mdb333

well to be fair arbitrage in traditional markets only really works at massive scale.

Its also part of the invisible hand that brings equilibrium to markets. Unfortunately its not really accessible to the average investor.

great article but it kind of petered off at the end... why not highlight what folks have gone on to do post @stake?

they got acquired by Symantec. Mudge went on to work with the DoD to development a cyber fasttrack program, Weld started and recently sold Veracode, Katie started the bug bounty at Microsoft, Joe Grand is still doing his thing w/ HW etc...

these folks really are self-made titans of the industry and a true testament to meritocracy and the hacker ethos. They legitamized security research as we know it.

I've visited around summer solstice few years back and didn't find it too bad really. Of course, we rented our own car and did the ring road so we were only around Reykjavik a day or two. Certainly, outside of the golden circle you won't see many any other tourists at all. Hard part is finding places to stay though as there isn't much out there!

...well don't go to China lol!

can't read the article due to paywall but can grok the content based on the title. When you break it all down it's pretty much a supply/demand type issue where supply is constantly limited, or in reality decreasing, and demand is increasing rapidly. The only thing that can adjust the speed of the above is pricing and regulations. Unfortunately, many "destinations" are hungry for the tourist dollars and don't think about (or know how to) building a sustainable industry.

Regulations can help; some examples: --Antarctica treaty limits size of boats that can make landings, number of people that can be on land at once and the minimum ratio of guides/tourists. --Bhutan limits the number of tourists allowed in the country annually, requires they tour with a guided company, and mandates a minimum spending amount per day. --Ecuador limits boats in Galapagos to maximum of 100 passengers, limits the port of calls allowed based on boat size and has consistently increased entry fees to balance demand --Even in San Francisco they passed an ordinance banning tour buses in certain neighborhoods as they were a constant nuisance of noise and pollution.

Beyond regulation, its just a matter of price and accessibility. There's tons of wilderness still throughout the world but very little is easily accessible or of interest to typical tourist. If there's only one or two flights in/out per week to a remote destination you know tourists numbers will be limited. Anyone with 30-60k can visit the north pole. Ive seen pictures and it looks boring AF but at least it's exclusive. Even climbing Everest now is described as an escalator up the world's highest garbage dump. Comparatively, Venice is a city of 50-60k ppl but sees 20M tourists a year! They are starting to put some things in place to control the insanity but it's probably too little too late.

Unfortunately, at the risk of sounding racist, a big part of the problem for more typical destinations is newly rich asian middle class hungry for luxury but completely unaware of local culture/customs, uneducated on the sensitivity of ecosystems, etc. Seems like everyone agrees that the Chinese have taken the lead position as world's worst tourists... and they've already reached 2x the size of Americans (which are admittedly also pretty terrible) int'l annual travel volume.

Also, the internet must share some of the blame! you used to have to work hard to discover a new place, research a desination, meet locals to find out the best secrets... now the Internet lays all to bare and its simply a competition of who has the most impressive instagram roll. Even, the park next to my house used to be a relative deadzone but now gets all sorts of tourist traffic because it was featured on some hidden gems of SF type website.

Shareholder/liquidity preference is very important... for example if you are VC backed and there are multiple classes of stock, eg. common vs preferred, you will probably find that preferred stock holders have payout preference. Even if you own a large chunk of common stock the purchase price might not be high enough to take care of preferred stock holders with any significant amount of money left for common shareholders. Generally, at a certain acquisition price preferred stock is converted to common and all shareholders treated equally.

Best thing is to have someone review all your stock agreements and such.

Anecdotally, the last company I worked for was eventually acquired (long after I left) for low 9 figures. Turned out the price was just enough to pay back investors and other shareholders got nothing... I imagine that felt pretty shity for folks who spent years building "equity."

I traveled on the sister ship to this one couple years ealier on a similarly exotic trip to all sorts of far flung destinations. While it was a small crowd (~50 passengers) it was mostly all these types of hardcore dedicated travelers, mostly eldery folks, that are keen on checking off the most remote of destinations. Sure, a few of them were rich lambo-types but by and large they were pretty down to earth, nature focused people with above average means. I find it hard to believe they would fall for such swindling but it sounds like this guy had just enough real stuff going on to convince folks he was legit...

anyway you slice it, this was and will always be the golden era of PC-gaming!

Its definitely sad to see in person where bordering on pristine primary rainforest are miles of palm plantations encroaching closer every day. Of course, don't forget all the problems caused by the farmers slash & burn tactics too.

Need to boycott companies and products that use palm oil! Make sure you read labels when you buy foods and choose more sustainable options.

bummer... I grew up watching ski movies and listening to my grandfathers stories about hanging out and filming with Warren and other pioneers of skiing way back in the day up at Cannon mtn and elsewhere.

Definitely a legend who adapted right alongside with the sport!

the real test comes when folks try to withdrawl their fiat...

Calling them a "Security firm" might be stretch. Took them longer to fix a simple bug than it took to file a lawsuit -- ridiculous!

A couple nice things about SF on this topic:

1. Davis Stirling (Housing related laws) mandates that building associations cannot prohibit owners from installing solar panels. Basically, they have to work with you to find a way and can't just say no.

2. As of this year, SF is the first city to require that all new buildings (10 stories or less) have solar installed.

This is just a teaser for the book obviously... as all this has already been written about multiple times over elsewhere. Perhaps the only additive here is the parallels they draw to SV starups in general and how business itself has become increasing ruthless and universally corrupting; turning wideeyed entrepreneurs into ravenous cash-eating beasts. Seems to beg the question to whether Ross was any different...

