Really disappointed to click on the article and see that her official job title was "VP & Head of New Mobility". "Chief of Scooters" sounds way more fun.
176 karma · joined December 4, 2019
The responsiveness of the UI was like nothing I'd ever seen before. Unfortunately BeOS fell by the wayside, but I have such fond memories I keep meaning to give Haiku a shot.
Apparently when the Alaska Native Corporations were set up, folks were aware of what a terrible failure the Indian Reservation system had been in the lower 48 and knew they had to do something different. And as far as I can tell, Alaska Natives have a much higher opinion of their native corporations than American Indians do of their reservations. So I dunno ... it's a gross corporation, like many others around the world, but it's a gross corporation that belongs to, and works on behalf of a population that could easily just be victims of said corporations. At least they've got one deep-pocketed organization in their corner.
Mixed feelings about the board too. I wonder how many other multi-billion dollar companies have a board member without a college degree? ASRC has several! On the other hand, 4 board members are female and there are a wide range of ages too, so their democratic board selection might yield a good diversity of experience and outlook.
From what I understand, the federal government sets aside contracts for small businesses owned by certain disadvantaged classes (disabled veterans, women, Alaska Natives, etc). But apparently ASRC is able to continually spin off wholly-owned subsidiaries that are considered Alaska Native-owned small businesses, even if the overall ASRC is too big to qualify for those set-aside contracts.
Today ASRC is the most successful of the Alaska Native corporations, but along the way has basically become an evil oil company mixed with an evil government contracting company. But hey, they give each of their Inupiat shareholders a multi-thousand dollar dividend every year, so they seem to be a necessary evil.
Notably, ASRC just quit the Alaska Federation of Natives, basically because the AFN acknowledges a climate emergency but ASRC just wants to keep drilling for more oil.
I've also noticed ASRC contains a fair amount of what might be seen as nepotism elsewhere. The CEO's family and the chairman's family are certainly well represented in the company's ranks. But on the other hand there aren't a whole lot of employers in the North Slope so maybe that's just to be expected.
It's kind of interesting to see how the sausage is being made, even if I feel like GitLab would underpay me in my current location.
Maybe that's true in high-choice, low-stakes consumer situations, like "where should I eat dinner tonight?", but is it true in industries with high barriers of entry?
If I decide I'm flying across the country to visit family, I'm going to buy a ticket from some airline that is in fact trying to extract as much revenue as possible from customers. And the airline business seems to be healthy.
If I need to buy a new car, I'm going to be presented with models and trim packages designed specifically to extract the most money from the customer. Honda doesn't offer DX, LX and EX trim packages to save you money - they bundle things together so that even if all you care about is a sunroof, you're also paying for alloy wheels, fog lights, etc.
I've never shopped for tractors, but I'd suspect that maybe the tractor companies that stay in business are in fact the ones which extract as much revenue as possible from customers.
If you put yourself in Gitlab's shoes and imagine hiring people, it does make some sense. A couple years back I remember reading articles about the oil boom in North Dakota. People were flooding into a remote area that was lacking all sort of services, so next thing you know rates shot up, even for mundane stuff like barbers or auto mechanics. Of course, I don't want to pay twice as much for a haircut or oil change just because some folks in a boomtown a thousand miles away are charging those rates.
Of course, my hair can't be cut and my oil can't be changed remotely, but a REST service sure can be implemented from a thousand miles away. It'll be interesting to see if GitLab sticks with their approach long-term, as I do believe (anecdotally) they are missing out on good talent in second-tier cities.
I hope one day down the line Universal Basic Income can level the playing field somewhat - that's one progressive policy that can't be "abused" because it's universal. No one is going to claim it fraudulently, nor will they suspect others of doing so, because that's impossible.
I didn't bother reading the rest of the post after that claim.
Maybe he means that Google was the first non-Chinese corporation to stand up to the Chinese government specifically regarding Internet search?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-13/ingenious...
> You can—and should—hold two passports from the same country, simultaneously.
...
> You just need to show written evidence of your conflicting flights, with your name on the reservation. And remember: You can book refundable tickets as proof of travel, show them at the passport office, and then cancel them later. Then you’ll have one handy for any future travel traffic jams.
I guess there's just something more "understandable" about a plane crashing due to an engine failure rather than software fighting the pilot. Or it's more understandable when someone died in a car crash because they couldn't control a skid rather than Autopilot driving into a concrete barrier it avoided previously because something inscrutable in the programming changed.
Perhaps we're heading towards a world with on average better, but less well-understood, outcomes.
