What's the point in writing something while "not caring" if the reader understands or not? Seems like a false confidence or false bravado to me; it reads like an attempt to project an impression, and not really an attempt to communicate.
Well, that's pretty much how China behaves with respect to foreign companies operating in China. They all need to be joint partnerships with owners in China.
In historical context, the “militia” was everyone, every able bodied person who could participate in common defense. It wasn’t a specific organization like we’d think of today
Beyond that, the right is entirely unconnected with service in a militia. That clause at the beginning “A well-regulated Militia …” does not scope or bound what comes next; it offers one explanation for why that right is protected.
SCOTUS explained the historical meaning of these words in more detail in District of Columbia vs. Heller, including an in-depth examination of the language as part of its opinion that the right is an individual right.
> 1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
> (a) The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but
does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative
clause. The operative clause’s text and history demonstrate that it connotes an individual right to keep and bear arms.
Yes, but a person can still choose which job to work in order to optimize their happiness, trading off compensation with the work's enjoyment. A person can also invest in themselves and develop new skills to unlock additional types of jobs, etc.
Why should there be a corporate tax rate at all though? Why not just tax income and leave it at that?
All of the money that corporations earn (and would be taxed on this way) will always be taxed as income before it's distributed to an individual, after all, no? Corporate tax never fully made sense to me.
Yes, it can. It provides a feeling of excitement or enthusiasm for whatever you're doing, and can be channeled into working hard for long periods of time. Especially if your job already brings you some satisfaction, then doing your job on amphetamine will provide more. Pilots in the airforce (and possibly other warfighters) are given amphetamine to augment their performance.
I think of it as basically stealing energy or enthusiasm from the future, though. You might feel energized and focused now, but it comes at the expense of less energy and focus when the drug wears off. The withdrawal effect is pretty mild if you take prescription doses of it though, e.g. Adderall (which is amphetamine). At normal moderate doses, taken in the morning, almost all of that energy can be recouped during sleep (though not all). I wouldn't want to take it daily for a long period of time though, otherwise you'll build up an 'energy deficit' that could lead to a crash.
P.S. I know people who have essentially destroyed their lives by becoming addicted to amphetamine or meth. It's a dangerous drug.
> Working with base-10 numbers is so much easier than trying to think in base-60, base-12, and base-24.
In some ways, sure. If you're doing precise mathematical things. Otherwise, if you're doing simple mental math, base-12, -24, and -60 have some advantages.
60 can be evenly divided into 1/2 (halves) or 30 min, 1/3 (thirds) or 20 min, /4 or 15 min, /5 or 12 min, /6 or 10 min, and by 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60.
24 can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and so on for 12. I always assumed this was the reason for the "imperial" unit measures and for time and length. Dividing things into thirds is a common use-case and it's nice to be able to do that evenly.
Maybe he wanted to start drawing a salary in order to resume working on Processing again, and the board said no. (That isn’t my first guess about what’s happening, based on the highly polarizing content on the foundation’s website but the thought did cross my mind.)
The part about turning off donations via Ethereum due to concerns about “environmental impact” was pretty good too.
(I mean, if a donor doesn’t have Ethereum, then they are probably not going to buy Ethereum in order to donate. If they only have Ethereum, then they need to transact it anyway to get a currency that the foundation will accept… And that’s taking it for granted that Ethereum has some problematic environmental impact, and that the impact is important enough to warrant losing donations for.)
The funding doc reads like an organization that has lost its way and is pursuing various vague social causes (“decolonizing wealth”), or social justice wars, rather than its original mission.
How do two-wheeled segway devices handle this? If you continue to lean forward and try to exceed their maximum speed, they will somehow tilt you backward and slow down anyway.
(Presumably, enough force on the front edge could cause them to over-tilt, but riding normally, it will forcefully tilt you back and slow down.)
I've listened to the voice call [1] linked in [2] and I interpret it the same way that Reddit staff apparently did -- as a veiled threat.
Here's why: Christian is saying during the call that if Reddit wants Apollo to "quiet down", then to "make it easier" on everyone, Reddit should pay Christian $10 million dollars.
I agree that there is ambiguity to the conversation, but if you listen to the exchange in context ... it sure sounds like Christian's offer is for Apollo to "go away quietly", as in he personally won't make noise about it. I'm not honestly sure that there's another sound way to interpret this.
Listen to the audio yourselves and consider: what exactly is Christian offering in exchange for $10m? It's not the cessation of API requests, because Reddit already has it own their power to make that happen unilaterally. Therefore it must be something else.
