barnacled

America acted to address the issue and prevent future outbreaks. China is doing precisely the opposite, and looking to save face rather than save lives.

Anybody with half a brain should be aghast at what's going on very blatantly right in front of their eyes. The next pandemic might not have a 0.4% case mortality rate mostly affecting those at the end of their lives/with comorbidities.

Taking the point separately about disease prevalence in Asia - absolutely, and there are many reasons as to why - the wide biosphere, the broad consumption of many species not consumed abroad, the prevalence of high risk animals with similar biology to ours but higher tolerance for e.g. fever/respiratory disease (bats are unfortunately extremely good at this) - this is precisely why we have to be extremely vigilent there.

This is also what makes the Chinese refusing to allow serious investigation into the outbreak (now only permitted via the highly questionable WHO) along with them opening wet markets shortly after the initial outbreak and worse of all the undenaible cover up particularly egregious.

Perhaps the next pandemic would be unavoidable even with China doing all they could to prevent it - but for them to play dice with the future of civilisation with what control they have is unforgiveable.

the US and UK may have done terrible wrongs but they are held endlessly to account. I don't want to get into a dreadful endless debate about foreign adventures (I am not a fan of the Afghan or Iraqi wars by the way) but there is just a world of difference between a totalitarian state and a democratic one.

Imagine the police turning up and arresting you for that comment and you disappear never to be heard from again. That is the reality for many Chinese dissidents. Don't undervalue the freedoms gifted to you by the imperfect state in which you live.

The CCP (who have all but destroyed and coopted the great history of ancient China) are a despicably evil state who will cause a great many FURTHER deaths if the world doesn't start taking note and action.

What is a journalist for if they don't even tell the truth when the elephant in the room is the size of a meteor? Not a single mention in this article and most I read recently.

However the virus broke out, China knew full well after SARS 1 that wet markets and e.g. traditional Chinese medicine were huge pandemic risks and did nothing. After SARS 2 broke out there was a very well evidenced cover up and misinformation campaign which apparently without which could have saved 95% of cases.

But instead of the media keeping that in collective consciousness we get pieces like this.

As they rightly say the next pandemic could be considerably worse. The absolute lack of any political or economic pressure on the country most likely to cause it directly informed by a media who appear to no longer care about that fact will be a big factor.

If you think I am being unreasonable, just do the thought experiment and imagine the US or UK had done what china did. You would not hear the end of it and sanctions and actions against them would be instant and severe.

But don't worry, at least zoom seems to work ok.

Also given their links to fsf who insist on 'GNU/linux' it is amusing to see the name contain neither GNU nor Linux.

As a huge Linux fanboy (I contribute to the kernel minorly as a hobby) I can also see the positive side - using Linux is such a foregone conclusion that we don't even need to mention it any more :)

Ultimately I would have preferred to know in advance even if the tax had to be paid this way and had the option to discuss and obtain advice on how to proceed rather than be lied to and have tax withheld with 1 day's notice.

However given the general chaotic and disorganised nature of the startup their poor handling was not at all a surprise.

I think the moral of the story is even if you are lucky enough to cash out don't expect the company to do 'the right thing' in any way. It is really out of your hands.

I had fully vested shares not options so EMI didn't come into it.

I was diluted from 3.2% to about 1.3% but the value of the company had clearly risen so _at that point_ it was unimportant.

However in my opinion the company's burn rate and lack of growth clearly meant a later exit (likely an acqui-hire IMO) would have seen dilution without an equivalent growth in value, not to mention the ever-increasing VC non-dilution shares accelerating that.

I got majorly screwed on tax because the startup made no efforts to be efficient and were very chaotic in their arrangements for payout so that is definitely another important factor.

Overall by winning the startup share lottery I made roughly $500k for 5 or so years working there and that was as employee #1 so the maths given the pay cut probably don't work out too well (perhaps break even if I'd played the career game well).

However of course I am hugely grateful it happened and I got to see a startup grow from 3 people to more than 10x that and learnt a lot, as well as changing my coding career direction substantially.

