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sdljfjafsd

105 karma · joined December 9, 2020

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sdljfjafsd··on Genius Sells to Media Lab for $80M
> When an acquisition sells at the same price as money raised

The acquisition did not sell at the same price as money raised so this assertion is invalid. The article directly stated this - did you read the article you are commenting on?

"Its price tag of $80 million represents less than what it raised over the years in venture capital, according to PitchBook."

sdljfjafsd··on Andreessen Pulls a Bezos
This feels like a puff piece for andreessen:

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

sdljfjafsd··on GNU nano is my editor of choice
Despite having 7 years of back end experience, I've never learned vim. Is there any other editor that hits these requirement (being able to login to any server to edit text) or does every server engineer need to learn vim?

(I mostly use a mix of sublime, intellij, and vscode to edit text)

sdljfjafsd··on Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name
Buzzfeed is a weird Jekyll & Hyde business. They have two businesses

i) the typical buzzfeed junk - Buzzfeed - This group follows no journalism practices, steals content from other sites, doesn't attribute, writes click bait articles, rebrands ads as articles, etc.

ii) the investigate journalism department - Buzzfeed News - this team has top notch investigative journalism. They actually do tons of original research, interview and cite sources, break big stories (many of the Uber scandals were found through their original research). Basically this group follows journalism standards and actually is at the top tier of investigative journalism.

The irony is that i) and ii) are run under the same brand and the only reason why Buzzfeed can fund investigate journalism ii) is due to the b.s. content they serve from i).

it's a weird scenario where the org is both the worst and best of journalism. Bu at least they have found a sustainable, albeit sleazy, way of funding investigative journalism.

sdljfjafsd··on Square Banking
Square has an ILC: https://squareup.com/us/en/press/square-financial-services-b...
sdljfjafsd··on Google reports soaring attrition among Black women
Google's outcomes are pretty weak. I work at a large tech firm that has significantly higher percentages of employees who are black and/or hispanic compared to Google. We are at 2-3x the rates Google publicly reports. At my current company, I regularly work with Black employees, but when I worked at Google, I could go weeks, if not months, without working with a Black person.

You can tout all the sophisticated programs about conquering bias or what not, but the truth is many of these initiatives have shown little actual evidence for improving outcomes. Our company is probably doing 1/10 of what Google is doing with 2-3x the outcomes. One major difference I see between Google and us; we actually have offices in cities with high concentration of black and hispanic talent. While I was at Google, leadership pushed people towards the HQ and in fact they were shutting down offices that were in more diverse areas of America. You can tout all the sophisticated programs Google runs, but I believe that Google misses the most basic steps for how to increase diversity in their workforce.

Our metrics aren't great, but they are a significantly better than Google. We aren't a unicorn, I know of a handful of tech companies that are at the same level, and the common pattern I see is very basic steps towards hiring that Google refuses to consider. As an outsider (and an insider several years ago), my experience is that Google invests in lots of programs that give a credence of caring about diversity, while actively avoiding doing impactful things.

sdljfjafsd··on The cost of cloud, a trillion dollar paradox
Carousel team was huge. My roommates was at Dropbox and said it was 100+ while he had a handful of engineers supporting him for enterprise features. Mailbox was another consumer investment that was largely a waste. Drew really didn't like enterprise.
sdljfjafsd··on Deadly fungi are an emerging microbe threat
Systemic corticosteroids are not prescribed for patients with mild symptoms at home in America. Basically you get acetaminophen and are asked to quarantine similar to a cold. Budesonide is not recommended in the case either. I am talking about US standards, but I think EU and UK doctors would also agree with me.

Hygiene in hospital is definitely a possibly other issue.

At least by US standards, blood thinners are not a reasonable procedure for mild symptoms either. In general India is being extremely aggress with using prescriptions, at least compared to the west and Eastern Asia. There are many examples where AIMS protocol and Indian standard guidance is contrary to WHO, NHS, and CDC guidance.

sdljfjafsd··on Uber's crazy YOLO app rewrite, from the front seat
my question is, what was the business value of doing a full write rather than incremental shift? same question on the specific date - was their any business value delivered by specifically launching the new app on New Year's?

If not, this rewrite basically cost huge amounts of burnout across the mobile and server teams for no business value. At best it seems like an intense learning experience that didn't actually unlock $$.

sdljfjafsd··on Uber's crazy YOLO app rewrite, from the front seat
IMO, I would not put Uber engineering in the "highly regarded" bucket.
sdljfjafsd··on Deadly fungi are an emerging microbe threat
This isn't surprising to me. In India a lot of state governments are sending covid pill packs to citizens which really don't do anything for covid and contain things like hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, zinc, other steroids, and other blood thinners.

even the AIMS protocol doesn't recommend against drugs and techniques that the rest of the world has rejected almost a year ago. My partner treats covid in the US and has been doing consults to patients in India. Most of their work is telling patients to ignore the pills their doctors or government has been sending, although they rarely listen.