This 'clarification' that Christian provides afterwards, stating that he means API utilization will "go quiet", doesn't make sense, because Reddit doesn't need to pay for that. Again, he must be referring to something else.
What is Reddit buying for $10m? The answer that "Christian will shut down the app and go quietly" is the only answer that makes sense in context.
We should also keep in mind that actual, intended threats aren't necessarily going to be communicated explicitly. If you imagine a lobbyist threatening, say, a congressperson, would they say explicitly: "Vote for our initiative or else we'll stop funding you and fund your opposition"? No, almost certainly not. They'd say something that communicates the threat but requires reading between the lines -- as is the case here.
Even without the need for threats, Christian has a reason to be unhappy with the API change, and voice his criticism of it publicly. It might be what he was planning to do anyway. So perhaps he's offering for Reddit to buy him out in exchange for ceasing his public criticism. It's not precisely a threat because regardless of the offer he might have been planning to criticize Reddit publicly. But it sure would feel like a threat to Reddit. "Buy me out or else I'm going to cause even more public fuss about this". The way that it's communicated, it lands as a threat from my perspective, because the payment will not be for anything besides his silence.
If they had taken credit cards, and made fraudulent transactions, maybe they could have made a few purchases in retail stores, but as soon as you detected that fraud you’d call the bank and issue a chargeback - a hassle but you’re not out any money.
Also, banks are smart. If a single CC is being simultaneously used in multiple physical locations, that’s an immediate red flag for fraud. My bank also asks for OTPs when I make online payments at novel/obscure websites.
A scammer who got my full CC number couldn’t make a fake physical card since it’s chip-and-pin; or at least not use it at any mainstream retailer which would require a chip transaction. So they’d be limited to online ones. I suspect the bank might even be passed the IP or other fingerprint details when authenticating the transaction, resulting in OTP requirements when risk is detected (online transaction from foreign country when I live in my country).
As long as you have a couple of CCs (so you can still pay for stuff if one gets deactivated due to fraud), CC fraud will typically be detected by the bank and refunded, along with new card issuance.
My main CC company will also text me randomly asking if any of the last three charges was unauthorized, with their details. Sometimes the card is paused until I respond. This most typically happens when I’m traveling. If I text back that they’re all legitimate then the card works again immediately; if one is fraudulent then they get me on the phone to confirm the details and issue a new card.
The CC companies seem to be pretty good about not having false alarms when you travel any more (though if you’re traveling internationally, giving them a heads up helps avoid issues) - I believe it’s simultaneous use from multiple geos that trips fraud alarms.
Can’t he borrow against his Tesla stock, and other assets including his ownership of SpaceX, and personal property, for cash to buy Twitter?
Depending on his banking relationships, and other assets that he can use as collateral for the loan, he might be able to borrow a fairly high percentage of the current value of those assets as cash (maybe 50 to 70 or 80% or more if the collateral assets are diversified or the bank simply has high confidence in his effective credit rating or ability to repay — and he may be doing other business with that bank incentivizing them to give him a favorable deal).
I’m not a billionaire but by establishing a strong relationship with a bank, have been able to establish a credit line with a limit that is a high percentage of my assets that are invested by the bank in a diversified portfolio, along with other assets, at a low interest rate (mortgage levels - a credit line at approx 2.5% interest of an amount almost equal to my total assets at the bank).
I also recently refinanced my house with this bank starting last winter and was able to achieve getting a 15 year fixed mortgage at a 2.125% interest rate - a huge reduction from my previous rate of 3.5% on a 30 year. I now pay less per month and will own my home much sooner, consequently paying considerably less in interest over the remainder of the loan, and building much more wealth in the process.
With some wealth and favorable banking relationships you can accomplish things that most ordinary people don’t know about and I myself didn’t know about until I started looking into the possibilities. I am sure a billionaire has access to even more options than I can conceive of.
What’s wrong with Word? Modern businesses are turning increasingly to document formats like Google Docs and Quip in my experience: online editing solutions where documents are stored online and are as easy to share at any stage in their lifecycle as sharing a hyperlink.
Quip has extremely basic editing features, to the extent that I sometimes find it stifling. However, it does a great job at providing 95% of what most business documents need: several headings sizes, paragraphs, numbered and bulleted lists, and the ability to embed pictures - with great collaboration tools.
Quip as a medium is like Hacker News comments. You don’t have a lot of formatting options to work with so you focus on the content rather than messing about with styling.
Most business documents are written and read in a short period of time. Both of the tools show you who from your organization is reading the document for collaborative reviews and allow people to add comments on content inline. Google Documents allows people to make suggested changes that the author/editor can review and accept, incorporating the edit into the document; or the author can share the document and allow people to make changes to it directly.
