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ultraluminouson Uber, DoorDash and similar firms can’t defy the laws of capitalism after all

Thank you for the informative reply. I definitely agree on all counts, especially re "ponzy" etc. I think that the pandemic forced the entire sector to focus on profitability and cut most loss-leading initiatives, so hearing they're trending towards core profitability makes sense!

ultraluminouson Uber, DoorDash and similar firms can’t defy the laws of capitalism after all

I agree with the gist of you're saying, and I didn't personally dig into their last few fillings, but I suppose what the parent comment is trying to express can also be stated as "Uber's core ride-sharing business model is not cash flow positive", which can be obfuscated when arguing GAP vs EBITDA.

ultraluminouson Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

Yup. Essentially, housing is an in-elastic demand, and livable land is a finite resource, further exacerbated by the realities of emigration. Combined with extreme wealth inequality, it brings us to this type of dystopia - https://ssir.org/articles/entry/tackling_the_housing_crisis_...

ultraluminouson Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

It's not a question of "would it work", the point is that real-estate prices are rising in dozens of countries, and thousands of cities. Zoning is a local issue. Assuming that the reason homes prices are out of control in Santiago, Chile and in Tel Aviv, Israel for the same reasons as in San Fransisco is, well, silly.

ultraluminouson Zillow seeks to sell 7k homes for $2.8B after flipping halt

I've seen this argument touted frequently in housing related threads and it always confuses me. Housing prices have soared over the majority of the developed world - dozens of countries[1]. Is NYMBYism and prop13 driving the housing crisis in Luxembourg? Chile? Estonia? Do you think the entire world property market, taxation and legislation is structured exactly like in the California bay area? The whole "just zone more high rises" argument is so obviously reductive, I can't help but think it's pushed primarily by property developers and speculators.

Housing prices continuously rising to slurp up any marginal income has been studied by economists for a couple of centuries (rent extraction), and taxation solutions such as a Land Value Tax were suggested by Adam Smith himself.

https://blogs.imf.org/2021/10/18/housing-prices-continue-to-...

ultraluminouson OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

Are you an immunologist by any chance?

ultraluminouson OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

Arkansas was one of the last states to seceded the union. The very second sentence in the ordinance linked is "In addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention in resolutions adopted". You are more than welcome to look up those "causes and complaints" and let me know whether they are slavery related or not.

ultraluminouson OSHA to require employers with 100 employees vaccinate or test workforce

If only the slaves had any appreciation to the important component they were in their slave master's culture, they'd probably complain a lot less and try harder to accommodate their agrarian needs.

sadly necessary /s

ultraluminouson U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

Except that it actually didn't?

ultraluminouson That coworker who never stops refactoring

This has to be satire right? Right?

ultraluminouson Docker Releases Plugin for Simplified Deployments into AWS

"they accomplish the same goals as full VMs in a different way."

They are explicitly not that. Docker containers do not provide you any real isolation guarantees from a security POV and make no attempts at such. This is extensively documented. [1]

"If you're running Docker in a VM on a bare metal server you're doing it wrong. "

Ummm... Running Docker inside a VM is by far the most common deployment type of Docker there is. What do you think is an EC2/ECS/GKE deployment? Hint, there's a VM running your containers in all of them. This is also what Docker the company recommends - https://www.docker.com/blog/containers-and-vms-together/

[1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/windowsconta... https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/containers/containers-vs-vm...

ultraluminouson LinkedIn to cut 960 jobs worldwide

Not OP but - https://qz.com/1811291/jack-welch-was-the-best-and-worst-thi...

GE’s breathtaking growth under Welch was fueled in large part by its transformation into a financial services superpower. By 2000, nearly half of the company’s revenue—$96 billion—came from GE Capital

GE’s exposure to finance proved to be an enormous vulnerability after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and particularly during the financial crisis of 2008. While Welch’s successor, Jeff Immelt, tried to diminish GE’s reliance on finance, his efforts came too late.

ultraluminouson An Amazon programmer’s perspective (2015)

"in my time there I worked during the weekend 3 times (i don’t count oncall here)"

Why wouldn't you count it? Do those days not-count somehow?

ultraluminouson Bye, Amazon

And if the real world could even hypothetically fulfill such a requirement, you would have had a point.

ultraluminouson Bye, Amazon

Lynching slaves was immoral, unethical and "blameworthy" before it became illegal.

ultraluminouson Bye, Amazon

First, I agree with your conclusion. The way to address this is to change the law, pushing individual corporation is ineffective.

However, you DON'T have to maximize your profits above all other corporations. There's no such actual fiduciary duty and there never could be. That's the point the poster is trying to make - something being legal doesn't make it ethical and acting in a unethical, but legal, manner does not absolve you of contempt.

ultraluminouson S&P 500 Buybacks Now Outpace All R&D Spending in the US

If you're referring to "...investors have been cashing out of US stocks at a record pace", than to further clarify - investors are divesting out of the public stock market entirely. They're not selling their Apple stock in a buyback to invest the proceeds of the sale into an exciting IPO, or a deep value small cap. They're just taking it out of entirely. Think what that implies about the macro structure of a "market economy" when the majority of new money going into stocks is executive/company initiated stock buy backs, and not "investment".

ultraluminouson SoftBank Seeking to Take Control of WeWork Through Financing Package

Sure thing -

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/difference-between-...