Seems like the CEO of multiple major multinational corporations would be the sort of person who would need this.
So maybe when Ghosn was required to hand over his passports, he gladly handed 3 of them over, quietly retaining 1 or more in a safe place.
Now every new car needs to have adaptive cruise control and anti-lock brakes and stability control and Apple CarPlay and over-the-air updates and who knows what else, so there are a ton of things that are hopefully well-behaved black boxes that people hopefully understand mostly correctly, but who knows what could go wrong in a rogue OTA update or something.
I'm not all that familiar with the aerospace industry, but this feels the same. Of course all of these components will be tested, but if no one understands the whole package, who knows what fearsome edge case awaits when Flight Safety Program 32 gets in a fight with Flap Threshold Control Program 3 or whatever.
Attn Congress: Fix this.
If the data know that I live in a nice neighborhood and commute every day to a office park job then Facebook will expend compute cycles on showing me things of interest to me. If an inner-city poor tries to get on Facebook, it can just show them a blank page. No money to be made there.
Norsemen was filmed simultaneously in Norwegian and English (the actors did each scene in one language and then the other). That way Norwegian audiences can enjoy this expensive-to-make show in their native tongue, and it can also gain widespread popularity in the much larger English-speaking world (which pays the bills).
I recently read that Hinterland (aka Y Gwyll) did the same with Welsh and English.
Anyhow, is there a name for this technique of producing a show in multiple languages simultaneously? Any other examples of it? It seems like a good idea for producing high-quality content in languages that otherwise wouldn't necessarily attract that level of investment.
I've known folks who limp along old cars for years, dealing with potentially dangerous issues with the transmission or suspension. And don't get me started on people who don't keep tires with sufficient tread.
But all these terrible cars are cheap to continue driving in a just-barely-works state. Folks are able to get to their jobs working daycare or fast food in a beat-up 15 year-old car because many places in the US don't require safety inspections, or if they do, only when the car is transferred to a new owner.
If individual car ownership ends, and all the cars are instead owned by large drive-share corporations, that's obviously going to be heavily regulated, cars will all be maintained on a best-practice schedule, etc. Similar to how rental car companies or Uber/Lyft today only use newer, reasonably-maintained vehicles.
If that becomes the reality for all cars in America, we might see a market sort of like Japan. They have a rigorous periodic safety inspection called Shaken, so cars in Japan mostly tend to be newer. Once cars get older and require more work, they're often seen as fairly worthless in Japan and exported to poorer countries with more lax vehicle requirements.
I personally like the Japanese system - it seems to make sense that cars on the road should meet a rigorous level of roadworthiness. But that's so different from the current reality in the US that I'm not sure society would go along with the higher costs that would come with these well-maintained shared vehicles.
Say GitLab was entertaining acquisition offers, would the CEO just ask the lawyers to come hang out in his living room?
Or do they mean "of course we have a small office for legal and practical reasons, but rank-and-file employees all work remotely".
Yikes, what is wrong with me? One of my best friends quit his job to become a stay-at-home dad because his successful lawyer wife made more money and wanted to keep working. I've been supposed to look down on him this whole time? Sorry society at large, I guess I missed that memo.
If they add an ethical vetting layer in there, ok, sure this one is an easy call. But people will continue to complain about other government agencies, foreign and domestic. People will complain about corporations who violate privacy or violate open source licenses or violate web standards. People will complain about non-profits who align with religious or political interests. People will complain about polluters and arms manufacturers or companies with ties to polluters or arms manufacturers.
Next thing you know, GitHub can't sell to the State Department or DOJ or Ford or GM or Maersk or Boeing or Shell or Aramco or Google or Facebook or McKinsey or so many others. And, I dunno, cutting those organizations out might be a great ethical move, but I'm not sure spending significant amounts of time investigating organizations and adjudicating the results and deciding NOT to make sales and dealing with the inevitable lawsuits is going to help GitHub make money.
They do own a website that accounts for something like 4% of retail sales.
If you were a member of say, the Utah State Police, and you saw this article, what would you do? Ok, a photo claims these guys drove cross-country averaging 103mph with a top speed of 193mph. Can you prove they didn't slow down to the speed limit while they were in Utah and only drove incredibly fast in the other states? Also, which one of these guys was actually driving while they were in Utah?
I believe the police would have to cite a specific individual for driving at an illegal speed at a specific location within their jurisdiction. Sort of like how everybody new Al Capone was a mob boss, but it was a struggle to actually charge him with a specific crime.