purpleblue

The wand will be useless unless they hold it above the area for 30+ seconds, which probably won't happen. Or unless the light is extremely intense which sounds dangerous.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I read about UVC light and purchased a UVC light bulb before they ran out online. I used it to sterilize my N95 masks which were impossible to find, and all the research I did showed that you could do this 20+ times without affecting air flow or filtration of the mask. I even found studies that talked about how to use it to disinfect flu virus so I used those as a guideline as to how long I should expose the masks. I even went so far as to buy ajar and tested that the UVC light at least killed bacteria as advertised. I know viruses are much tinier and there's no way to test for the virus but at least I knew it was working as advertised for bacteria.

Of course all this ended up being useless, but it was a fun project during the pandemic.

This is a well-known thing, people aren't guessing here and there's nothing to dispute. Having multiple layoffs destroys morale and the best practice is to cut deeply once to avoid a second layoff. Anyone who doesn't believe this is simply and foolishly repeating the mistakes of the past. Which suggests to me that it was a surprise to even themselves that they had to do this because of a revenue shortfall.

Two layoffs is worse than one big layoff, in terms of morale.

I can understand a single layoff to "right size" the company, but a second layoff always points to an underlying problem that they didn't either believe or recognize only a few months previous. Which kind of makes me nervous. This as the Meta layoffs means that they didn't have a handle on the problem only a few months back.

The real reason that only a couple have touched upon, at least in the US, is because in the last 20 years the tax rules changed. The IRS put the onus on the hiring company to pay taxes if the contractor didn't pay their taxes. That's a huge burden, which is why most larger companies will go with well known companies that can take on that liability. 20 years ago, this didn't happen so it was easier to hire a single contractor but now the tax liability has forced many companies to change their policies permanently to only hiring from larger contracting companies that can ensure that taxes are paid.

Just as big as it needs to be, and not more.

I was using a 12 year old desktop for my main system at home until I recently and impulsively decided to upgrade. I don't notice any difference because a lot of what I do is web browsing. The only thing that was transformational was things like using Photoshop, gaming and any high-intensity applications, which are few and far between. Even using Excel was hardly noticeable.

To be fair, I would never have guess Yahoo still had 1600 employees to lay off.

What I see in this thread is A LOT of people complaining about a free product, but I wonder how many of them have actually donated money to help with the development? I just donated $100 myself because of the current donation campaign, but I'm happy with what I get largely for free.

My son is 10 and is naturally accelerated across many subjects (12th grade proficiency in ELA, 9th grade proficiency in Math, talented in music, writing, etc).

We have been actively indoctrinating our kids with the idea that college is not the be-all-end-all, that they should NOT apply for Ivy schools, 3rd tier schools are very good and if they want to go abroad or even eschew college altogether, we will support them. I've seen the effects that college admissions have on kids, especially in schools like Gunn and Palo Alto high in the Bay Area. Children committing suicide because they screw up a test is disgusting.

There is NO WAY I'm letting my kids go through that mental hell. And from some of the TikTok videos I've seen, you can dedicate your entire life to having a top application (sports, grades, extra curricular activities) and still get completely rejected by all Tier 1 schools. I won't allow my children to go through that just to be subjected to the whims of a racist, capricious admissions board.

I just discovered last week that Teslas don't have AM radio. I was trying to get the 49ers game as we were driving and I couldn't find the button for AM radio to listen to the broadcast, so I got my wife to search for me. She eventually found a link that said that because of the noise from the motor, AM radio wouldn't work so they removed it entirely. I was a bit shocked but I guess that's just how it is.

You didn't have a full backup of your database? That's on you. Disaster Recovery is an important part of any project. Heroku could have blipped out of existence by accident and you would still have the same problem.

I don't see the rip off. I think it's about 60% similar but your design isn't special at all and very generic. The idea that someone "ripped you off" is a huge stretch to me.

Message to Confluent Employees from Jay Kreps

Today we’re announcing a very hard change we have to make. We are rolling out a set of adjustments to our 2023 plan oriented around driving additional efficiency. As part of this we are reducing our workforce by about 8%. If you are one of the individuals whose role is impacted, you will receive a calendar invite for a conversation with a senior leader today. If you are outside of the U.S. there may be slightly different timelines based on local laws. If you are one of the individuals whose role is not impacted, you will receive a follow-up email letting you know you are not impacted.

Why we are doing this

This decision was not made lightly. However, I believe this is a necessary change to set us up for success in the year ahead.

To many, I’m sure this news comes as a shock, though those following the broader tech ecosystem closely may be less surprised. In this challenging economic environment, sales cycles are taking longer and many of our deals are more scrutinized by customers. This puts pressure on growth. Meanwhile there has also been a significant shift in the market, resetting expectations for the tech sector. This rapid change in the world around us, left our plans for the year increasingly squeezed between downward pressure on growth from a slowing economy and upwards pressure on efficiency from the rapid change in the market. Ultimately, we had optimized some aspects of our operations for a very different world than we found ourselves operating in. The responsibility for that falls squarely on me.

In light of this we reevaluated our plans for the year, and have made the decision to accelerate our path to profitability, while still delivering high growth. In our new plan, we expect to grow revenue by approximately 30% in 2023 and exit Q4 2023 with breakeven non-GAAP operating margin.

