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nopriorarrestson SoftBank Seeking to Take Control of WeWork Through Financing Package

Details including the exact amount of SoftBank’s potential investment couldn’t be learned, but executives at SoftBank figure We needs at least $3 billion to get through the next year

This is insane.

nopriorarrestson Report: WeWork expected to cut 500 tech roles

This should be top level comment.

nopriorarrestson Report: WeWork expected to cut 500 tech roles

I think they are making a killing. If you have a business meeting in progress with your client, you are not going to move to another hotel bc of $500 whiteboard fee. You cringe and put this expense on your corporate credit card. And hotel knows this.

nopriorarrestson Report: WeWork expected to cut 500 tech roles

What hard problems related to software and infrastructure WeWork was solving? I can not imagine a single one. Handling check-ins? Counting number of beers consumed?

nopriorarrestson Is Stack Overflow allowing ads to use fingerprinting to track users?

>Automatic ads might be x10 cheaper, but x1000 less effective.

what are you talking about?

Lets say you are running SaaS for Azure admins. Do you want to buy the top banner on slashdot.com for the whole month, no targetings at all, for 50K/month, or you only want to show yor ad if user was interested in at least 2 stories with azure tag, for 5K/month?

Automatic (aka highly targeted) ads are more effective, not x1000 less.

nopriorarrestson Is Stack Overflow allowing ads to use fingerprinting to track users?

Because it does not work. The cost is paid by customer, and he is looking for cheaper service/product.

And your competitor can always claim that 10% of client aqusition cost is donated to fight climate change... and then you stand no chance ;)

nopriorarrestson Is Stack Overflow allowing ads to use fingerprinting to track users?

You can probably do it, but your competitor who do target users will end up with $30 CPA and you will get $300 (or worse). So, unless you are ok with x10 user aquisition cost, you will quickly stop doing it.

nopriorarrestson Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

Well, I get that you want the world to function in a slightly different way, and you don't want people to associate advertised product to content around it; I'm fine with that. However, the world around us functions in a way where people subconsciously associate the product and content.

This is, in fact, a billion dollar opportunity -- ads on porn sites are so abundant and so cheap, first person who will help sell more premium product by advertising it on porn sites will become a billionaire. Not happened yet, and most porn sites advertise, well, other porn sites. There might be a reason for that (and it's not a hidden cabal of puritans who run marketing departments of well-known brands being haters of porn. trust me, those folks will sell their souls to the devil for 10% uptick in sales).

nopriorarrestson Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

>That's not illogical at all, that's mainly who I see in Porsche dealerships and nothing about that contradicts what I said.

I don't know, I think signaling is OK, and I don't consider people why buy signaling products as "vain dumb and insecure". I just don't see that anything wrong with that. I mean, you made enough money to choose good, quality product, be that t-shirt, bike or even a car. Why not choose some premium brand with some signaling attached to that, instead of just buying generic nike t-shirt or toyota corolla car? If you like that Mercedes AMG Roadster because you think that it will make you more attractive to chicks (and btw it will, I guarantee) -- and you got money to spare, well, go for it! You made enough money to buy Porsche 911, why drive Honda Civic then?

I see people signaling with their choices wrt premium products, and I don't judge them at all.

>Frankly, I am frustrated with a common trend I noticed in the Bay area where people who couldn't be bothered to leave their home/tech bubble and interact with people outside their comfort zone

I've never visited USA in my life, and do not plan to, so your guess about me being SF resident living in SF bubble is wrong. :) I do work in ad-tech / advertising, though, so I learned something about how industry works. JIC, during my daily commute (I don't own a car and use public transit) I see more people who make $500/month than people who make $5000/month, so no bubble here. :)

nopriorarrestson Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

>From my experience in dealing with very rich and very poor people of many different cultures, the only people who give a damn about status to that extent are the young and dumb

Sorry, you are mostly wrong here.

Let me present you with example of an ad targeted to 50+ very rich audience. This is an ad directed by Cohen brothers ("Big Lebowski", "No Country For Old Men", etc) advertising Mercedes AMG Roadster and shown during SuperBowl -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exxaJrtH2kg -- and pay attention to a punchline -- "still looking good". Pure signaling for an older folks.

This may sound illogical, but most people who buy "signaling" products (such as Mercedes AMG Roadster) are in +40 y.o. cohort. They got money to spend, unlike millenials who can only signal status while choosing craft beer on Friday evening.

Also, your guess about me living in my "pristine little bubble" was too personal, tbh, but I'm fine with that. No offense taken here.

nopriorarrestson Verizon to Sell Tumblr to Automattic

>Whether it's seen next to porn should be irrelevant.

It does not work that way. If some average person sees some brand advertised on WSJ and FT, and another competing brand on PornHub he will attach more 'premium' value to a first brand, and will pay more for owning product from this brand. It's only normal and a part of human nature.

People enjoy content from PornHub, but they want to be associated with something advertised on WSJ/FT/NYT/etc. People want to signal status, not just own a good stuff.

nopriorarrestson 8chan goes dark after hardware provider discontinues service

>I saw many posts subscribing to the general theory that racial violence has been accepted throughout most of human history

My knowledge of human history mostly validates this theory.

nopriorarrestson Trump signals scrutiny of Google's ties with China after Thiel comments

I do remember these 600-comments threads regarding net neutrality and how it will be the end of the world once repealed because evil ISP will charge folks for each bit.

