Judgmentality

What is your definition of middle class?

Just curious, how many tabs do you normally have open?

> Since there has never been any company with $600 billion annual sales

I wonder if someone clever might exploit this loophole to kill the reverse repo market, which is almost hitting $600 billion daily. And technically it's run by the fed, which is technically a private entity. This is obviously an outlier within an outlier and God knows the government wouldn't let it's magical money maker come under fire, but it seems like with the right set of circumstances this going in front of SCOTUS could completely undermine how our entire concept of debt and lending works in the US economy.

Everything I'm saying is purely speculation. This actually happening is about as likely as the US admitting it invaded Iraq for oil (and a bunch of other more nuanced reasons). It's not about honesty; it's about money.

Your comment was about lawyers. I gave a random anecdote. We're not talking about different things at all, unless your comment was only about specific lawyers which you failed to mention.

Anyway, I don't care enough to comment anymore.

Do you have a link? I'm trying to dig up stories on it, but it's so stale. As far as I can tell almost everybody settled, and the few that fought in court eventually won.

https://www.wired.com/2010/05/riaa-bump/

IANAL, but I'm curious if you are. In my experience, lawyers tend to get a lot done by intimidation. Remember all those ridiculous lawsuits from the RIAA over downloading illegal music? Well, it turns out when people actually took them to court they won every time. But people settled out of fear.

Sure, if the lawyers are actually trying to do things legally first and adhering to the letter of the law, I'm sure they're happy to have their efforts challenged. But I have never, ever, in my life encountered a lawyer who worked this way (and I have lawyers in my family, I've been to court, I've personally hired several, blah blah blah). I am not saying they don't know the law, but they use their greater knowledge of the law to their advantage. Their goal isn't transparency, it's submission.

Fun fact - if you buy the car new, you may have the "option" of being presented with these choices before purchase. And you can actually refuse! The dealer will be confused as hell, but they are hell-bent on selling a new car, and will actually void it if possible. I know because I've done it. You don't want the weird spyware (OnStar, Carnet, etcetera)? After agreeing to buy the car, refuse to accept the terms (they legally require your signature for this), and they'll find a way to get around it. If they refuse then go buy a different car, because fuck those guys.

Obviously this will vary by manufacturer and feature, and it's getting harder as time goes on to remove this shit from your vehicle.

The irony of not being able to the transport the thing that usually transports the things.

> Does the origin of SARS-CoV-2 really matter at this point?

I hear this question so often I'm beginning to get upset.

Yes, it absolutely 100% matters for the same reason it matters that we learn about anything. Why would we ever want to restrict our knowledge and be willfully ignorant? At this point I just assume the only reason is political. And when has that ever been a good thing for humanity or history?

For all we know China is purposefully manufacturing viruses as weapons (in fact there is already some evidence of this happening), and you think it doesn't matter?

Honestly none of the anti-China propaganda ever really seemed to do anything for me, but nothing has made me more leery of China than the wall of "we don't really need to know where covid came from" comments I see on the internet. I don't know or care if the person I am replying to is a shill, but I have never seen such a strong front defending ignorance before in my life.

JFC everything gets flagged now instead of anyone having a discussion. I'm directly responding to part of the comment which I believe to already be political, so I'm just trying to continue the conversation that OP started. Maybe if most comments suggesting we should explore this issue weren't so quickly flagged on HN it would make me more receptive to the idea this isn't an organized political front.

However, it is perfectly normal for a police officer to pick up a person just for walking down the street in America without carrying any papers, and once that person is held for 48 hours (which they can do without filing any charges) ICE can easily come and deport somebody.

I think you are unwittingly coloring your words, likely because you are frustrated by this post (it's petty drama you want to downvote but policy says you can't, and you have inside information you can't share). This is like subtle apophasis, where you're implying that the tweeter (wow that sounds so weird) is on the wrong side.

I'm not taking sides here, despite being a YC alum (alternate account) I stopped looking at the forum forever ago and had not even heard about this nor do I care, honestly I just thought it'd be fun to read some drama on HN since it's so rare here.

I think enough other people are commenting on this to suggest it's not just me. I think you mean well, but none of us are unbiased. It seems like a no-win situation though. So it goes.

Someone else proposed what I consider a very reasonable solution. Just make whatever data they have 100% transparent, and you as the user can choose to offer less (or more) at any point in time. This should be regulated similar to HIPAA with serious penalties for any violations, because it absolutely is about avoiding privacy violations.

And if you as the user want to share no data at all, you should have that option. This is the company's problem, not the customer's problem - or at least that's the world I want to live in.

And obviously don't hide anything behind dark patterns, and all the other common sense gotchas. Violations should be treated as criminal fraud with prison time (assuming they are found guilty in a court of law, and proving criminal fraud is notoriously difficult but the threat needs to be real).

> It's a big Rohrschach test and nothing more.

This is a really insightful way of describing this phenomenon.

> It's lazy when it doesn't come with a proposal to replace the stuff that you want to burn down.

And what do we want to replace targeted ads, surreptitious tracking, and a system that exploits its users for money while not being held accountable to its users with?