For example, when my team is having planning meetings, or we are reviewing a project plan, etc. the primary author will often project/screenshare the document, while everyone else also loads it on their computer. We can each see where everyone else’s cursor is (or highlights) and all edit the document simultaneously (if the author wishes) or leave feedback/suggest edits - that we can all see.
These kinds of features matter more in a business environment in my experience more than the ability to format documents in complex ways.
Personally, I find Quip too simplistic, because it does not handle things well like having multiple paragraphs plus a code block in a numbered list item. Google Documents can also have issues with things like this, but I rarely run into something crucial that I cannot do. (But it does have missing features: for example there is no way to add line numbers to a document — but these are less important now that the convention is for everyone to review the document on their computer simultaneously, rather than printing them out).
I find Word to be the most powerful of all of these editing tools and have the easiest time getting it to do what I want. However, (at least the versions I’ve used) seems geared around writing and saving documents locally. It would be my choice of tool if I had to write a long business document and Google Docs wasn’t fitting the bill.
There’s probably a way to set up collaboration features with Word like with the other tools these days, but the “best” collaboration I’ve seen has been through SharePoint which was painful: people had to “check out” the document in order to make changes, etc. I imagine that with Office 365 Microsoft has something better now but if they do I have not had a chance to use it.
Quip and Google Docs “just work”. They are web applications so there is no difference in what is supported between OS versions like with the Word.
In my career as a software engineer & businessperson I’ve rarely needed more than these types of basic text editing tools to collaborate with and convey ideas to my colleagues. Making collaboration simple, including the ability to simultaneously edit a document, or enabling people to read a document at their leisure (asynchronously), and add comments/suggestions/edits - which always refer to the authoritative latest copy (none of this monkey business with emailing around copies of Word documents) provides far more value than advanced editing features would.
If a person can’t get their point across easily using Word’s defaults, perhaps customized a bit by choosing their preferred font, including diagrams where necessary, then I’d question whether the difficulty is the editing tool or something else.
Unless you are producing specialized documents such as academic research intended for publication, or legal documents intended for submission to a court, etc., in my experience business documents rarely need more formatting than Markdown can produce; and easy real-time collaboration is a massive value add.
I myself was “canceled” privately from an employer where I had worked for over a decade. Fortunately the issue stayed in-house and my name did not go public.
I wrote an on-topic email about my life experiences and challenges concerning a medical issue, linking to relevant CDC and WHO medical guidance on the topic and suggestions on how the company could take steps to mitigate discrimination against people in similar circumstances.
Despite my good intentions, desire to bring hard data from authoritative sources into the conversation, someone presumably took offense and reported me to HR - I assume the allegation was promoting discrimination, even though I was not expressing any opinion of my own and simply linking to data from authority data from sources & pointing out problems and challenges that the data showed we would face in fighting that exact same discrimination. Sadly ironic.
I never learned the details of the allegation nor had a chance to defend myself. Multiple employees vouched for me, including people from the minority that presumably initiated the complaint, and many others sent me private messages saying how they thought my contributions were constructively adding to the conversation. The investigation was completely opaque, and the ultimate explanation was that I simply used bad judgment. That’s at-will employment for you. No opportunity to appeal, confront accuser, present evidence contrary to the accusations. A decade of good reputation and sound judgment meant nothing when (presumably) a minority reported me for discrimination.
The same HR investigator who investigated me previously investigated allegations of sexual misconduct by a female employee of a manager I knew well. The employee was performing poorly and filed misconduct allegations against the manager too. The manager had kept extensive documentation and was cleared. We were virtually certain the sexual misconduct allegations were bullshit and retaliation: and ironically the target was a supporter of the employee. The target ended up being fired. (Despite it being highly likely there was any more than he-said-she-said evidence with no corroboration.) The problem employee was on medical leave for months and eventually left the company.
Moral of the story: (1) Don’t expect fairness from HR. Their job is to protect the company from liability. They don’t care about you. A big company doesn’t care one whit for fairness and will fire you based on a calculation about liability of the situation going sideways (like PR explosion) (2) Don’t post about non-work topics at work, even if it’s being discussed, unless that’s your job. You never know what risk you’re exposed to. (3) Everything you post publicly online will be around forever. Even if you delete it someone might have an archive. Have sensitive discussions only in private group chats over end to end encrypted messengers, potentially ones that support message expiration (delete history after 1 day | 7 days | etc).