2 years ago net neutrality was repealed.

1. Has anything changed to the worse, consumer-wise?

2. Was there any postmortem acknowledging the fact that the end of net neutrality, unlike predicted, isn't the end of the world?

nopriorarrestson Google Calendar Is Down

Almost 2 hours down. What a way to discontinue another product, Google!

nopriorarrestson Google Calendar Is Down

Well I get that shit happens, but what is strange about these recent google incidents is actual downtime. 5 hours for google cloud, and almost 1 hour already for calendar.

I thought google can do better.

nopriorarrestson Amazon.com Credit Builder: Build credit with no annual fee

>2) my instant change in net worth does not affect my ability to handle my finances month-to-month

idk man, if I inherited 1M USD, it would definitely affect my ability to handle my 3K USD monthly expense.

nopriorarrestson Always Own Your Platform

good advice to follow, but the problem is...

if you are 21 y.o. vlogger focused on barbell training and restoring old american muscle cars, this advice will sound like "dude just do more straight deadlifts and focus on hi-rep kroc rows, they will help you with development of your back" -- aka, some special gibberish speak. it takes so much knowledge to do so, it just won't happen.

nopriorarrestson Always Own Your Platform

Generic 'oh guys let's make world better' stuff, without explaining how it could be really done irl.

I mean, popular vlogger owning his own platform, really? Eating hosting costs, solving discoverability problem, etc?

nopriorarrestson AdTech Sucks

From the article - "If you’ve been on the internet for any amount of time, you’ve probably seen very poorly targeted advertising. In my experience, I see a lot of car ads. I don’t own a car".

One can argue that advertising cars to person without one make some sense.

At least it's better then advertising vacuum cleaners to person who bought one on amazon 1 week ago.

nopriorarrestson Google Cloud Is Down

https://status.cloud.google.com/incident/compute/19003

>We will provide an update at 16:00 US/Pacific.

it's 16:22 and no updates were posted. a bit unprofessional..

nopriorarrestson PSA: Tesla ELDA has steered me into oncoming traffic multiple times

Related thread on Tesla Motors Club - https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/emergency-lane-depar...

nopriorarrestson My Infant Daughter’s Life Shouldn’t Be a Variable in Tesla Autopilot's Beta

It is well documented that Tesla regulary releases features which make wrong decisions and put drivers into dangerous situations. Last case happened literally 5 days ago and already well-documented by Tesla owners (and not some imaginary evil short-sellers):

1. https://np.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/burimz/psa_emer...

2. https://np.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/bulra4/emergenc...

3. https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/emergency-lane-depar...

It worth mentioning that this feature, called ELD, can't be disabled permanently and enables itself back again after each trip. Driver is expected to disable it manually each time. Also, this feature could kick in anytime, even when driver is actively steering!

So, maybe author was wrong when he mentioned his kid, but his point is essentially correct.

How is this behaviour OK on a public road -- "I made it half way into the shoulder and the emergency lane departure kicked in a yanked me back into the lane, almost hitting the car I was passing as I fought with the automatic steering"?

nopriorarrestson Sam Altman on Twitter: It's gross seeing so many root against Tesla

I don't know if it technically counts as a lie, but on 31st of January he told investors that he expects profitability in Q1 2019. Instead Tesla delivered 700M loss.

Before that, in 2017, he told investors - "“What people should absolutely have zero concern about, and I mean 0, is that Tesla will achieve a 10,000 unit production week by the end of next year. […] I think people should really not have any concerns that we won’t reach that outcome from a production rate.”

Guess what, we are well into 2019, and they are producing around 5-6K M3 per week.

This is not how you run multi-billion company.

nopriorarrestson $500k a Year yet Struggling? Let's Do a Double Take

I differentiate between savings and investments. For example, my own savings give me the ability to modestly live for 1 year without work AND without liquidating my investments.

If I had everything invested and nothing saved in bank account, I might get into situation when I need to liquidate my investments ASAP, which could be very unfortunate, timing-wise.

nopriorarrestson $500k a Year yet Struggling? Let's Do a Double Take

With index fund you can at least have stop-loss order in place. It's hard to set stop-loss order for house.

nopriorarrestson $500k a Year yet Struggling? Let's Do a Double Take

Even in this case, your house value can take a sudden plunge. Savings are savings, they are not going anywhere. It's money that sits in your bank account and you always know how many years without work you can afford.

nopriorarrestson $500k a Year yet Struggling? Let's Do a Double Take

If you have used debt to buy a deprecating asset (car or almost anything you can buy with credit card, like iphone) you are not saving. In a long run, your asset will cost 0, and you haven't saved a penny.

nopriorarrestson American millennials think they will be rich

>with 2% inflation and 9% return (pre inflation)

9% pre inflation is insane, and 7% is too. If you can do that consistenly, you will be a billionaire hedge fund manager. Ten year treasury bond yields 2.59% per year, anything above it is risky.

Sure, you can stuff 100% of your savings into S&P500, but then you will have to deal with unpredictable 20-40% drawbacks, which take years and years to correct. Last recession S&P500 basically halved.

nopriorarrestson Tesla Live Stream – Autonomy Day [video]

Elon just promised Level 5 FSD this year, by the end of it.

nopriorarrestson Canada grounds Boeing 737 Max 8

>airlines would value diversity in the fleets

aka much more money to certify pilot crew, aka more expensive fares, aka less experience for any given pilot with some particular aircraft type.