I wouldn't recommend joining a startup as a non-founder other than for changing career or starting out. The trade-offs don't really make sense in most cases and you get a lot less say than you think you might (founders understandably want to control what is their baby) - never do it for the money.

note: I posted a more detailed overview of what happened at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25496667

I think given the overall situation I came out of it well, but it does go to show that even when you do hit the startup share lottery as we both have the actual cash outcome can vary by a significant factor, though we are both lucky to have made cash given the 99.9% of startups whose shares end up worthless.

I cashed out $500k pre-tax as employee #1 at ~1.3% post-dilution but pre-IPO with the startup valued at $35M so had the company been valued at a sub-unicorny $350M or so it would have made me a millionaire. Just wondering how the % numbers compare.

I joined a startup as employee #1 and though I opted to have slightly more salary than shares I ended up with 3.2% of the shares.

I was with the startup long enough to fully vest and left with actual shares rather than share options (a product of me joining when the startup was just founded and had no share option scheme).

After I left at I believe the 3rd or 4th VC funding round an offer was made to buy my shares by a VC who wanted more ordinary stock to convert into a new series B non-dilution higher priority share class. All of the VC shares were of course non-dilutable.

I accepted the offer (I didn't have faith the company would IPO and felt the most likely exit - an acquihire - would come when I was far more diluted at far lower value) and after a very poorly communicated and drawn out process ("we'll pay you next week" for 4 months) I finally received payment valuing the company at around $35M at a diluted share holding of 1.3% netting roughly $500k gross.

Throughout I was assured that I would only have to pay a capital gains tax (I'm in the UK) and additionally received faulty independent advice that confirmed that this was the case, however 1 day before payment I was told that I'd have to pay roughly half at income tax and the other half via capital gains (the latter tops out at 20% in the UK so this was a huge difference and cost me $55k+).

This was done by the startup withholding the income tax and paying it directly on my behalf via the UK's Pay As You Earn (PAYE) scheme while leaving me to pay the capital gains later.

In the end I had to pay roughly 1/3 of the payout in tax netting me ~$350k.

I was paid out 7 years after I joined the company.

Overall I feel the dilution _was_ offset by the increase in value of the company, and the % I received was fair as to my contributions, but the tax arrangements were handled very poorly indeed and gave no room for a more efficient arrangement.

Given that I felt the shares were no more than lottery ticket toilet paper + suspected I'd get cheated in some way even if there was a payout the outcome was really really good and unexpected, and have in fact changed my life (I can now buy a house after years of misspending!)

But I definitely don't think the economics work out too well. I was paid probably half of the proper wage throughout and put up with a lot before vesting, having stayed there for 5 yrs that works out to $100k extra a year on top of the smaller salary (started at $50k roughly) - a FAANG or such would probably have paid the same by the end.

However at the time I joined I worked in a very unmarketable (and soul destroying) role and the position helped me change my career direction, gave me a lot of good experience and ended up paying out anyway.

I'd not work at a startup again (not only for salary vs. equity concerns) but I don't regret having worked at one.

Something of a stream of consciousness but perhaps it provides some kind of raw data to add to the pile!

Covid 19 is 0.4% and really that is heavily skewed by those over the age of 70 and especially 80.

Covid 19, while enormously disruptive due to its infectiousness and tendency to put a big chunk of people in hospital, doesn't even begin to compare to what the plague did. Not far off of half of western Europe died. It was unimaginably catastrophic.

It's pertinent because people are not learning the biggest lesson of covid - this was nothing but a trial run for a serious pandemic. Bird flus can get up to the 40% mark or more and without the age variation.

The reality is if a black death like disease hit the modern world civilisation would likely more or less totally collapse.

The fact people are so incredibly lackadaisical about the origins of and behaviour around the outbreak not to mention any future efforts to at least reduce the odds of another novel virus pandemic seriously scares me.

And probably that works well for go and keeps a very clear philosophy and style for the language. It is just the fact they very blatantly misled the community on the scope of possible contributions that frustrates me.

Fuschia does, in all fairness, appear to be considerably more honest on these issues.

The bazaar certainly exists for the Linux kernel insomuch that this can and does happen (partly as a result of the fact many companies contribute but none control it). For go it does not, for chromium it does not seem to either.

It is tough for a company with internal aims and pressure to adhere to that kind of model for sure.

