or re-distributed as incentives to drivers, no. It went straight to the pockets of the local rent-seeker.

The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber/Lyft brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it.

And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-white neighborhoods...).

908B64B197··on Dating, education, and sex ratios
> I no longer discuss anything related to gender, relationships, or personal life dynamics with anyone outside of my bubble.

It's also pointless to discuss them. People say all sorts of things, but then act completely differently!

908B64B197··on If you want people to show up, data shows these are the best meeting times
> EU and even more so Asia-based employees prefer to first discuss the idea on multiple 1:1s for a long time, to discuss / think / make decision with everyone, come up with some harmony before any formal meetings. And the meeting itself would serve only ceremonial needs -- to let the manager officially declare the idea live.

This is so that the manager doesn't lose face in front of his subordinates. In the US, if the junior employee has a stroke of genius during the meeting and comes up with a better idea than the manager, then the manager just looks good for hiring that guy.

908B64B197··on US moves to block Microsoft's Activision takeover
> between "buying nothing" and "buying the biggest game developer in the world"

I wonder how much of that is because of IP and said IP's underperformance.

908B64B197··on US moves to block Microsoft's Activision takeover
> or the deal could be modified to suit the UK’s concerns.

The argument given by the UK's bureaucrats had something to do with cloud gaming. I guess they could make Activision's tittles available on competing cloud gaming platforms in the UK.

908B64B197··on Geofence Warrants and Reverse Keyword Warrants Are Invasive
> Is the EFF aware that 95.75% of the population of the planet does not live under the Amendments of the Constitution of the USA?

And yet, that 95.75% has a net drain (especially among high earners and top of their fields professional) to the US, meaning that people all over the world seek and actively desire to be protected and live under the Constitution more than their countries' laws.

908B64B197··on The US government is buying troves of data about Americans
> without literally going through everyone's private communications?

Most shooters had mental issues that went ignored or were swept under the rug by the adults that were supposed to help.

> Only like 0.1% of them will ever shoot up a school

This is still at least two orders of magnitude larger than the real number. It's what the people who wants to take legally-owned firearms away want to the public to think.

908B64B197··on The US government is buying troves of data about Americans
I have no clue why GP's comment was flagged. Brigading going on?

Few years ago we acquired something in Montreal related to AI, and it's interesting because when we tried to get the team to relocate to California many weren't interested. A lot of the key personnel ended-up moving, but they still kept a significant presence in the city. Even today, when hiring they'll have engineers indicate early in the process they won't ever move (despite pretty much everyone considered for that office being eligible for an O-1 due to the nature of the work being done there).

What's interesting is we opened a satellite location in Toronto and it was a completely different experience. First thing people asked coming into interviews was about relocating to the US and if we could sponsor their visa. The demographics also skewed heavily toward recent immigrants to Canada.

The irony was, the Toronto location was opened specifically to house developers that simply couldn't pass the higher bar for US immigration.

908B64B197··on Canada’s Big Flex in Space
Something you have to keep in mind is that there are two parallel markets over there: SV caliber developers and the rest. The former won't have any issue getting a job in the US (takes maybe a week for a talented engineer to get one). Therefore, comp has to be priced appropriately. The later can't -and likely won't ever be able to- secure a US visa, mostly due to skills. A lot of them are immigrants to Canada themselves (there's a reason they immigrated to Canada, it's way easier and the quotas are close to 10x per capita compared to the US). Some companies leverage this and have floors of international devs they park in Canada for a fraction of their US counterpart through a subsidiary.
908B64B197··on Canada’s Big Flex in Space
At the time it was puzzling to me why Trudeau was so submissive regarding China. He bowed down to the CCP and wasn't able to secure the `Two Michaels` release. In retrospect, that might have been because of the double allegiances the Trudeau cabinet held toward China [0] [1].

He did a great job for Boeing's shareholders (me included) and the CCP. Just, not for the Canadian public it seems!

[0] https://globalnews.ca/news/9658738/trudeau-foundation-china-...

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65054559

908B64B197··on Canada’s Big Flex in Space
Anecdotally, seems there's a lot of Canadians expats here in the Valley and they don't seem too keen on returning. We've been getting a lot of international applicants (but work from home was supposed to mean Canadians could avoid moving to the "dangerous" US but work for American companies?).

Post 2016 the messaging from most commonwealth countries (UK, Canada, Australia) seemed to be that they were going to be the ones benefiting from a brain drain of Americans leaving the country. Canada was supposed to become an "AI Superpower" and its Universities were supposed to be where innovation was going to happen next due to the perceived hostility of the United States to foreign talent.

