bko

It's no different than humans taking inspiration from IP and copyrighted works in their own creative endeavors. Imagine if programmers were unable to learn from open source. Or artists were unable to mimic styles and storylines. Musicians can't riff on things that others created.

I think they're just meant to be friendly. I don't think it's that deep. They're useful and not scary and its marketing is meant to project that image.

> The problem here is you not believing sexual harassment is real, or a real problem

???

Where do you get that from? I do think it's a problem and it becomes a problem because we accept mixed-sex work environments. HR isn't there to protect women from getting harassed, they're mostly there to protect management. Sexual harassment is still illegal, whether HR exists or not.

I don't think HR ladies are roaming factory floors making sure people are wearing hardhats. That's a managers responsibility and the company has legal obligations.

Mixed workplaces are more problematic. Most industries were almost exclusively single sex and things worked well without HR

> pensions, benefits, workplace safety, reintegration from sickness,

We use Justworks and they do that all for us. You're technically an employee of Justworks, and their name shows up on your paychecks. You hook into their health and 401k benefits, and they check all the workplace safety boxes. For instance, they'll mail you posters you legally have to put up in your office to ensure you're telling employees about overtime. HR plays literally no role in any of time apart from maybe selecting the health plans, something we do once a year and roll over every time.

> ensuring that staff is well trained for their role

What does an HR person know about training for your role? Is HR cross-trained in engineering for instance? Seems wildly different from my experience. HR would ineffectively screen candidates and ask you about buzz words. So they'll ask "do you have experience in Javascript" and I'll say "no, but I have a lot of experience in Typescript" and they'll just screen me out because they'll have no context.

And HR staff is also much more social so they'll pick up on awkwardness and screen there as well, when in many fields like engineering, the tolerance of awkwardness is much higher.

I believe this is the legal team. There are a lot of self imposed restrictions HR puts on companies, like the can't have a drink during lunch, but I don't understand how ignoring such rules leads to getting sued.

For sex stuff, sure, which was my point about women. A former employee can sue for being fired or harassed, etc. And I guess having everyone jump through hoops with training about all the various isms can provide plausible deniability when something illegal happens. But I think you're overstating the role HR plays here.

In the US the reverse happened. Although people drink less, you do get offered alcohol everywhere. I don't remember it being present at places like zoos, kids indoor playgrounds, state fairs, etc. I was even at a birthday at a public park at 10am Sunday morning and saw some White Claws being passed around.

People drink less but there is less stigma around alcohol and obvious other once illegal drugs.

HR ruined everything didn't they?

I heard a comedian make the point that HR only began to exist once women became more prevalent in the workforce. And at that point you do need much more oversight. And having women in the workforce is positive since they're ~50% of the population and offer distinct experiences.

But I wonder the unseen downsides of having HR so powerful in an organization. From useless screening of candidates, to overly corrective actions by everyone terrified HR will essentially fire them. Maybe it would be better to have 1-2 glasses of wine during lunch occasionally. They're extra-judicial, easily the most powerful group in an organization with little oversight.

This was sudden very large drop, coincided exactly with announcement CEO would be leaving.

MongoDB reaffirmed both Q3 and full-year FY2027 guidance this morning.

There was no revenue warning, earnings revision, or deterioration disclosed alongside Desai’s departure.

There was no major analyst downgrade today driving the move. In fact, Citizens maintained its Buy rating and $519 target.

There's literally no other reason I can reasonably think of for the large stock drop apart from his departure. So I think you're stretching here. You just can't admit what's obvious because you likely think it's morally icky to suggest someone can be worth that much.

Also you have to consider that Zuck is probably paying him 9 figures to leave. So another person validating that he really is worth that much

I think it's a pretty clear counterfactual. Someone works there company is worth X. If he doesn't work there, what would the company be worth? Note that the role itself doesn't go away, it will get replaced, but the difference in market value is his worth to the company compared to a median CEO.

It sounds like you just have something icky against someone being worth billions to a business. It's not a moral worth, it's just a market value as perceived by the market. In other words, a rational investor would gladly pay the CEO $1b for him not to leave and save $6b in market cap. So by definition he must be worth at least that much.

I don't think the CEO sabotaged anything or created legal liability causing the $6b drop. I think you're stretching here.

If you think his departure won't impact the company, it looks like you're smarter than other investors and you get to buy MongoDB at a 25% discount. Also there's a job opening at the top spot, although you may be better suited as an investor with this kind of insight.

Zuck probably outbid him. He walked away from $30m unvested. If they paid him more, he likely would have stayed and the stock wouldn't drop $6b

CEOs leave all the time. Average tenure has dropped over the years suggesting a fierce competition for senior talent

CEO leaves, stock market value drops ~$6.5B

One interpretation is that senior leadership (e.g. CEO) matters a lot. But it flies against the idea that CEOs are overpaid. From a quick search, it looks like his total stock comp was ~$52m which was a bargain considering his departure cost the company billions. Perhaps he would not have left if he had a higher pay, more in line with the value the market ascribes to him.