And it is good you have been honest about your approach prior to this in that no contributions were taken but now it is a matter of whether or not a non Googler has the opportunity to make such a change, in accordance with your policies.

But obviously as a hobbyist with limited free time I am understandably cautious as to where I put my effort.

Honestly on a personal level it is probably no loss on fuschia's part, I am a minor contributor at best, but the general point stands.

There generally tends to be an insular 'cathedral' rather than 'bazaar' approach to Google projects where those working for the company get considerably more say and control than outside contributors.

The whole issue I have with it is that they pretend otherwise. With go many people laboured under the misapprehension that they could have more input than was actually possible. Not so different with chromium.

The cathedral model is fine but be honest about it.

With the Linux kernel if you have a good idea and can defend it you have a genuine chance of contributing. So I know my limited spare time efforts aren't wasted. With fuchsia I couldn't be so sure.

I hope I am wrong but the fact they are only now taking potential contributions suggests otherwise.

Apple have repeatedly done this same process to a number of suppliers. There was a good website that listed all of the offices apple opened near suppliers before cutting them off, but it went offline :(

IMG should have been much more careful but instead went all-in splashing the cash they got from apple and acting like it was forever. Pretty dumb.

Apple can rely on the media giving them positive coverage. At the time I was amazed at even how much benefit of the doubt even the BBC gave them (US company bankrupting a UK one you'd think they'd back the UK one eh?)

I was also amused to be 'inside' a story discussed on HN, and unsurprised at how far off many were. Tons of apple rationalisation syndrome as usual and lots of 'how dare IMG be so arrogant' etc.

The reality is Apple are extremely ruthless and have been trying to take control of everything for quite some time now.

I can't tell you 100% that it's not an entirely new GPU that was somehow completely reinvented from scratch but I can tell you I think that's highly unlikely.

Imagination couldn't protect their IP because they couldn't afford the lengthily court case that would ensue.

Note by the way Apple have quietly started licensing IP from IMG again, long after striking ~75% off the stock price and resulting in them being acquired by a private equity firm...

Apple's MO with every _smaller_ supplier has been:

1. Set up office down the road 2. Poach top engineers 3. Come up with some excuse to cancel use of supplier and integrate in house.

The media and fanboys are remarkably complicit, coming up with excuses for apple's behaviour and giving very favourable coverage.

In this case, intel are too big for this trick to work and apple already have loads of ARM talent so it makes perfect sense to transition.

I wouldn't rule out apple trying on the whole 'we don't need a license' thing any more with Nvidia but it's probably unlikely given their size.

I worked at imagination technologies who was bankrupted by Apple doing this technique and whose GPUs are still used by them so I saw this and people's remarkable lack of attention on the incredibly consistent pattern of control first hand.

While all of this is obviously true, I actually think it's great that intel and AMD are receiving some serious ISA competition and it will net benefit non-apple consumers too long run.

Congrats to apple for pretty impressive technical work but I do wish more would see apple for the ruthless control freaks they are.

At the end of the day I think rather mundanely it's really more about money than anything else.

There are things brilliant programmer can do and concepts they can realise or creativity they can apply that a poor programmer couldn't dream of.

But it's never quite so simple as 10x, never so easy to quantify as their being able to complete a given task faster or produce more work.

What I have seen far more often however are programmers finding sneaky ways to appear more productive. Cutting corners, hacking things in and - an often overlooked technique - happening to have a such a good knowledge of their own pile of crud messy code that they can in fact produce solutions _considerably_ more quickly (because you know your own mess better than other people's).

None of these types of programmer are good for an organisation, some in fact are positively toxic and very destructive. In many cases a better programmer would take longer, sometimes considerably more so. But by perpetuating this 10x idea things get topsy-turvy and it's the poorer coder who gets categorised as brilliant and the brilliant coder who gets categorised as poor.

Another aspect of the 'rock star programmer' meme (which this is a variant of) is somebody who's genuinely very sharp can often be good at coming up with ideas but lousy at implementing them and worse at taking criticism. I've seen an extreme example of this in my career.

Often the best solution requires careful thought, consideration and design. The best programmers are the ones who weigh up the RoI and, while remaining practical, think things through carefully.

