114 karma · joined October 13, 2016
So I'm deleting my password since I can't delete my account.
I've responded to every reasonable response to my comments. That will have to suffice.
A shame this site has become so anti-intellectual.
This is why the right to self defense cannot be restricted by any interpretation of the second amendment. Same with speech and the first amendment.
Those amendments are restrictions on government, not creators of rights.
The problem is, the states legalized gay marriage at the state level, and DOMA which is invalid under the 9th amendment and powers clause caused a problem.
They should have struck down DOMA and let the states have their choice, as they do under the 9th amendment.
That is my point. In this area and many other areas of human rights, the government is corrupt and a criminal organization violating these rights.
Have an upvote for a reasonable reply.
Trump doesn't pander. He doesn't care about gays much he's not courting the gay vote, but that's appropriate- government should be out of our lives not denying our rights.
Obama could have taken action in 2008. He didn't. He continued to oppose gay marriage.
Did hillary stand up to him? Of course not.
You guys think we have to vote for you otherwise we're self hating or some other bullshit.... but we don't. You are going to be in big trouble when the republicans implode and are replaced by libertarians, or they loosen up on social issues and obsolete the libertarian that way.
The religious right is dying out. So when a serious party offers both economic freedom and social freedom, the democrats-- who pretend to offer social freedom and don't even pretend to offer economic freedom -- are going to be DOA.
Unless you fool all the people all the time that all the people are racist and sexist.
That's hugely softer than Hillaries absolute denouncement of it.
He was spot on about Obama pretending to be in favor of gay marriage (though wrong in his timing- Obama didn't "learn his lesson" until after the Supreme Court ruling. Talk about leading from the rear.)
Like his comments about the court ruling, I read this as him being opposed to the issue as an issue, not the right.
This is the guy who invited Theil to speak at the republican convention-- the first openly gay speaker who in fact stated he was gay at the podium and was applauded for it.
That sure undermines the spin democrats want to spin, but it's the reality.
And basically, this is a turning point for republicans. Trump is the first non-openly homophobic candidate from either party to run for president. It sucks that he's such a doofus and doesn't give good soundbites, but there it is.
So, will you be consistent and say Hillary is a racist? (Would be consistent with her long friendships with Robert Byrd, and her "needy latinos" comment)
The only people talking about Obamas race where Obama supporters who wanted to avoid substantive discussion about the issues.
Those same people are running around calling Trump a racist now.
And once again, Liberals are not talking about Trumps positions, but merely calling him racist and sexist.
"It seems so fucked up to vote for someone hoping that they're just a pandering amoral liar who won't deliver on their promises."
Well, the charitable view of Hillary supporters is that this is what they are doing. Otherwise, you really think journalists should be taken out by drone for publishing things embarrassing to hillary?
You really think free speech rights should be taken away from people who make a movie critical of hillary? (That's what "Citizens United" was about - the supreme court defended free speech for a group that made a movie critical of hillary-- and since then we've been hearing how evil that ruling is.)
As for elections not being legitimate, that clam was made repeatedly, with merit, after 2000. The democrats lost, and they lost due to widespread fraud.
Finally, Hillary belongs in jail. Basically all of the allegations have been proven by the wikileaks email releases.
When your opponent is a blatant criminal it's quite fair to say "you'll be in jail" and quite different than saying "I'm going to jail you for disagreeing with me" which is what people seem to want to clam he said (so basically they are lying about him. If he's so obviously reprehensible, why the need to lie about him?)
A lot of people are advocating authoritarianism- in fact thats the point of this whole thread- whether we should "excommunicate" Peter Theil.
But they don't seem to realize that leftism is essentially more authoritarian than rightism. Rightists want economic freedom, Leftists don't. (On social freedom neither of them want it- which is why Obama didn't try to legalize gay marriage, and picked Joe Biden the architect of the war on teen pot smokers as a running mate.)
Why don't liberals recognized that Hillary and Obama are authoritarians?
Remember Hillary suggested that we should use a drone to take out Julian Assange.
But we should be reminded about Trump taking this position and we should all forget that Obama and Hillary are arguably worse?
1. I'm gay. Hillary Clinton has campaigned against gay marriage here entire career. Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (not coincidentally on the day I stopped being a democrat.) Trump doesn't care about homosexuality (literally when asked what he would do if he found out an employee was gay he said "it makes no difference"). While HRC supporters like to portray him as anti-gay and wanting to overturn the decision legalizing gay marriage, that's not honest. He correctly disagrees with the basis on which the decision was made, which is different from disagreeing on the outcome. (There really is no power for government to regulate marriage, especially at the federal level.)