However I imagine those that are upset about CEO pay will find this unconvincing. Is there any other way to interpret this?

You don't "have" a billion dollars, you created a billion dollars. Wealth is created. If Amazon stopped in 1998, it's not like the $2.5t Amazon is worth today would be distributed across Barnes and Noble, Pets.com and other retailers. Maybe some of it, but it's likely that the world would just be ~$2.5t poorer, likely more since AWS is the backbone of much of the online economy.

Right, because it's totally normal for an online book retailer to grow to $2.5t company. It was just coincidental that Bezos was involved. Plenty of companies grow at this pace for this long.

You seem to be confused.

A person can have an ownership share of $1B and not own the entire company if the entire company is worth more than $1B. For instance, if you own 1% of a company that's worth $100b, the company isn't "in the hands of a single person".

But even still you're saying that one person cannot create a $1B company which would mean a lot fewer $1B get created. Which under "big company bad" mentality, sure maybe it's a good thing. But that's obviously an insane position to take

So you're not allowed to own a company whose share is worth more than $1b? So everyone would cease productivity after that point because you'd essentially be working for free. Even worse, you have downside.

Suppose you own 10% of a company worth $10b and you love grinding so you keep working, grow it to $20b and your net worth is now $2b on paper so you have to give up 5% to the government, leaving you with 5%, bringing you down to $1b cap. Now the company drops back down to $10b and you now have $500m.

Bezos would have retired when Amazon was worth ~4-5b. But according to the kind of people that want this kind of cap, Amazon would just continue to grow to 50x over the next 25 years just through inertia. Because it's totally normal for a book retailer to 50x over 25 years.

Makes no sense.

So this is a post criticizing that Jensen doesn't know his address and somehow this is bad and something to do with AI

> Toy sales among adult-only households have now outpaced households with children for toy sales, growing 16% through June, according to market research group Circana, equivalent to 55% of total toy industry receipts. Toy sales among all adults are growing 25%, only slightly behind the teen group at 33%. Together, teens and adults generated nearly 60% of the industry’s incremental dollar gains in the first half, Circana said.

Oof...

Step one: find two things that differ in nearly every relevant respect.

Step two: identify the broad category they share.

Step three: ask, “If you accept one, why don’t you accept the other?”

They can access treatment. There are a lot of options. The question is should we force treatment at some point.

Use the veil of ignorance to answer that.

Suppose your loved one was one of these afflicted individuals literally killing themselves on the street. Would you want to force them to get clean or would you want to make their lives "easier" by giving them some "harm-reduction" that will allow them to persist in their zombie state?

Or what if you were in the grips of this lifestyle. Would you want someone to force you to get help or facilitate you killing yourself?

I know my answer

Yes. I don't think the typical homeless drug user is relying on pharma provided research on the substances they're ingesting when deciding to pick up the habit in the first place.

Here's the difference if it's not obvious:

Opium is a dangerous drug that harms its user. AI is a useful tool that helps people be more productive or explore their interests.

I agree, but there's also a whole domestic "AI doom industry". The pipeline from AI researcher to guest on popular podcasts promoting your stop-AI-from-killing-us startup/"non-profit" is less than a year.

"competitive landscape"

It's clear that people are using it for personal reasons

> The Brookings Institution / AmeriSpeak Survey: A nationwide survey found that 57% of Americans use generative AI for personal tasks (such as web browsing, daily use, or information searches), while only 21% report using it in a professional or work role.

Is there "competitive" reasons to have an AI girlfriend? There is an implied preference that you like the technology by using it by choice and you don't think it will end civilization. You may tell pollsters you're worried but it's the same people telling pollsters sea levels are rising while investing in beach front real estate. Meaningless.

I love the hyperbolic language.

"enlisting an influencer army"

put 'good for the world' in quotes because obviously it's not

A more neutral headline would be: OpenAI Is Enlisting Influencers to Promote Its Public Image.

The rest of the article reads like anti-AI slop. For instance:

> The company isn't asking influencers to assuage fears that a rogue AI could destroy humanity.

It is weird how prominent anti-AI sentiment is online and in media. It's by far the most popular and fastest growing technology in the world. So presumably people have a general favorable impression of the technology as they're engaging with the product and many are paying for it. And I don't buy that it's being jammed down the throats by most employers. Sometimes maybe, but I see the reverse, where people WANT to use frontier models and are being prevented through archaic security hoops.

The big question is who is funding the influencer army to gaslight people into thinking AI/data centers will somehow end the world?

There's nothing compassionate, loving or caring letting people kill themselves consuming hard drugs.

I think the real reason is basic collusion. They're burning tens of billions training new models. It's a very competitive space. They know that the companies capable of frontier models is limited so if they can all get together and agree to slow down it gives them more time to make money from inference.

So you're using the IDE for review? The main features you need are around simple things like reading files, tracking git changes, things like that?

That's a small subset of the functionality you would need if you're actually authoring code. So the IDE maybe be more valuable, but the feature set you need is actually much smaller and can probably be redesigned given your narrow workflow.

Is this accurate?