privateSFacct

It's really not clear what happened here.

Some misconceptions though I'm seeing.

1) Banks always pay ACH debit requests (that draw money from your account).

No - you can sign up for ACH positive pay if you want.

This generally gives you till 11AM PST to accept or reject an ACH request. You can set rules by originator -ie, always pay up to $X from originator ID $Y.

You can also set a default to either pay unless rejected or reject unless approved.

You can also put an ACH block on accounts that shouldn't have ACH activity.

All this costs money.

2) Wire transfers

Hard to rewind these, so lots of extra hoop jumping. New accounts may limit your ability to wire large amounts of money.

3) Fraud is real.

Consider your parents and their retirement account. How would you feel if someone wired out or transferred out their entire brokerage balance? Think of how they authenticate with bank - could someone fake this? YES! Your parents re-use their passwords, write them on sticky notes, and their PII is everywhere.

Many more (sad) examples here.

"By default, users have a unique tracking/advertising ID attached to their phone."

Google has the same thing, and with apple if you care you can opt out.

"When Limit Ad Tracking is enabled on iOS 10 or later, the Advertising Identifier is replaced with a non-unique value of all zeros to prevent the serving of targeted ads. It is automatically reset to a new random identifier if you disable Limit Ad Tracking."

So this is a positive in apple's case over google privacy wise, not a negative against google.

"- iOS is extremely restrictive, making certain privacy adjustments impossible."

Generally you can't get unremovable malaware installed on an iphone you buy from apple. If this type of privacy restriction makes you choose android privacy invading phones - go for android. Many people like the locked down Apple setup.

The law prohibits upfront pricing unless the drivers are employees of uber.

The law requires you (the rider) to be the customer of the driver. So the pricing / payment between driver and rider need to be linked.

If you are a customer of uber transit services (instead of uber ride finding and safety platform) they can offer flat rate prices and eat difference, but the drivers then need to be employees.

1) Will the taxis always take you to your destination in Columbia?

In the US at least, if they didn't want to go where you were going they wouldn't pick you up or would make you get out. That's not a problem with Uber. I've done 1hr long uber drives without complaint to out of the way places. Very impressive that Columbia is so far ahead here.

2) Will the credit card machine in the taxi always be working?

In the US at least, they always say the credit card machine is "broken". I would explain I didn't have cash or access to cash and since the machine was broken I wouldn't be paying the fare. They would then "fix" the machine. What a joke. Very impressive that Columbia is so far ahead here!

3) The taxi commission did not enforce behavior for drivers

Talking on the phone, driving unsafely, smoking etc were all common. Does Columbia have great enforcement in all these areas based on rider complaints? Very impressive that Columbia is so far ahead here!

4) If paying in cash the driver doesn't have change (which makes no sense since he gets lots of cash).

Absolutely not - do you realize how safe flying in the US is? And you want to charge the people (flawed - yes) as murders? Absolutely revolting!

No question - for elderly uber has been a godsend. I don't think people realize the change. My area has uber assist as well which can be nice.

yes - there is paratransit - but we are talking schedule 2 days in advance, long bumpy van ride etc etc and hit or miss in a lot of other ways.

The problem is almost everyone in the US uses credit cards etc -> so having the driver handle the money is not easy - it almost always will need to go through someone else (usually a merchant gateway, merchant processor etc.).

Taxi's do it by saying the credit card machine is "broken" to avoid the merchant / middleman charge - is that what you are proposing?

If the drivers process all the amounts gross will they properly deduct the commissions paid to uber / lyft?

I actually like the idea - just you are putting a fair bit on the drivers -> merchant accounts, chargeback handling and dispute resolution, etc. And you generally need good credit to manage all this.

Yeah - I remember the claims about upfront pricing being bad / illegal etc.

I think they did upfront pricing because users preferred it - I certainly did.

But you can't do upfront pricing under CA law - the driver has to be able to earn whatever they earn from driving - if they take you on a long route now - they get the extra I think and you are charged the extra.

I'd be interested in more on this claim.

- Was this mostly a power loss or a data loss?

- If data loss, did this affect EBS (which has had a claimed annual failure rate of 0.2% - 0.5% or so if I remember) or S3 (much lower failure rate). Remember, EBS WILL have volumes go bad - that's in the docs, they recommend snapshots, aws backup manager etc if you need higher durability.

There have been a number of threads suggesting places like Gandi over AWS because they are so much cheaper. I've always been skeptical about building key apps on these types of places but folks INSIST it's the right choice.

3TB at Gandi costs $6 + you get compute with it. 3TB of bandwidth at AWS might be $270.

Has anyone tried this instead of using cloudfront etc? Get 100 $6 hosts and pump out content for your ipv6 connecting clients etc?

Bluetooth using Airpods pros seems to be about 140ms latency vs speakers at about 60 ms. So a difference of 80ms. Others have differences 184ms - so more than double the latency. Could bluetooth adopt whatever apple is doing?

And what apple is betting on is that people will prefer their totally sealed, light as possible, "throwaway" $200 product over the competitions user service, replaceable battery option.