Not true. This is often included the questions asked by background check companies when they confirm previous employers. Its up to the previous employers whether they provide that information. I have seen both (ie company refuses, company provides) in my own background checks.

... so you probably want to think twice about outright lying. There are many ways to avoid lying but still getting your point across. In most cases, employers will be scared off more by someone blatantly lying (which would also be cause for termination in most cases) than someone delivering a compelling case for why they are worth more than what they were previously paid.

...yeah but imagine you're trying to hire a contractor to do some job. Of course you're going to ask, "how much does it cost?" Generally you will shop this job around to get an idea of the range of prices for similar work from qualified contractors and then make an informed decision. If you go at it the opposite, "I'm willing to pay X for this job Y" then you've skewed your capability to make an informed decision unless you already have an accurate basis for what the job should cost.

In the employment world, folks use Radford and similar as guidance which of course can steer them of course from where the local talent market actually is.

it has nothing to do with freedom of speech.

This is fitting into the same category of not being able to ask candidates; what's your sexual preference? what's your religion? do you smoke? are you planning on having children? etc. as part of the hiring process. They are rules that help avoid discriminatory hiring practices. At the end of the day they help companies more than the individual. The individuals are already protected from discrimination and could sue if these questions came up during an interview and they didn't get the job. Banning these questions ensures companies and their interviewers avoid situations where they could become legally liable.

Whether salary info helps the company or individual more is debatable since this does not represent a protected class, but obviously the goal is to support the individual.

good to know, I was wondering if this would include information from previous employers on background checks... which it sounds like it does.

It will be interesting to see how this affects the hiring markets. Out in SF/etc it came up in just about every discussion I had last time I was looking for work usually as part of the first phase. No point interviewing candidates that wouldn't accept the job. It's pretty much a risk mgmt exercise from the hiring side. Similarly, I always asked what the compensation range they're targeting is as I don't want to waste my time either.

I wonder if this ban addresses background checks covering the same information, because some companies do ask for this data from previous employers although not all provide it. Without protection there this ban seems fairly limited.

Anyhow, I don't agree with all advice to never disclose current/previous salary. In some scenarios certainly it makes sense, but in others it is the opposite. You want to justify a higher market value and set the expectation that you're unlikely to be interested unless they're willing to compensate at $X or higher. Of course it's different in terms of leverage if you're employed currently or not. Recruiters and interviewers will waste tons of your time if you don't get on the same page quickly. Lack of transparency around your compensation expectations will exacerbate this issue. Whether that means you tell them what you're making or what you'd like to make doesn't really matter, but you better do at least one of the two.

Having been an avid player at the time I can see how a specific well written narrative as opposed to procedural generated stories would have benefited the overall player experience, but in all honesty I don't think it would have made that much of a difference in the games success. You either enjoyed playing or you didn't; the story was always somewhat secondary to just solving the missions and ideally getting the mastermind. Cryptanalysis and circuit logic weren't everyone's cup of tea especially when you consider games like King's Quest 5 & Ultima 6 came out the same year and the years that followed were a blitz of games with much improved graphics and gameplay like Wolf 3d, Wing Commander 2, Dune, etc...

You can create "value" without needing to sell your data. By offering free services to small sites they can gather more data on browser profiles, attack patterns, attackers, etc. which they can use to improve their techniques, tuning, intel, analytics, etc.

Still, I would assume by signing their ToS you are agreeing to some hefty terms.

Still, begs the question: what value do they get from their "Free" customers? Is it simply a freemium model based on getting conversions OR do they extract value from front-ending those smaller sites? Seems like the latter for sure... but that doesn't make it a honeypot.

is this surprising news? at least living in SF its pretty clear we're at full saturation. Companies have been throwing all the money at fending off competition and expanding to new markets... As well, most all of these gigs are means to an end, so equally unsurprising about the employment trends. Go ask folks if they want to be a taxi driver or delivery person and you'll get pretty negative response. Ask, hey do you want to work for Uber or Caviar and it's sure, why not. I imagine the novelty wears off pretty quickly.

agree this reeks of ca 2000 burstage... so you have a bunch of eyeballs you sell ads to. Big f'in deal, that's not a $25B business unless you can continue to scale 10x (profitably). The rest is simply tech-fad novelty junk.

I'd still buy into the IPO and ride it up a bit though.

it is, https://octopart.com/search?q=

folks are digging the kemper profiler too. Can't argue with the results but i guess im still addicted to analog.

I wouldn't say they're pointless but more of a convenience than a necessity in most modern designs. Probably more important in vintage amps with old tubes and such where folks generally want to be more gentle and preserve the life of the tubes. Either way depends on the amp & circuit and you're right in many cases aren't needed.

I'm still resisting the AxeFx but being short on space and a growing stack of rack gear waiting to get fixed might push me over the edge soon :-]

There's a pretty classic book called Electronic Projects for Musicians that might be of interest: https://msu.edu/~dougl126/Electronic%20Projects%20for%20Musi...

True but i think a lot of that is in adherence to the original design/specs they're emulating (or straight up ripping off). Folks went nuts over the XVive BBD revivals or even still pay ridiculous sums for original panasonics. Sometimes there simply aren't alternatives to achieve the same circuit or you're repairing something very specific (although that's probably outside the scope of the article's PoV).

As well there's the vintage issue...Sure, I buy NOS caps from the 50-70s for guitar tone circuits. I doubt side by side they sound noticeably better but if you're building vintage it only makes sense to keep the 'tronics true to the time period.

basically homomorphic encryption is being able to perform mathematical operations against encrypted values. So you can for example add two numbers and get an accurate result (also encrypted) with zero knowledge of the underlying values before or after the operation.

so Calctopia isn't acting as a trusted 3rd party?