Canada sure had a lot of "talent" immigrate in the meantime, but from my observations it's mostly people who can't -and likely won't ever be able to- secure a US visa, mostly due to skills (there's a reason they immigrated to Canada, it's way easier and the quotas are close to 10x per capita compared to the US). Some companies leverage this and have floors of international devs they park in Canada for a fraction of their US counterpart through a subsidiary.

It's interesting, in retrospective, to see how wrong these predictions were. Top destination for Canadian nationals in Academia was, and still is... the US.

908B64B197··on El Paquete Semanal
> Castro then demanded that in addition to their relatives, the boats had to be filled with common prisoners from jails and mental patients, who were given the choice of staying in prison or trying their luck emigrating on those boats. Castro wanted to provoke a crime wave in the US to tarnish the reputations of those Cubans living there.

I can't help but to see a parallel with the out of control flood of migrants (some of them potential legitimate refugees) Turkey let into Europe in order to put pressure on the European Union back in 2015.

908B64B197··on Expectation vs. Reality: The Hard Hand Dealt Young People in 2023
... and that's still a better deal than the UK, where the norm is no equity and an capped salaries for "IT personnel" (their words, not mine).

Anecdotally, seems there's a lot of British and European expats here in the Valley and they don't seem too keen on returning. We've been getting a lot of international applicants (but work from home was supposed to mean Europeans could avoid moving to the "dangerous" US but work for American companies?).

Post 2016 the messaging from most commonwealth countries (UK, Canada, Australia) seemed to be that they were going to be the ones benefiting from a brain drain of Americans leaving the country. Canada was supposed to become an "AI Superpower" and Universities in the UK were supposed to be where innovation was going to happen next due to the perceived hostility of the United States to foreign talent. I recall someone pitching the "Silicon Roundabout" and that Cambridge and Oxford were going to be the new Stanford and MIT.

It's interesting, in retrospective, to see how wrong these predictions were. Top destination for UK nationals in Academia was, and still is... the US [0].

[0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...

908B64B197··on Canada’s Big Flex in Space
It's probably a great thing for Canada that the Avro project was shut down. The real tragedy was the CSeries/Airbus A220.

The Avro was a cool paper project (it is ultimately unknown if it could even achieve the projected performance since no flights were performed anywhere close to the claimed speeds or with real hardware). The Avro didn't serve any purpose, it was rendered obsolete by ICBMs and 50's soviet technology. The plane was made to intercept a nuclear supersonic soviet bomber that... never materialized! The soviets and Americans went all-in with ICBMs, rendering bombers pretty much obsolete (by Sputnik launch it became obvious nuclear payloads would be delivered with ballistic missiles). Would have been a costly, useless plane.

The A220 was a complete airliner project with a production line and $52 billion dollars worth of firm orders as of 2020. When the Trump administration slapped tariffs on it Trudeau immediately bowed down, despite the tariffs later being thrown out in courts. All he did was to basically threaten to not buy Boeing fighter jets and instead get f35 from Lockheed (which he was contractually obligated to anyways). No support for the industry, nothing. And that was for a flagship prestige technological project.

All he had to do was to be a little bit more assertive and make a capital injection at the right time. Bombardier was swimming in orders, it was guaranteed that the project was going to make money at this point (plane was even certified by the FAA by then).

I still don't understand why he reacted so submissively to Trump. Having the CSeries sold to Airbus at a huge discount was foolish: The plane already had a profitable amount of orders. Canadians paid for the R&D, Europeans and Americans are now reaping the benefits.

While there was very little the Canadian government could do to save the Arrow, other than maybe building it as a training aircraft, it was 100% possible for the Government to save Bombardier and the A220 program. I wonder if the fact that the company is headquartered in Quebec made it politically impossible...

908B64B197··on Mechanical Apple Watch from real e-waste Apple Watch
It's completely self-inflicted.

Duties, tariffs, out of control regulations and taxes to pay for underperforming civil servant's pension funds. It all adds up.

908B64B197··on More startups throw in the towel, unable to raise money for their ideas
Facebook ignored compliance at the time, but the way they mitigated the risks was by targeting a smaller, exclusive market (smaller colleges in the US) that's less risky compliance-wise (no minors for instance, domestic market).
908B64B197··on NYC Bailing Out Hotels Paying Premium Rates for Budget Rooms to House Migrants
> Across the board, illegal immigrants are LESS likely to commit crimes.

While true, it should be noted that part of this is because illegal immigrants can't be repeat offenders, unlike citizens. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 77 percent of former inmates are rearrested within five years [0].

[0] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/03/09/seven-things-t...

908B64B197··on Apple Vision Pro: Apple’s first spatial computer
Can it even shrink that much?

Optics killed HoloLens.