It is the same bet they have made repeatedly with their phones. Smaller sim card (obsoleting old approaches) - removing headphone jack, switching to lighting, doing totally sealed (but durable) devices etc.

It's generally paid off - oddly people seem to prefer used apple products (ie, beleive in their durability) over used logitech headphones or android phones - so the actual life of apple products ends up being pretty long.

Apple's battery service fee is $49 for airpods and useful life is perhaps around 3 years, if you keep wanting to replace the batteries every three years. My quick sense is that most folks may retire their airpods after the second battery (6 years in) at the longer end.

So far their approach has paid of tremendously for them.

I am curious what other headphone providers are doing here. Ie, how easy is it to get a fresh set of batteries after 3 years that are of high quality and replace them. I've gotten burned replacing batteries in products with amazon replacements and the mfg sometimes doesn't even stock or sell new batteries for their devices so I've gone with Apple for now - if you go into their store for a new battery I've never had a problem with quality.

Phones are sold this way - and people like everything "packaged up" into a black box in many cases.

My guess - the company that makes all the parts / wire runs / etc very visible has a harder time selling to mom and dad when they stop by with their kid.

All good ideas, but repairing surface mount / integrated / dust and vibration glued parts is not as easy EVEN IF they were open standards as a 40 year old tractor is to repair. I spent way to long repairing an old gas engine, it was super simple in terms of operating approach. Opening the hood on my new car - the fixes are not as obvious.

Right - the term sheet is the "price sheet". The buyer still has to buy.

They really need to share more details of these term sheets that fell through so we can confirm they were either binding or signed.

"Term sheets are non-binding, and even though they should signify a VC has conviction in investing in you and is ready to move towards closing, they fall through more often than most founders may expect." - https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/22/three-reasons-your-term-sh...

If these were signed term sheets and the investor has done a few weeks of legal / financial due diligence - then yes - not common. If these are deal or talking point term sheets with no definitive agreement and little formal due diligence - then those do fall away more often.

Most medical billing is far LESS transparent than a $200/year annual fee. Seriously, if you break your leg call around and try to get quotes for cost for a diagnosis and standard set and cast. You literally in most cases WILL NOT be able to talk to ANYONE who will give you this info or is willing to spend time quoting you.

Even worse, you will get a random set of bills from random providers - making it VERY hard to track what ties to what where.

Basically - if you are cash payor - you will show up and pay what they surprise you with at the end. A lot of folks going to one medical have insurance - they just find one medical MORE transparent.

I'm also very curious about their performance per watt / dollar for the standard ML datasets out there (facial recognition etc). We have a reasonable sense of both training time and runtime for these in the cloud (and it is falling FAST).

an ipad goes a LONG way towards reducing problems.

Get a Logitech external keyboard for it.

I'm not just talking tech scammers. It's just harder to "mess up" the ipad for anyone.

Sure - look into something like a depletion deduction using the percentage method rather than cost method.

This creates a complexity nightmare - as you end up with basis changes for s corp pass-thru's etc that are not tied to anything "real" - ie, no additional contribution of assets or payment of tax on accumulated gains. This all makes things very complicated from recordkeeping, reconciliation and auditing perspectives.

I hope you are joking!

Olympus - Accounting fraud - overseas whistleblower was the one prosecuted!

Lots of other cases - Japanese CEO's doing MUCH MUCH worse face zero prison time and/or prosecution.

A lot of folks posturing here. The compensation charges - which would have been the first to go to trial if they'd ever gotten to trial (the prosecutors have been dragging things out) were laughably weak. If this is what puts CEO's in jail for years it's a total scam - 100's of japanese CEO's do this and much more. These companies are tied together every which way.

Fantastic news!

Now let's have the IRS start building out their free e-file program and IDEALLY put some pressure or at least summarize what parts of the tax code are the most complex so they can be simplified.

A lot of the tax code complexity comes from congress messing with the logic of taxing folks on their income.

And yes, simplifying the tax code would get rid of loopholes like deduction that can exceed the cost of the item placed into service (!) which make zero sense AND create tax vs gaap difference that have to be tracked over long periods of time.

Another one to get rid of - phantom LIFO inventory unless the inventory is real.

Didn't the SBA payments continue after Ghosn left? And folks said these types of payments generally got a lot of levels of approval? A reminder that he has been prohibited from telling his side of the story so far.

A lot of his complaints was that the prosecutors were leaking TONS of info but he was prohibited from replying and that he had no guarantee of a trial date.

This whole compensation thing seemed so weak. The filings disclosed what he was paid, there was no agreement to pay him more. He was keeping track it seemed like of what he felt he should get paid. I'm sure he (and many other CEO's) sometimes calculate how much they believe they should get -> maybe they propose those numbers to the board etc. How is that criminal? He wasn't paid that much if you look at it. There are .bomb scammers getting paid far more.

The other odd thing is the claim that he didn't render services. By all accounts the guy was a workaholic.

For this he's been in jail with no confirmed trial date. Given the supposedly slam dunk nature of the case why don't they go to trial on the compensation FEIL charges?