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/11/13/1542091438000/How-acc...

These results beg the question of just how much weight we should give analysts' earnings forecasts. It turns out, not much, especially in the long run.

Peter Berezin, the chief global strategist at BCA Research, is out with a new report about stock selection and market timing. In it, he asks the following: "How can we distinguish between hidden gems and fool's gold?" The answer, he determines, is not the thousands of analysts Wall Street has bankrolled to do just that

PS - Just to be perfectly clear, I was definitely joking about WSB. Sister comment is right, WSB is the 4chan of "finance".

ultraluminouson SoftBank Seeking to Take Control of WeWork Through Financing Package

I’m not going to get into the specifics of this particular article, or public analyst reports in general, but FYI Barrons is possibly the worst source of financial information on planet earth. You’d be better served following WSB’s advice than take anything your read there seriously.

ultraluminouson Ask HN: How did your startup change after an exit?

I have no idea what you base this statement on. You are absolutely likely to go to zero by continuously making market trades as a retail investor. Every trade has two sides and the side you're trading against is for the most part significantly better informed than you. That's why Robinhood makes its money by selling their 100% retail order volume.

ultraluminouson Ask HN: How did your startup change after an exit?

You are statistically guaranteed to have worse expected value as a retail stock trader than at the blackjack table.

ultraluminouson The WeWork IPO

Oh then you'll love finding out how much of the overall economy is guided by tax code idiosyncrasies - read up on stock buybacks vs. dividends for extra horror.

ultraluminouson Microsoft’s Q4 earnings and 2020 expectations

Is Intel not a "mega tech company"? They have 75% the market cap of Microsoft, and virtually all of their revenue is from producing silicon.

Ironically this is exactly the point you miss - Intel's business it to produce and sells silicone. Intel's cohorts are AMD, ARM and NVIDIA, and they are all technology companies who's business is the development and sell of technology.

Apple produces consumer electronics, and though in many cases it also designs and produces some internal technology components, their business is not in any way dependent on selling that tech in itself. In fact it's arguable that the main influence on whether an apple component is developed in house or outsourced is economical/logistical and not tech based at all. Apple's cohorts are Sony, Samsung, LG etc, all consumer electronics providers.

ultraluminouson Microsoft’s Q4 earnings and 2020 expectations

No, their business is consumer electronics. Those consumer devices contain (and are built with) tech, but the tech is not the product itself. This is in comparison with MS, which for the most part sells tech.

ultraluminouson Microsoft’s Q4 earnings and 2020 expectations

I am both bemused and somewhat concerned that you seems to hold the belief that "business discussions" are conducted outside of the realm of "emotional expression".

ultraluminouson Support for right-to-repair laws slowly grows

He's not advertising "on sombedoy else's trademark". He's advertising a business that offer third party repair services of a product name <trademark>. You are commenting on an article titled "Support for right-to-repair laws slowly grows", so perhaps his feeling of "entitlement" is the topic of the article?

ultraluminouson Why Google+ Failed

The GP is providing their personal insider view regarding what they perceived as mismanagement of G+, and is starting of with describing the vantage the had at the time. There are many (many) instances of appeal-to-authority on HN, but this is just plain `ol context.

Apologies if I read too much into your comment, but Appeal to Authority is a name of a logical fallacy and ascribes some sort of intellectual failure to the poster, when there's clearly none.

ultraluminouson Inventors killed by their own inventions

"Obviously leaded gasoline actually did appear to be the better choice at that time, or else people would have just used the non-patent-encumbered ethanol."

Eh. "It could only be this way, because it was" is a textbook definition of begging the question and circular reasoning. It's entirely possible that there were multiple extrinsic reasons that lead to this situation that aren't "leaded fuel was just the better option". Marketing/PR, industry momentum, regulatory capture, cost-of-entry into the fuel industry. In fact it was noted below that the leaded fuel inventor has partnered with GM.

This is exactly what the GP meant by invoking History vs. Econ 101. You're assuming that this simplistic model of price/demand is an inevitable law of nature even though there are countless counter examples throughout history of the wrong decisions made for the wrong reasons.

ultraluminouson I Now Have a Cardiologist

Pretty much the entirety of the article you're selectively quoting is praising preventative care.

The byline is "Contrary to conventional wisdom, it tends to cost money, but it improves quality of life at a very reasonable price."

and the article closes with this

But money doesn’t have to be saved to make something worthwhile. Prevention improves outcomes. It makes people healthier. It improves quality of life. It often does so for a very reasonable price.

There are many good arguments for increasing our focus on prevention. Almost all have to do with improving quality, though, not reducing spending. We would do well to admit that and move forward.

Sometimes good things cost money.

ultraluminouson Show HN: Expensive Chat – Pay one cent per letter

Genuine question and not some MRA trolling, but how is that demeaning? How would the etymology of English pronouns would be demeaning to anyone?