I was fortunate to be able to sign a mutual non-disparagement and NDA with my employer as part of an agreement to mutually terminate my employment, for consideration of staying on paid leave until a certain date so that I could job search without having to explain my departure, and receive my next stock grant. I’ll never be able to work at that employer again unless someone very high rank makes an exception.
The most frustrating part of the whole situation was never receiving a real explanation with any detail about what I was alleged to have done wrong, or what corporate policy I was alleged to have violated, nor have an opportunity to rebut the accusations. I also don’t believe my management chain stood up for me or defended me despite my long record of good judgment and high job level.
The silver lining is that I fortunately found an even higher paying job at a higher level with another tech company. My ability to get a promotion had probably already stalled out, and doubly so after that episode. So the threat of termination resulted in a higher level and considerably higher paying job at another employer, with an small group of people who know what really happened.
I got lucky though in that sense. I’m pretty sure that the person who reported me is a Twitter activist about that topic. I’m fortunate that they didn’t attempt to direct the outrage machine against me, otherwise I might have ended up in the same boat, publicly canceled. I stand by what I wrote as being reasonable, defensible, unbiased, and non-discriminatory (I was proposing ways to fight that discrimination!); merely discussing the topic and mentioning data and facts that the cancel crowd don’t like could get you canceled. My bad judgment was choosing to discuss the topic at work at all (even in a discussion about fighting discrimination).
Be careful what you write. I for one would appreciate if more companies adopted Coinbase’s “no politics or non-work chat at work” policy [1]. Employees could and should engage in the political activism they are passionate about on their own time, not by trying to manipulate the company’s strategy, or engaging in internal debates (unless necessary to contact the company‘s business and establish its social policies, as part of one’s job role) in my opinion, especially through strongarm tactics. This would free employees from the distractions of wanting to oppose extremist viewpoints they disagree with. At my last company I knew large networks of employees who disagreed with what these vocal extremists were writing internally but were afraid to say anything against it for fear of what ended up happening to me.
I don't necessarily subscribe to this point of view (I don't know what I believe; I need to think more), but allow me to play devil's advocate consider: most of the people who die from this disease are old people who have already lived their lives. The young are giving up the opportunity to live their lives by staying home to stop the spread, when they predominately aren't at risk of death. Should the young give up their lives to save the old? The young already sacrifice substantially for the old - in the United States by way of Medicare for example. The lives of many young people are completely on hold: they cannot go to school, cannot have weddings, cannot have fun, all to stop a disease that for most not-old healthy people is similar to the flu or even milder. If you're a young person you might not find this to be a worthwhile sacrifice - sacrificing years of your life to save people who have already lived "full" lives (that would be longer if not for COVID, but have made it to old age).
News is totally fucked. Look at how most media reported on James Damore being fired from Google, and what they quoted him as having saying, vs what he actually said (1).
According to the media, Damore called women "neurotic" and said they were "biologically unfit to be software engineers". Nothing close whatsoever to what was actually said (1).
Meanwhile there are university professors willing to defend the memo (2). For example, "For what it’s worth, I think that almost all of the Google memo’s empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history." (Geoffrey Miller, evolutionary psychology professor at University of New Mexico)
A war that was started on incorrect pretenses is not the same thing as terrorism. Among other things, the US did not deliberately target the Iraqi civilian population, and made their best efforts to avoid civilians being harmed. The US provided substantial reconstruction aid to Iraq to help undo the damage of the war afterward - more than $60 billion.
However, it's hard to avoid there being some undesired casualties in war, especially when the the fighters on the opposing side are using guerilla tactics and hiding within the civilian population, such as deliberately fighting, sniping, or using mortars from within what are otherwise civilian compounds, or even mosques, forcing the US to either ignore the attacks (unacceptable) or respond and attack mosques and civilian compounds.
All of our soldiers are unformed, with a flag, and follow rules of engagement that involve not attacking anyone except positively identified targets (i.e. observed holding weapons). Terrorist groups operating in the middle east wear no uniform and exploit our rules of engagement by attacking, dropping their weapons before the coalition can respond, then pretending to be civilians. Even though they're the only men-of-age in an area from which an attack just took place, since they stashed their weapons somewhere, the rules of engagement mean that our troops can't do much if they didn't observe a person holding a weapon.
Uniformed soldiers fighting other uniformed soldiers is different than terrorists that attack civilians or soldiers and then hide, pretending to be civilians.
The Iraq war was started on pretenses that we now know are false, but let's not conflate that with groups that deliberately target civilians (with suicide bombs in shopping centers), or conduct attacks even on military facilities and then pretend to be civilians when pursued for a counter-attack.