At my request, everyone on the executive team took a step back to look at our existing expenses and headcount. We wanted to ensure we had fully funded every essential aspect of our near term execution and longer term plans. But we knew that in the rapid growth over the last 8 years, there was room for improvements in efficiency without compromising our longer term plans. With this in mind we made a set of targeted cuts that enable a more rapid path to profitability while maintaining high growth. We’ll talk through these changes in the days ahead.

Our plan for departures

Unfortunately, we are saying goodbye to many friends and colleagues across the company. We want to do this in a way that ensures we are doing right by our departing team members.

In the U.S., impacted employees will be offered severance, healthcare coverage, outplacement services, immigration support as needed and some forward vesting of RSUs. Those outside the U.S. will receive a broadly similar package but with variations based on the requirements of local laws.

What’s next?

To those who are leaving, I want to say thank you. You have made important contributions to Confluent and I have the utmost respect for all of you.

To those who remain, I know a change like this is jarring and disruptive. We’ll be adjusting some team structures and our plans for the year in light of this change. We’ll be discussing this plan in greater detail at our company kick off next week.

Despite the difficult environment, I remain very optimistic about our future. We are a leader in a massive, highly strategic space. We have a huge opportunity to build a major new data platform that can be the central nervous system of every company.

I want to personally thank all of you for being here, showing up, and helping build Confluent into the enduring company we all know it can be.

-Jay

I'm not talking about the history of tipping. I'm talking about why tipping exists right now in the US. It's a form of additional tax on consumers that the restaurants don't have to pay and exploits workers with the promise of tips. Restaurants going below minimum wage should be illegal and if they can't afford to do that, then I'm perfectly okay with them going bankrupt.

No. Workers should be paid a fair wage and all prices should be transparent. As well, different types of work deserve different types of pay. End of story.

Your "oh these poor, hopeless blue collar workers that desperately need our help" is just your own classism, looking down on them and making you feel better about yourself by thinking you're helping them survive, like small swimmer fish eating the leftover from the shark that you are.

I think instead tipping law should be that it is not be asked for until after the service is rendered. These days they will ask for tip BEFORE anything is served which makes me very upset. It traps you into paying and any incentive for good behavior is completely stolen.

Most places in the world do not have tipping. The US has tipping because for some reason, the law allows restaurants to pay below minimum wage. I think that tipping should be outlawed and waiters should be paid a wage supported by the market, at least whatever minimum wage is (in California, that's $15.50/hr).

This is called "learned helplessness." I read an article on this where a dog would encounter electric shocks and it got to the point where the dog wouldn't even try to jump or leave the area with the electric shocks because it just assumed that the electric shocks were going to keep happening.

Whenever you think to yourself "why bother changing, it's just going to be as bad as it is here" that is learned helplessness, and you correct that the way you did, by leaving the situation. It's a coping mechanism for people that doesn't have the physical, mental or emotional energy to endure a change to get themselves out of a bad situation and it's a trap.

Congrats on working your way out of the bad situation and hopefully this empowerment continues with your for the rest of your life!

The Apple Music app is terrible, one of the worst on the market. I hate it, it is so clunky and borderline unusable.

I lost a bunch of email addresses because they decided to start enforcing the use of security answers even when I had the correct password. Then I lost some more email accounts because I logged in from different locations (I moved) and they thought I was a fraud, even though I was able to confirm using the backup email address. I'm fairly concerned that eventually I'm going to lose all my email addresses due to these increasingly draconian requirements that are sprung upon us.

What do you mean by basics? How far back do you want to go? Algebra? Art of Problem Solving is what my kids use, it's pretty good and thorough.

I understand the point of this blog post but it's also kind of BS.

For example, the last one about how to handle unexpected situations. Some people have a tendency to panic or have high anxiety over the unknown. That doesn't mean they aren't of high character or you shouldn't do business with them. They could have built their entire lives to anticipate these types of situations and have other coping mechanisms to help deal with it. In a work environment, they could easily have those things in place.

To just spring something on someone without any context or knowing the person feels like a really, really poor "test" of anything.

Thank you for this. It's so infuriating hearing all of this social justice nonsense from people who don't know anything about actual situations. Knowing that people are paid twice the minimum wage is great and that it's not exploitation.

Yes. China has walled itself off economically, preventing American companies from making money in China. It's pretty crazy for the US to let the CCP run rampant in the US and compete against American companies when American companies don't have that same right in China.

I think we should definitely ban Bytedance and all Chinese companies until China opens up their economy to the US. I hate Trump and was against a lot but I supported tariffs against Chinese products.

This is a numbers game.

1) Apply everywhere, literally in the hundreds. Different cities, different states, etc.

2) Make sure you are prepared. Do hundreds of Leetcode questions at least to the medium level. Do lots of systems design questions as well. The fact of life is that you need to show you can do coding questions and your competitors will all be at the top of their game here. If you don't match them, why exactly would you be a better candidate than them?

China has already stated that they fully intend for Taiwan to revert back to Chinese control by 2050. It will be pretty interesting over the next 30 years to see how the geopolitics evolve around this, I hope I live long enough to see it.

Does China allow Instagram and Facebook in the country?

If you give GPT3 code with a bug in it, and ask it to find the bug, it can't really do that. I'm pretty sure giving it all the data and asking it why things aren't working the way it should, it wouldn't have actual knowledge.

There's a depth to explaining things that GPT still can't do. It's still astonishing, and has completely changed my idea on what AI can do, like write plays with very incredible context (better than most humans!) but there are still major limits.