lmartel

You can make the opposite point with the same logic though: "the powerful, dangerous tobacco industry was given a loophole in the flavored cigarette ban allowing them to prey disproportionately on vulnerable Black populations."

Nonrefundable rates are not marketed as a bet against global catastrophe. They're a commitment that you won't change your mind.

This epidemic is more similar to the hotel burning down. I would expect my money back in that scenario and do whatever I could to retrieve it.

Cell service isn't for yapping anymore, it's for scrolling!

Assuming it's an entirely separate venture, sure.

But from the OP it sounds like the cofounder might be continuing in the same line of business, but wants to "pivot" and jettison the now-dead weight of the technologist.

If this is the case it seems plausible that his contributions and R&D are still relevant, even if they're throwing out his code, and so perhaps he's entitled to whatever stake he vested over those first two years.

I agree completely. My favorite podcasts are crowd-funded with no ads, but the least-bad approach to ad reads is when someone reads a script, verbatim, in a bored monotone. Especially when it's not one of the hosts reading, but a producer whose voice you don't recognize and implicitly trust. But this is really rare.

Couldn't you criticize the parent comment for exactly the same reason? Someone posted "I liked her" and someone else posted "well I didn't."

The big missing piece is roles. No service uses a root access key directly. Instead, there's a webserver role with access to a relevant secrets group but no access to data warehouse secrets, for example.

Access keys can be provisioned and downloaded straight onto the box from the service. Sure, a compromise is bad, but only exposes the secrets that would be available on the pwned box regardless.

It was more than a few months ago, but they published a best-selling eponymous book.

So at minimum they've got your identity and much of your browser history.

Seems reasonable to call that obscene.

That's not the purpose of grandfathered pricing, they just want to raise prices without upsetting active users.

If you cancel you're not an active user anymore :)

This may not have been a serious question but I'll give a serious answer: depending on the interviewer, you could get bonus points for going "above and beyond" or, yes, you could be penalized for "not reading the spec."

I've found that the best way to handle it in a conventional whiteboard interview is to mention it when appropriate and offer to add the functionality later.

"Now, here's the part of the code where I'd deal with odd N. Since we're guaranteed even N in the problem statement I'll skip this for now, but we can come back to harden this function later if you like."

It seems to me that "because, deep down, we don't want to" is a perfectly legitimate answer to the question posed by the title.

I agree, though, that _why_ we don't want to would be a more interesting article to read.

This didn't make intuitive sense to me so tried to Google it. Is "Introselect" what you're referring to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introselect

It's a hybrid of quickselect and median of medians, but the switching strategy's a bit more complicated.

I'm no fan of open offices but your workplace sounds like it has more issues than just the floor plan.

If one company will pay you 500k for working 60h/week and another will pay 500k for working 40h/week, then choosing the latter isn't entitlement. It's market forces at work.

If you think developers are overpaid, then just say that.

I don't know if I'd be comfortable relying on a third party for data export.

People like Criss who ask this question in interviews are looking for a brute force solution with recursive backtracking.

You didn't answer the question.

No, that's not clear.

What's clear is that if you press "no" on the popup, they'll terminate your account.

What will happen if you press "yes" and then continue to discriminate however you like? My guess: not much.

There's a difference between saying "I believe we can develop X" and "we currently have X." As I understand it, Holmes and Theranos did the latter. And that's fraud.

Lots of people here undoubtedly agree with you, but you're probably going to get downvoted again, because:

    Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.    
    Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or announce that you expect to get downvoted. 

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is the pool of outsourced workers really so small that you can say "Greeks have great expertise in databases" and have it mean anything?

The "you" he's referring to is Pinterest, not the commenter.

I agree with the unrepresentative part, but absolute sample size numbers don't tell you anything. For some experiments, N=100 is more than enough, and for others N=10000 isn't even close. Did you look at the p-values or any other confidence measurements?

Here's what you're missing: I do a lot of online shopping, but packages getting stolen have cost me, personally, $0. Your proposal would cost me > $0. Why should I participate?

If the posted speed limit is 55 and everyone but you is going 80, then exceeding the speed limit avoids danger. There's your situation.

[Of course, you'd never get a ticket in this situation, and I think there are even legal provisions regarding respecting the "flow of traffic" in some US states.]

My favorite solution to the "I started n months before my cofounders" problem is to write an IOU from the company to the person for the work they've already done at some significant but less-than-1 fraction of their typical monthly rate, say 50% or 70%.

This allows the founding team to acknowledge the extra work without creating an uneven equity split.

Anecdotally, it's unheard-of to not take full advantage of paid family leave at a technology company, whether it's two months or four.

There are issues around vacation, especially "unlimited PTO" as a perk, but no one seems shy about paternity and maternity leave.

But a million dollars at age 18/21/whatever isn't. Trust fund kids still get a head start of a couple decades.

It's clear that the author wants me to dislike Sprig and like Josephine, but after reading the entire article I honestly can't articulate a single reason why other than an abstract feeling of wholesomeness. This reads like satire.