908B64B197··on Apple Vision Pro: Apple’s first spatial computer
Pro Display XDR is also in a market segment where it's the last step before getting a calibrated display that's 10x the price. When looking at the specs it's actually a great display at a good price point.

> Of course, Vision "Pro" suggests maybe they have a non-pro plan for that in the works already, in which case it would help the ecosystem sustain even more.

Like every other platform products, the V1's audience is... developers. Once there are a few killer apps, Apple will commoditize and unleash a much cheaper version.

908B64B197··on Criminalization of encryption in France: the 8 December case
It's part for the course in a country that bans paternity testing (to "protect the unity of families"! ) [0]

[0] https://idtodna.com/paternity-test-in-france/

908B64B197··on America has paid a steep price for parking
Public transit is extremely safe if you withhold crime stats and footage as not to incentivize "racist stereotypes" (whatever that means). [0]

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/bart-withholding-s...

908B64B197··on Parents in Ireland town to voluntarily ban smartphones for kids as old as 13
Keep in mind there's a direct correlation between "screen time" and depression...

Meaning that kids that spend 5+ hours per day on their phones are depressed. Up to one hour had no noticeable effects. [0]

Now think about why a kid would self-isolate for 5 hours a day and it might give you a clue about why they are depressed in the first place (hint, it's not the magical screen!).

[0] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-ill...

908B64B197··on Signs of de-dollarisation emerging, Wall Street giant JPMorgan says
> The whole dedollarization narrative is like some weird propaganda pushed by china.

The beauty of the US dollar is it's always worth a US dollar... It's strength is a measure of much foreigners trust the US economy and it's political and judicial system. What drives the demand for the dollar is the will of people to invest money in American securities and on the American capital market. I don't see it ending anytime soon.

Chinese investors invest on the Chinese market in Yuans. Rich Chinese investors invest on the US market with US dollars.

908B64B197··on Facebook to block news for some users in Canada
> they have racist laws

Like, against black people?

> voted twice in my life about leaving Canada

That's not at all like the US Confederation or Civil War.

> they had an IRA style terrorist group called the FLQ.

Did they actually get convicted under terrorism laws? From my understanding, it was a series of mailbox bombing, some of them by the feds themselves. [0] Nothing remotely looking like 9/11.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_controversies_involvin...

908B64B197··on Facebook to block news for some users in Canada
> confederate state > secession

I don't know if these words have the same connotation in Canada as in the US, but these are two pretty loaded terms out here.

908B64B197··on Facebook to block news for some users in Canada
Aren’t the French Canadians notorious for buying and consuming their own culture?

Friend of mine here in the bay area is French Canadian and his teenagers (both full Americans born here) both watch and follow French Canadians on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. He explained to me that under Canadian law, absolutely none of that is Canadian Content or Culture. No subsidies, no quotas. Even a Denis Villeneuve movie isn't either.

Apparently, to watch original content in French he has to VPN in Canada to be allowed to watch content that's only produced in Canada for French Canadians by CBC; they won't even make the smallest attempt at exporting it.

Honestly the whole concept, to me, is bizarre.

908B64B197··on Facebook to block news for some users in Canada
> News organizations are tired of providing fodder for Facebook comment sections and not getting eyeballs on their own websites.

That's not limited to Canada. It's a worldwide phenomena.

But the question media company should be asking themselves is why aren't people actually clicking on the articles and reading the content?

It's perplexing to me because it would cost them (the media companies) billions of dollars if they had to buy adds on platforms like Facebook for their content. They get all of it for free and yet these links don't translate into actual clicks.

908B64B197··on Facebook to block news for some users in Canada
The most interesting thing is what's defined as "Canadian Content".

Most of what Celine Dion produced in her career doesn't fit the government approved list of cultural content, so is considered foreign music. Celine Dion, probably Canada's most recognizable voice and signer, signing in French, a language almost exclusively spoken in Canada on the North American continent, isn't considered Canadian culture.

But some recordings from Elvis do count because he happened to record them on Canadian soil. [0]

[0] https://nationalpost.com/news/extremely-canadian-media-that-...

908B64B197··on The newest college admissions ploy: paying to make your teen “peer-reviewed”
> It seems to me that a good standardized test score is one of the only things that someone with a lot of motivation and talent, but very few resources, can use to distinguish themselves.

That's the way poor immigrant Asian kids and rural whites did it a generation ago. Nowadays, CRT activists are trying to get "holistic" criterions to be used by admission committee. [0] You guessed it, they also argue that the SAT should be de-emphasized.

[0] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-harberson-asian-...

908B64B197··on The newest college admissions ploy: paying to make your teen “peer-reviewed”
From our experience there's no difference between Ivies and good State schools.

Especially with affirmative action, it's way harder for a White or Asian male to get a spot at some universities.

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