warp_factor

Yes it should be awkward, but at least in my experience in the past this was expected to happen. And the person on the other side of the awkwardness would mostly be receptive from the tentative approach.

I feel like nowadays, because it is so much easier (but fake) online, most people simply gave up all tentative of approaching//being approached in real life.

I mean meeting people in real life still happens, but it is getting more and more rare//isolated and awkward unfortunately. I guess we live in a society where everything needs to have a well defined flow and be well codified.

because society still associate being single with a bad trait (I guess the logic being that if you are Single there must be something wrong with you). You therefore don't want to expose publicly that you are single with a blue bag.

Great idea.

It is exactly my complain with dating apps: They shifted most of the dating scene online in a predefined "boring flow". It is unfortunately extremely rare nowadays that people approach each other in real life. I think there is a couple reason why that became the way it is:

- Online dating app wide acceptance made it in such a way that it became the "expected flow" through which dating occurs.

- Trying to approach people offline is now seen as more and more awkward since less and less people do it.

- I also feel like the whole #MeToo and political climate makes it more difficult to approach people of the opposite gender as more people are now worried that it could be wrongly seen as sexual harassment.

Something I never managed to fully confirm or deny:

I manually disabled all the data collection on my Google account (search and location history). Is Google still tracking my location? Would I still appear in that database? I'm pretty much Google-free at this point except for some spam emails and the need for a google account for Android Play.

Simply put: UX is bad and most people figured out this was an easier way to do it. (Also something that comes to a shock to people working in the Bay: Most people are really not that good with computers).

Also, basic behavior mimicry. You see other people do it so you also do it.

That's the issue with Slack and other hype trends that will eventually go away as fads.

Slack doesn't you make you more productive, it makes you spend more time on smalltalks and constant distractions.

I almost never had a constructive discussion on Slack. In contrast, I used to have them way more over email.

I think those comments try to react to the fact that this news got overblown because the researcher is a very talented woman.

She definitely did something amazing and unfortunately it turned political because it fits the narrative that some people love to push currently.

I'm not a fan of the liberal agenda of positive//negative discrimination. I really believe that it is making everyone worse off, especially women that are being treated like little kids that need to be shown the correct path.

What is going on with all this cult-following of "FANG" companies? I seriously don't get it. From what I see those are close to the least ethical companies in tech.

It really disturbs me that people chose a job for fame and money in those companies way before choosing an interesting project, or something that you can believe in.

I thought this was a joke. Seems to be real though.

multiple economic papers have shown that Rent Control is a huge disaster for a city. As said in another comment, it rewards those that moved in early (and those might be super rich techies like most of my friends that like to brag about having a rent controlled 2000$ 2bedroom). Rent control forces new units to be priced super high because the landlords know they will not be able to increase afterward. Probably one of the most failed policy in SF (and there are a lot of failed policies there)

you are right and I'm not sure why you are being downvoted.

Most of the 72$ shares sold pre-IPO to retail investors were dumped on IPO day to make a quick profit. The individual investors and employees that are still in LockOut are now holding the falling knife

only if the IPO price is completely unrelated to the fundamentals, like it is for Lyft currently.

If it is unrelated to the fundamentals, you are in full speculation territory and the only goal buying the stock is to sell it eventually to a bigger fool that will pay more for it.

The stock is in free fall right now. It popped because it was so much hyped accross regular investors. Right now I predict that one week from now it will go under the 72$ opening price

Very similar to Lyft and Uber it seems

I agree with you completely, it is a simplistic example of course. But spending multiple weeks in each you can have a feel for the culture of each place, the way people behave, their level of education etc etc.

I was thinking about the same thing. It seems this stock is completely disconnected from the fundamentals and that's what allows it to go so high (And make the founder//VCs rich).

If we push this logic to the extreme, what would prohibit a stock to be completely uncorrelated to the company it represents? What if at some point a stock is traded based purely on the hype and the idea that someone else will eventually buy it for even more eventually later on? This seems to be what's going on with this IPO, it is 100% speculation that someone dumber than you will eventually buy it for even more. Back in the days dividends and voting rights were used to keep the stock inline with the company's fundamental, but in this specific case, why is the stock related at all to the company since there are no voting right nor dividends?

probably not.