I'm less confident that an airbnb "business" might not go off-site to slam customers. We already have regular businesses suing yelp users etc for bad reviews even if factual.

I'm not a huge fan of the hunt people down across the net and in real life to destory them modern approach to problems - even if you as a user claim you need the "outlet".

Someone shows up to your airbnb in Berkeley wearing a trump hat. You're telling me no Berkeley hosts would go slamming these guests as racists online if they could?

Someone shows up down south on vacation with their partner but hasn't yet come out yet as gay - has a bad host interaction with someone bigoted - if airbnb allowed off-site reviews you are sure no one would out this couple?

I get the urge to publicly destroy people, just realize there may be folks with opinions different than yours who may then want to spend time trying to destroy you.

Having run into nutty hosts (and before that landlords) would you as a guest feel good if one of those hosts started posting negative reviews about you offsite based on your stay at Airbnb?

Ie, if their only outlet for a guest that "created problems" "did nothing to fix them" was off-site reviews?

I've found folks with the approach of I should be able to slam you publicly react TERRIBLY when they themselves start receiving off-site reviews. And I've found the nutty hosts / nutty guests often have the most time to pursue things like off-site reviews as an "outlet" for their aggression.

I have stopped saying at airbnb when traveling except for big group trips and paying for very premium places because the quality of hosts is problematic as you describe, and airbnb should ABSOLUTELY shut down the false advertising hosts (extra charges after / poorly disclosed "rules", cameras in all the rooms etc). But I do have an outlet, I book a nice room at a hotel - a very predictable experience! And I'm not the only one.

Airbnb has had problems with people finding out where hosts work, where they have other business etc and leaving offsite reviews for airbnb stays on those platforms.

My question - would you rent out a room in your house for a night if someone starts leaving crappy reviews about you everywhere? Many people would not.

I think Airbnb AND homeowners should carry much more liability for some of the fraud on Airbnb, so I hope to see airbnb paying big penalty bucks in the future.

Airbnb likely dislikes third party reservations, offsite payments and offsite bookings for business reasons as well. I wouldn't be surprised if folks going off-site are asked not to participate on-site - fair or not.

This also makes me laugh out loud.

If Amazon gave two craps about some of this stuff it would be cut WAY back.

For a few years at least every Apple branded product on amazon I bought was 100% fake - lazy fakes too. I ended up having to buy from Apple directly to get something legit. You are telling me brands haven't complained about this? I find that totally hard to believe.

The crap amazon sells is going to bring them down.

I've got used stuff sold as new (complete with debries from previous owner).

If they cared they would.

Have sellers post $1,000 bond to sell, scaled up based on sales volume.

Enforce clear fraud issues with account bans and forfeit the deposit (ie, the whole changed 5 star listing selling a totally different product).

Segregate inventory by seller, and enforce consequences on seller for product quality issues.

Have a QC team sample 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 items and 1 item per seller each year. If it claims USB 3- test to spec, claims waterproof test to spec, claims safe for kids - test for lead. Whoever does this will win in long run. Who wants lead in the product they give to their kids.

This reputation issue could bleed into AWS. Why trust a company that CANNOT get control over its marketplace. The fakes are horrible.

Can I ask briefly what kept you spending such a significant portion of your day working for such an employer? Is this is in the US or somewhere else where maybe there is a forced work period? In the US at least your employer generally cannot force you to keep working for them but I know other places in the mideast etc they can.

This - some of remember the MULTIPLE CONTROL PLANE takeovers at these third rate places.

Seriously - root access on the control plane - that was then covered up. You really are going to build your business there?

There is a reason AWS can charge the premium.

I quickly learned my lession in linode at least!

Look again please.

"Here's how the GDPR options of an European website looks like: https://imgur.com/a/ckOivi7 "

False, the EU website has an ugly cookie bar with a button called "I accept" that everyone has been trained to click yes on.

"That "Analytics Advertising Feature" MUST be unchecked by default. Only users that actually want to be tracked are tracked."

False, users can be presented with an accept / reject button on a standard cookie bar, clicking accept can opt them into tracking - please LOOK at the EU website example I provided.

"Every "tracking feature" (cookies, fingerprinting, IP tracking, whatever) must be hard opt-in."

This can be done though an accept button on a website that users have been trained to click yes on. My earlier suggestion that folks do a study on how many users navigate into these policies for every website they visit to make fine grained selections if such options are even available stands as well.

"If a website only use functional cookies (colours, session, login, cart, language) they don't need consent, just disclosure (and it doesn't have to be an ugly cookie bar)."

I gave you an example of an ugly cookie bar on an EU website subject to GPDR - I can find many more.

This is the problem with these folks messing the net up. Everyone should do this / shouldn't do that, but no attention to what is actually happening.

I want to be clear, billion of pages are showing I accept buttons, some without reject buttons if they are disclosure only, some with reject buttons that kick you off the site, and some with reject buttons that opt you out of tracking, and users are being / have been trained by the EU alert notices / disclosure only notices (which generally DO have an I accept button) etc to waste their time clicking I accept everywhere.

This is bad for actual user choice, actual privacy.