Unfortunately I've worked at a startup (from employee #1 to multiple VC rounds) where the CEO believed in this meme and seen the damage it does first hand.

I absolutely accept that learning to live frugally and no longer make the same old mistakes with money is a huge advantage. It's amazing how that can compound and no longer having to worry about money is very freeing.

But then there's the whole 'and never had a job again' bit and the implication that his further success was either immaterial or just an inevitable consequence of having saved some money or maintaining a surplus - obviously not the case for very many.

It's very well written and pithy but, like much of PG's writing, leaves you feeling like hands have been waved like windmills.

That concerns me as to the validity of the Paris accord then. They also have 1/2 of the world's coal capacity and absolutely no plans to reduce that.

Their emissions are almost double that of the USA, if people are to advocate for extreme action surely it should start with them...

I really regret the emergence of figures like Greta Thunberg, while heralded as a great advocate for action against climate change I feel she has actually been more harmful than good - she advocates an extreme alarmist position, often referencing highly debated timelines ('follow the science' doesn't take into account scientific dissent) which of course if/when they don't happen get ignored much like a doomsday cult.

It has resulted in this "if you're not perpetually panicking you're an anti-scientific climate denialist" mentality which I find really stymies actual practical discussion on the subject.

It's not helped by actual climate denialists pointing this out and thus tarring those like myself who absolutely believe in man-made climate change but who are pragmatists who realise the world is not quite so simplistic as good/evil and governments are not all-powerful gods who can magically change everything all at once.

I also think unfortunately there is a fair bit of anti-capitalism (the system that has lifted billions from poverty) that has snuck in, in the UK 'extinction rebellion' a very much Greta-esque protest group have openly advertised their views on this. Of course no comparison is made to other economic systems and their ecological track records...

It shouldn't be about ideals - 'we must cut carbon emissions to 0 no matter what', but rather 'what option is best in comparison to the consequences of another'.

The govt are going to make these cars mandatory soon. London is the ideal place to do this due to infra + rich people with EVs (more than you might think, far from 'almost nobody'), yet I don't see any street that has charges along it.

My point is that it's not easy. Having to upgrade the grid and dig up tons of roads is simply not easy no matter how much people want it to be.

It'd truly be one of the biggest infrastructure projects the UK has ever seen and likely run into the £100's of bns. The disruption would be like nothing ever seen before (you can't just upgrade substations or dig up basically every residential street in the country without disruption).

I think many like to comment on this from the position of being one of the few who owns an electric car and has the luxury of finding places to charge. That does not scale without truly colossal infrastructure changes.

I think "find ways of charging them away from their homes" does not scale given how long a charge takes and the numbers involved. If you've ever seen a petrol station at peak time you tend to get an idea of just how impractical that is.

I don't see any way round a truly colossal investment in infrastructure in order to move to fully electric in the UK (or any country), which maybe is necessary - but govts need to openly say this and then start actually taking action on it, not haughtily act as if it's not the case.

RE: economic impact People have in fact quantified it but it's a big topic as you can imagine. I don't think it's hugely controversial to suggest that poverty results in poor health and the data is clear that poor countries tend to have significantly lower life expectancy and higher poor health outcomes.

I'm not going to digress into covid as that's a whole other conversation :)

RE: Viability, I mean perhaps I worded that poorly - I think it's _possible_ to do it, I just think it will be exceptionally difficult (there are many roads that are not so simple to just dig up, huge HUGE disruption caused, etc. etc.) and require probably £100's of billions.

My issue is more that the govt have absolutely not addressed or even mentioned that, and many engaged in this debate won't accept that this is a requirement.

>I think you take a commonly-seen approach that tends to argue that any even moderate efforts to deal with the problem are too extreme. Not at all. I simply do not consider a multi-£100bn investment requiring basically every single residential street in Britain to be dug up and every single substation upgraded (not to mention other parts of the grid that will need upgrading) to be moderate and dislike when people talk about this govt action as if that isn't required.

Actually I would 100% advocate for only hybrids by 2030 (which the govt actually does advocate), but not a banning of hybrids by 2035 as it also advocates. Also more govt pressure to make hybrids considerably more efficient (they are already pretty impressive). Perhaps look at banning hybrids also by 2050? Or some reasonably practical timeframe.