After spending an extensive amount of time in Mainland China and Taiwan, it is fascinating to see how one country initially evolved in two separate countries based on different ideologies.

I would go as far as to say that if you want to see what communism and capitalism do to a country, those two are a perfect example.

Uber and Lyft IPOs look to me like they are legal ponzy schemes.

Both companies lose a crazy amount of money, they have close to zero moat, customers have no loyalty and will go to another rideshare service if it is one dollar cheaper. The fundamentals don't make any sense, but still we read everywhere that Lyft and Uber at those prices make sense.

The VCs and founders decided to get out while the market is up (and while they still can) and they will sell their shares to the "dumb" public that will buy into another overhyped tech stocks without really understanding the fundamentals. The employees cannot sell before 6 months, they are locked out.

After a couple weeks the market will probably realize this stock is overvalued and it will start to go down, but at that point all the big fishes will be out already and who will hold those toxic assets? individual investors and employees that cannot yet sell.

Can you explain more by what you mean with it is a "good company"? It is not a good or bad company, it is a company which mission is to make money.

Shorts help keep the stock market healthy by giving opportunities to investor to invest into overevaluated stocks. And honestly Lyft seems to be a perfect candidate for this.

I think one of the bigger challenge is that when you become bigger you launch more projects to handle the scale and each of those projects introduce new bugs for which you need new team of engineers.

Basically, once you hit scaling I think you end up with a super small team that managed to keep simple (instagram for example) or you end up with a huge team that explodes in complexity and needs to grow exponentially to handle all the extra complexity. Uber is very obviously in the later bucket.

ok, but:

* Everything they do is low data (no video, image or anything high bandwith).

* Their whole model can be subdivided into smaller local problems (all users//drivers in the bay area have nothing to do with the users//drivers currently in NYC).

yes there is a couple of algorithms to develop for Uber Pool, and for the real time matching but everything else looks like a fairly simple app backend to me.

I think you are right.

I think that what is going there is also a bit political. They started to grow their Engineering department so fast that they need to justify the headcounts now. So each team is trying to invent new projects all the time. Anecdotally, this was partially confirmed to me by a friend working there.

I said this before, but I still cannot understand why a service like Uber need so many engineers in the backend (multiple thousands). It is a complex distributed application, but nowhere near the scale or complexity of a Facebook or Google.

I was actually making a point that what defines a tech company shifted over time.

10 years ago, we had some "hard tech" with a lot of tech innovation. I was arguing that the meaning of "tech company" shifted to a business company, using tech as a way to streamline operations. Those are very different in my opinion.

I obviously prefer the first one. But I accept that in the collective mind, tech company mainly means a website nowadays.

That's what I find so interesting with Tesla owner. They spend a fortune on a car, then they minimize every single issue they have with the car. My explanation for this is that for a lot of owners, the car is a way to be part of a hyped group more than being a utilitarian object (what a car should be).

Airbnb or Uber are not really tech companies. They are business companies with a WebApp required as part of the execution. They didn't invent anything on the technical level, they brought some business ideas to existing tech (I mean Airbnb is literally a website with a DB)

In the same way that United is not a tech company, but they have a website that accepts reservation.

Tech companies create new Tech as part of their lifecycle: Intel, AMD, Google, etc etc. They create new Tech that didn't exist before, and this is core to their product.

I get that Silicon Valley shifted from Real tech 20 years ago to Futile WebApps that deliver pizzas faster, but it makes me sad that the new definition of tech shifted so much to pure business.

it's funny, not sure why you are downvoted

yes, everything is signaling. If you get a brandless tshirt, you are also signaling that you are too smart to buy the luxury brand.

You make a good point and I edited my comment. Thanks.

I replied on another thread on this topic where the same question got raised. (TLDR: Not perfect, but definitely a magnitude better).

With simple logic: If TV is not Healthy, then Facebook is definitely worse as it mixes TV and broadcasts specifically the fake perfect life of people you know.