I wouldn't be surprised if a large chunk of the covid negative or mild covid population is on steroids.

sdljfjafsd··on Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue
As other people have pointed low margin businesses like fintech would get skewered with this. For example, payment processing companies recognize the value of the transaction as revenue even though their cut is 1-2%.

You would shift the gaming of system from happening on the net income level to gaming of the system happening on the revenue level.

sdljfjafsd··on Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue
Yes, for me this is flopping in soccer and basketball. There's a pro for the athlete (chance of foul called) while the con is little to none. Hence both sports have floppers. The regulatory system must adapt to those who take advantage of the spirit of the policy but adhere to the letter of it. Obviously this is a constant issue, but what won't work is trying to "shame" the bad actors through hearings, media, etc. Policy must constantly evolve, esp. in areas like taxation.

Also for those who are better versed with law, is it possible that companies can legally defend actions like this by arguing they are maximizing shareholder legally and thus, they are obligated to do so?

sdljfjafsd··on Google promised its contact tracing app was completely private, but it wasn’t
In Portland retail stores require you to hand sanitize every time you enter which becomes a bit cumbersome if you enter a few stores during a trip. And yes, the extra effort has a cost, because I've been told to sanitize in front of employees who are interacting with groups of customers at close distance (while masked tbf). At the end of the day humans have a small set of things they can juggle in their minds and that focus should be on ventilation, spacing, and masking instead of wasting focus on unnecessary surface cleaning.
sdljfjafsd··on Oakland bans the use of combustion engine-powered leaf blowers and trimmers
Practically this incorrect. When a car is in single or double occupancy (which is majority of cases) it will pollute more than a motorcycle one. Yes, a filled bus or car might be more efficient, but the average utilization on an auto is very low since most people drive them alone.
sdljfjafsd··on Oakland bans the use of combustion engine-powered leaf blowers and trimmers
They are extremely wasteful. Auto manufacturers are always improving emissions on their engines but thats not the case in lawn equipment. Passenger flights and leaf blowers are two largely western luxuries that are absolutely horrible for our environment.
sdljfjafsd··on Apple now lets you transfer your iCloud Photos to Google Photos
The issue is you have an existing photo in your iCloud that is not in your camera roll (which is something iOS can automatically do so many people have this use case) there was no easy way to transfer those photos to Google.
sdljfjafsd··on Killing TurboTax
Square owns Credit Karma Tax, not Intuit.
sdljfjafsd··on There’s no such thing as “a startup within a big company”
Can you share your sources?
sdljfjafsd··on Airbnb will build a new tech hub in Atlanta
Time zones are important if your teams rely on synchronous communication (slack, zoom, etc.). My org has gone "remote" but we still rely heavily on synchronous communication so we still prefer to hire people in the same time zone.

Time zones are also important if you are doing customer or client support.

sdljfjafsd··on 50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists to Blame Fat (2016)
Maybe whatever group benefits from the gluten free trend? Also, maybe the soy and corn industries?
sdljfjafsd··on Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test
CADR is an important metric for determining if a purifier is correct for your room. You can use it to calculate how many air changes it does per hour. If that number is too low, the air purifier is not going to work well in your room. Basically there's a minimum CADR for each room in your house, but of course, exceeding that gives you little benefit. Most people search for devices that are ~4 air changes per hour.
sdljfjafsd··on Dyson air purifier outperformed by cheap DIY box fan filter in Marketplace test
Why did you believe the box fan did better? Did you do any kind of testing to verify that? The Blue Air's CADR is 2.7x that of a box fan.

I do agree that the box fan solution is a great low cost option for small to medium rooms, but if you need 1 device to purify a large area, it's not gonna cut it.

sdljfjafsd··on I Have Resigned from the Google AMP Advisory Committee
As a user, I've found tons of problems with AMP sites. I don't know if this is the website's fault or AMPs, but frankly I don't care.

Some issues:

- back button breaks

- difficult to share links

- when sharing with others, the URL prompts distrust

- parts of the page broken (this happens on a lot of Reddit amp pages where I try to expand comments and nothing happens)

sdljfjafsd··on I Have Resigned from the Google AMP Advisory Committee
I think OP was trying to make a point that the entire investigative journalism industry can't be replaced by freelance bloggers, not that freelance bloggers don't add value.
sdljfjafsd··on Elon Musk moves to Texas
Is that really any different from any other state, including California? Rural vs urban culture are completely different in every state in America. As Californians we still insulate ourselves from rural culture. The only difference in California those counties don't form the bulk of the electorate while in Texas they do. We still have the same problem: a cultural divide between rural and urban.