So, I hope Trump wins because Hillary is the anti-gay bigot between the two.
I'm not even going to get into the allegations of racism because that boy-who-cried wolf has been going on since Obama got elected and merely disagreeing with him makes you a "racist" now.
2. The claim that Trump represents "american facsism" is a misrepresentation of Fascism. Fascism is an economic system whereby the economy is privately owned but controlled dictatorially by a central government. That means Obamacare ("private" insurance companies, total control over the government) and the GM takeover are examples of American Fascism. The total surveillance society we have under Obama and W and would continue under Hillary is fascist.
To portray this as "liberalism" vs "fascsim" is wrong, and more right if you reverse the roles. (at least Trump is a bit economically liberal.)
3. You guys seem to grab "code phrases" and repeat them as mantras. The one you used is "existential threat to democracy". Remember in 2000 when Gore lost the election and we had 8 years of W as a result? Remember the massive scandal about voting fraud and how widespread it was? That's a literal threat to democracy. Like the Snowden revelations it was news for awhile, and there was talk of reform, but nothing was ever done.
How can there be a democracy when the votes are not even honestly counted? How about the fact that we cannot audit the software of the counting machines?
Isn't that a literal threat to democracy? Much more serious than some obnoxious reality TV star who's slightly more economically liberal than a woman whose entire career has been beset with scandal and allegations of misconduct-- almost all of which were just proven true with email leaks? Who had an investigation by the FBI where the agents say the outcome was predetermined? Isn't that level of corruption a serious existential threat to democracy?
You don't have to agree with me, that's fine- MY objection is to this delusion that there is a only one way to look at this and anyone who disagrees is somehow evil.
I'ma gay guy who wants to legally marry and I'm not going to vote for someone who has denied me my rights.
Tell me that makes me immoral!
In fact, I think they were going on in the 15 years before that as well, though they were less pronounced, less obvious and less extreme. The media has probably always been a bit of a propaganda organ... it's just that the voices were a lot more diverse.
The really alarming thing we've seen this year is Google, Facebook and Reddit starting to use algorithms to suppress some voices and amplify others. Combine that with "Correct The Record" (the army of paid hillary shills who have taken over at least reddit) and the internet is no longer the alternative where you can have a reasonable discussion.
Why participate when your opponent is most likely a hired troll?
It looks like they are still working out the compelling solution to electric vehicles and so there's no reason to talk about it before they have a product ready.
Why misrepresent this (as so many have in this page) when we can all follow the link and read for ourselves?
More context: " The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of “capitalist democracy” into an oxymoron.
In the face of these realities, one would despair if one limited one’s horizon to the world of politics. I do not despair because I no longer believe that politics encompasses all possible futures of our world. In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called “social democracy.”
So, he literally says he doesn't despair this.
As far as I'm concerned, the Clintons (Bill signed the "Defense of Marriage Act" in the first place) are the anti-gay ones (and add Obama to that too)
Not all of us are gullible to the blatant pandering and fear mongering democrats engage in.
While during the Bush years there was some stupid asinine anti-gay rhetoric from Bush, nothing was even attempted.
But it was the Clintons who banned gay marriage. That's all when I stopped being a democrat.
In 2004 I worked for a third party candidate, who had a direct line to live numbers as they came in. He also called to thank me that evening. One of the things he related to me was that they were watching vote counts as they got announced and he was doing very well, but once he hit a certain threshold the software seemed to switch and he would start losing votes.
This isn't a case of his percentage going down as more votes were counted, but his absolute vote count going down as more votes were counted-- something that should be an impossibility. And not just in one precinct but in dozens of them, particularly in areas of a particular software maker's machines.
I don't consider the elections valid because the machines that count the votes have closed source software and come from two politically connected companies.
The sad thing is that MIT described a solution that would allow online voting in such a way that anyone could independently audit the election without knowing who voted for whom (you could verify that your vote was in fact counted and that the total count is correct, but not know who your neighbor voted for)... they announced this in the 1990s I believe, but of course it wasn't adopted.
IF you're a founder and you're working for options rather than RSUs, you got screwed.
With the 4 year vesting schedule, employees are incentivized to leave after a year to diversify their holdings.
Being at a company for a year doesn't tell you someone is like that. This is why I called it a prejudice.