I'd say we're better off with nothing. So yes, in this instance, burn it all down actually is a solution.

I'm aware I'm ignoring the externalities, I'm aware it's complicated, and I'm aware what I'm proposing actually is lazy. I'm aware a bunch of people will lose their jobs (mostly in tech though so I really don't feel bad, having spent most of life in that industry). I'm saying in this instance it doesn't matter. We're still better off burning it all down.

I've never heard "hey this isn't working, let's start over from scratch!" be called laziness before.

I don't understand, what's the controversy with Potti? The dude was a piece of shit - what else is there to discuss? I'm not being condescending I genuinely don't see any nuance like you're stating. When is it ever okay to fabricate data?

Gotta say you're completely ignoring the negative toll this takes on morale. I hate unrealistic timelines, and I've been on almost every side of the table (engineer, engineering manager, product manager, program manager, even CEO for a tiny startup). Internally, only the most junior engineers tend to believe the timelines for these ambitious R&D projects. And it leads to senior engineers just getting tired of endless politicking around hype instead of actually focusing on building the thing and being honest about when it will be ready. To be a little less professional - the timelines are usually fucking bullshit.

I've quit before because of this very reason. You're allowed to disagree with me obviously, but I don't want to work with you if you honestly believe this is a good policy.

I actually hadn't considered this, and now I'm curious if some of the new F1 regulations (there are lots of new regulations fairly regularly, so I don't mean to say this is like changing the rules of basketball which happens every decade or so) have anything to do with Lewis Hamilton's total dominance, who happens to be the first black formula 1 driver.

Are you saying taking psychadelics makes you a degenerate? If so, why do you think so?

> Now it is clear, no can argue the founders success, it's written in black and white and made public for all to see, they achieved an undeniably great thing.

No one can argue the founders' successful profit. I know nothing about this company and have no opinion on it one way or the other, but I know companies that are borderline fraudulent (and I am aware that is a strong claim) that are going public via SPACs and the founders are getting rich despite not having a product or paying customers.

Sorry to reply so late to this.

Your points are entirely valid, but in this instance OpenAI - to the best of my knowledge - hasn't actually stated what any of the potential negative consequences are. I realize it's possible that they truly have uncovered some magic mystery, but why would they be the only ones to realize it when others are working on similar problems? And more importantly, why can't anyone articulate what these dangers are? I have heard a few scare-mongering arguments which sound like they were written for clickbait, but nothing substantial.

I realize you used to work/collaborate there so I'm sure you were exposed to these ideas and I respect your view, but my frustration is you still aren't stating what the bad consequences are. Is it really so nefarious that even mentioning it triggers some sort of scourge upon humanity? I just don't buy it, especially considering the managerial history (looking from the outside in) of OpenAI.

> In general, when people working full-time on a technology think it's dangerous and you don't see why, it's best to assume that they've spent a lot more time thinking of ways it could go wrong than you.

Or they could explain it to us in a way that's understandable. I see no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt when they've already thrown away so much goodwill.

Even Sam Altman considers his own company to be a failure - you fail to mention they basically sold for as much as they raised so it wasn't a success for most (if any) investors.

Also I don't think Sam proved YC can scale, in fact I think it's the opposite and we just haven't had enough time to watch it play out. I certainly hold YC in lower regard than I used to, and I'm a YC alum (alternate account).

He is a successful investor, I can't deny that. But he hasn't proven anything with OpenAI yet. And I think anybody that actually followed OpenAI from the beginning is really disappointed in how "open" it really is. The fact that you point to fundraising as proof of success is so bizarre. By that logic WeWork should be your favorite company of the last decade.

The irony is people use sunscreen to avoid getting skin cancer, and OP is pointing out it may be causing it instead.

A better solution is for Google to hire more people to help with moderation. It's just that Google doesn't want to spend more money, it wants to make more profit.

> I pay for G-Suite and I have access to live-human chat support.

Yep. The only reason I pay for G Suite is so I can complain to a human when something in Google is properly fucking up. They hate me but they always talk to me.

I know lots of folks who hate(d) working there. Just adding my anecdata to yours.

You want to have multiple offers because it helps you leverage yourself to higher pay during negotiations, and it also gives you more choices to decide where to go next.

You want to have a offer before giving notice just so you know what's next, and obviously you shouldn't do this if you don't intend on accepting the only offer you have.

If you have no offers you can quit, but you have no guarantee of finding a job immediately and it also can hurt your leverage while negotiating.

A company getting a tax break is not in the same league as what happened with Foxconn in Wisconsin. That was a truly special example of wild incompetence and corruption.

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/wbhjwd

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18128133/foxconn-deal-wis...

This is just a company that actually wants to build what they're saying they'll build (at least I believe Peloton wants to build treadmills and exercise bikes because that's what they do, I have no idea why anyone would build a "state of the art" facility for a technology that's already been largely obsoleted as was the case with Foxconn and LCD screens) and hoping for a tax break.

There is an enormous leap between "violating airspace" and "shooting down a passenger plane while violating airspace"