I'd also want to start the program of increasing charging points and substation infrastructure but on a more reasonable timeframe, but be honest about it and get the ball rolling NOW, not in 2030. Something like 'every X streets must have at least Y charging points' could be a start. Practicality.

What I'd also want to look at is - more nuclear, more renewables, investigate means of reducing usage of flights, investment into public transport (outside of London it sucks big time, and more generally e.g. trains are the most expensive in Europe + also the least reliable), more advocacy for work from home, greater subsidies in decarbonisation, but more than anything using economic pressure in league with other countries to pressure (and also not only pressure but help via aid) highly polluting developing countries to reduce carbon output.

There is plenty that can be done, I just don't think hand waving + denial of costs will actually achieve anything. In fact I think it HARMS the climate change cause more than anything.

Also, and again I know this is a sensitive area so I understand why you are coming across this way, but comments like 'you should be much more worried about this problem than you are' are unnecessary and divisive.

I am extremely worried about climate change. That is why I am concerned by extreme 'all or nothing' impractical approaches that will simply achieve nothing. I prefer something to nothing.

>in ten years you folks will need to be in a position to switch to a technology which is already reasonably viable so better get scaling

Do you consider needing to upgrade 400,000 substations and installing charge points along ~200,000km of roads within 10-20 years reasonably viable?

My whole issue with this is not that we should take NO action, it's that for any action taken we should either:

a. Speak honestly about the actual efforts required to make it happen and then take that action (e.g. start the substation upgrade, start installing the chargers), b. Take more practical action that requires less drastic work.

The option being touted is:

c. Ban non-electric cars by 2030 and hybrids by 2035, say absolutely nothing about the VAST £100's of billions required investment to make that feasible, feel good and move on.

Do you think option c is more or less likely to result in anything changing? I think this requirement is likely to just get rolled back and ignored.

"translate into pressure on all governments globally to build credible plans for decarbonisation"

I actually agree with this, but I don't think unrealistic plans that ignore actual costs are any kind of solution.

I absolutely do NOT advocate putting off addressing climate issues. I personally believe in taking as much of a global approach as possible (if China refuse to stop using dirty coal plants everywhere, economically divest from them for example), correctly counting the CO2 cost of e.g. electric cars/renewable energy from raw material to functional capacity, not just discounting all CO2/other nasty climate gases from production and taking as practical an approach as we can.

I am also a realist and realise that if a country was to go all in on what many deem necessary and suffers a colossal economic impact that'll likely discourage any other country from taking that or probably much action at all.

It's a hard problem that feels like it needs drastic immediate action but the problem is made harder from the fact that that is simply not possible, I'm sorry.

Those who truly are worried about this should be being as practical as possible in order to get as much change into the world as they can.

You are also glossing over the consequences of an extreme response to climate change - an honest discussion talks about the cost as well as the benefits of any action taken.

The "all or nothing" approach is likely to get you nothing because in democratic countries when you take actions that result in severe economic consequences, people will just vote in a govt that reverses it. It also sends a signal to all other countries who were considering such action not to do it.

It's not an easy problem this, and I don't pretend to have all the answers, but to me doing SOMETHING that is likely to be acceptable to democratic countries is better than doing nothing and souring the whole thing for ordinary people.

Good point but I think much of it could also be attributed to countries going through their own industrialisation processes and generating wealth (however that end product gets used). Are we to condemn them all to poverty? Much of China is still rather impoverished.

Also - are you suggesting we should shut down our economies in order that we don't produce anything in China for example? If not then _how_ they produce the power/do industry is in their hands not ours and it's an issue to address.

The big issue in China is the CCP have no reason to care or abide by any global rules on this (or follow the example of any goody 2-shoes western country). They have endless coal plants with very little CO2 mitigation and the corrupt/totalitarian nature of their govt makes it very difficult to have them improve on this.

>Is there any evidence of deaths attributable to shut downs so far? There’s over a million deaths worldwide due to covid, how many attributable to non-covid causes? E.g. suicide etc. There's a strong correlation between economic strife and deaths. I'm not going to get into the missed medical appointments etc. as that is not relevant here but that's a covid factor too.