Being at a company for a year can also indicate that the person is quality enough to be choosy about where they work and not to stick around when management proves themselves incompetent.
Most statups fail. Most startups management is very poor. The best software developers realize that they are making an investment by working for a startup. Thus staying around past the first year is a judgement call on the future of the company.
One of the nice things about the electric car business is the the part count is a lot lower, they are basically much simpler devices, and thus should be able to be made much more cheaply.
We may see a Yugo level electric car for $10,000 in a few years.
This would allow for margin expansion, especially if Apple can innovate in the manufacturing side (eg: go one better on automating the factory)
Plus since currently a Toyota RAV4 level vehicle goes for $30k-$40k, if Tesla gets down to the low $30k, Apple could produce a car for the $40k price point and be making $10k-$15k profit on each one.
Lower gross margin than the phone business, but offers the opportunity of significant revenue upside.
Plus with Apple there would be follow on revenue as well.
Since people are in the habit of paying mid $30k for a car right now, while there will be cheaper electric cars at the lower end of the market, Apple wouldn't require people to change behavior to be able to afford a car that gives Apple the kind of margins it wants.
Plus I expect there will be several innovations that are things "only apple can do" that add value-- the interiors of cars and especially the electronics and instrumentation of modern cars are terrible. Even the Tesla which tried a new approach, I think has bad usability. There's a lot of opportunity there.
I believe that a creative type like him has trouble operating under the demands of a corporation like Apple at that level, and that he did so for so long because his collaboration with Jobs was very intense and personal, and that this is not something he can have with Cook. Under Cook he is supposed to be the one who replaces Jobs in that role (while Cook is an execution guy.)
I believe he is participating and staying around only so long as necessary to get things ready for him to leave.
He's earned a retirement and some time to follow interesting design work that is not relevant to Apple's business.
Or are you stuck in the 1950s era idea of loyalty and these employees are not "loyal"-- yet are you considering whether you're giving them a reason to be loyal?
You're operating from the 1950s veiwpoint which is really a cultural hold over from the great depression- that employees should be desperate to find a job and companies should be free to screen them out for any arbitrary reasons. Let me guess, you make them write code on a white board too.
If you have a one year cliff you are providing a huge financial incentive for your employees to leave after a year, by shifting the risk onto them.
Maybe that's why you don't have enough people already?
Sure, staying somewhere only 6 months can be a lack of fit. Staying somewhere a year, though, doesn't mean anything negative. Especially with startups. The startup could have pivoted. The employee could have felt that it was a good fit, then the startup pivoted and they gave the company an additional 6 months. The employee might have done great, but the statup founders chose to hire form outside rather than promote within (Showing a lack of loyalty to their own employees, and to the ones who took the greater risk by being there earlier.)
Also, you should never look down on an employee who chooses to leave after one year even if you know they are doing it because of the cliff.
The option structure of four years of vesting with a 1 year cliff is employee hostile (And startups should not be doing this because it incentivizes your employees to leave.) The first years and even months of a startup are most critical. Therefore, vesting should start nearly immediately, at most a 90 day cliff.
Secondly, the startup cargo culture is set up in a way that does not have a level playing field for founders and early employees. Founders often get RSUs which are 3X as valuable per share as startup options. An employee on a 4 year option plan should quit every company after that first year cliff.
In that way, after four years they have options in four companies... rather than all their eggs in one basket.
RSUs solve this problem by giving them real skin in the game rather than a lottery ticket that is subject to all kinds of founder shenanigans down the line.
Franky, all employees should be getting series-A preferred as it is silly that a Venture Capitalist an put in $10k of 10k shares and get preferences while an employee who gives up $70k in salary gets $70k options that he has to spend another $20k to exercise and even then only gets common.
Why is a VCs money more valuable, dollar for dollar than an employees? It's not because the VC is really going to help the company execute in any significant way-- yet the employee is.
And the delta between market price and salary you're paying employees is a real financial investment on the employees part (another reason you should not have vesting cliffs.)
Given that we have this cargo culture where things are not thought out from first principles and everyone emulates what other startups did we have not only job titles from the 1950s (eg: 21 year old "CEOs" of 4 person companies) but we have option plans that have not changed since the 1970s!)
The right thing for an employee to do in the market where companies are not giving them real skin in the game is to move every year, so that they diversify their lottery tickets.
It's the only smart move.
And that's just looking at options.
When you consider the only time most engineers ever get a raise is when they leave to go work elsewhere, from a salary perspective they should leave each year too.