If someone could magically build a system that allows for the communication to be eavesdropped only by the allowed government agency, my objections would be dramatically reduced. But that's not the way tech works. Building one backdoor makes the entire system, and all users, vulnerable to a whole host of other malicious actors, including hostile foreign nations and unscrupulous hackers. We live in a world today where anyone can be hacked, even major institutions and corporations like NYTimes, Yahoo and Sony. We desperately need systems that are more secure, not less.
Backdoors are needed because a system uses E2E encryption.
If the system uses only P2P encryption then no backdoor is needed, which actually makes the system more secure to external threats. It is then for the provider to allow access to data only to "allowed government agencies" according to the law, which is how mobile phone networks work.
I'm not surprised that there are vast numbers of latent low-probability race conditions in the linux kernel or any major software project. Having seen the testing process in both hardware and software projects, the two are not even comparable. The testing process in most software projects is dominated by fully deterministic unit tests that are very simple in nature, and make large numbers of assumptions about the behaviors and interactions with other components. Low-probability race conditions between different components is exactly the outcome I would expect from this testing process.
The main problem seems to be that startup employees are being asked to pay taxes simply to exercise their options, even though the stock they now own is extremely illiquid. This problem exists here in America too. The best solution in both countries would be for employees to be taxed only for cash income/dividends, or when there is a liquidity event such as IPO or acquisition.
I highly recommend doing away with the lower capital-gains tax entirely and treating investment income the same as labor income. However, it seems ridiculous to ask someone to pay taxes when they literally don't have the money to do so.
This has always bothered me. I don't like incurring a tax penalty that has to be paid in cash, when I don't have any more cash to pay it or a way to turn the asset into cash!
Sidenote: how do you actually determine the spread for tax purposes when you can't sell the stock/it doesn't have a current price?
How does it make sense to treat investment income the same as labor income? I've already been taxed on the investment amount, and I get no rebate if I lose my investments.
You've already been taxed on the investment principal. Not the returns that you're getting on the investment. By your logic, the capital-gains-tax should be eliminated entirely because its double taxation, which is a ridiculous idea.
We're conflating different things here. The point we're discussing is that investment-income should be treated the same as labor-income. From your last comment, you presumably agree that labor is also a good thing that should be encouraged, so I don't see why investment-income should be taxed so much lower than labor-income.
The guy was perfectly willing to stay for the long-haul.
> weeks of remote work without formal agreement
Taking people at their word is "entitled"?
> a quick cash out over adding value to the company
The guy was faithfully performing all the duties assigned to him. Is he drinking the company kool-aid and devoting his life to his company? Thankfully no. Your employer is not your family, nor is it a cult.
Is the author naive? Maybe. Opinionated? Definitely but with good reason - the director was later fired, how often does that happen. Entitled? I see nothing of the sort.
> Maybe I could get a high equity offer, and if the stock turned around I’d stand to make a large sum of money. If it didn’t, I could quit in a year or two and go somewhere more stable.
If this is the intention of any of my candidates coming in and they call this "real commitment" to work for my company they would not pass the phone interview. Seriously?
> If this is the intention of any of my candidates coming in and they call this "real commitment" to work for my company they would not pass the phone interview
There is a very easy way to filter out candidates who want to leave in 1-2 years. Structure your equity vesting so that there's minimal vesting for the first 2-3 years, with a sizable severance package to protect against involuntary termination. I don't understand why you would give someone 30% equity after 2 years, if you're then going to begrudge them leaving.
> In the video, the protester who was shot is first seen joining a black-clad mob of people who chase a riot officer and tackle him to the ground. They kick him and beat him with what appear to be metal pipes.
> At one point, the protester approaches a second police officer who is standing nearby with a handgun drawn. Just after the protester hits the officer with the pipe, the officer fires at the man at point-blank range.
I'm just as pro-democracy as the next guy, but I can hardly fault a police officer for shooting someone in the shoulder when they are being hit with a metal pipe.
I hope the pro-democracy movement in HK returns to its origins of peaceful demonstrations. I don't think its good for the movement's long-term sustainability to turn violent.
What is the end game to your advice? China can successfully plant saboteurs into the movement and will win that game. The only people watching HK with sympathy are outsiders, and any intervention must be weighed against war.
We already have mass persecution if ethnic Muslims in China with reports of organ harvesting. The world (who?) isn’t going to war with China over something like that.
> "I hope the pro-democracy movement in HK returns to its origins of peaceful demonstrations."
Peaceful protests have limits in what can be achieved, if anything, and have actually slowly bit by bit lost a little freedom every year. They've been protesting every July 1 since handover-day 1997 [1], as well as every anniversary of Tiananmen [2], as well as every new year demanding universal suffrage and further influence of mainland China [3].
> I'm just as pro-democracy as the next guy, but I can hardly fault a police officer for shooting someone in the shoulder when they are being hit with a metal pipe.
I mean, they could run away. The police are there to enforce a new State order. A lot of people don't want that order.
> I hope the pro-democracy movement in HK returns to its origins of peaceful demonstrations. I don't think its good for the movement's long-term sustainability to turn violent.
Well, there's absolutely no hope of a non-violent movement bringing democracy to a state capitalist society. It's never happened, it never will happen. It requires States, which organizationally have diffuse self-preservation functions, to give up power. It's not even clear they can do that. People aren't seeking centrist American approval, they're seeking to self-govern rather than be handed from one massive military power to another.
Americans and many Europeans generally approve of violent police action, which killed 998 people in the US in 2018. Many in shot isolated situations that in no way resemble the wide scale resistance of Hong Kong's pro-democratic movements.
I suppose we should applaud HK police's forbearance up until this point, from the western perspective. American cops would just open fire and then gleefully make up lies about the nature of the demonstrations or their supporters.
>American cops would just open fire and then gleefully make up lies about the nature of the demonstrations or their supporters.
You say that but since the 90s there has been a concerted effort to not let federal law enforcement escalate to that point (at least in group situations like this). In small swat team type situations they can be very trigger happy but in an ongoing clash like this the politicians would (and have) hold the cops to a reasonable ROE.
> You say that but since the 90s there has been a concerted effort to not let law enforcement escalate to that point (at least in group situations like this).
You say this as if the inaugural protesters weren't rounded up, detained for illegal lengths of time, and subject to spurious lawsuits and fines that were enormously damaging to even passerbys.
> but in an ongoing clash like this the politicians would hold the cops to a reasonable ROE.
You say this like there aren't still ongoing lawsuits of brutality cases from Ferguson or that BLM isn't still organizing widespread civil rights demonstrations that draw hundreds to thousands and then being chased off by cops with tear gas, truncheons, and "non-lethal" bullets.
This is a conflict of interest, which should erode the trust that anyone would have on twitter. The man is simultaneously responsible for editorial decisions, while also serving in a brigade that "uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook ... to wage what the head of the UK military describes as “information warfare”.
Imagine finding out that the executive in charge of editorial decisions for Twitter in Hong Kong, is also serving in the Chinese military's department of "information warfare". As a Hong Konger, you'd have to be an idiot to continue trusting twitter at that point. The fact that Twitter is well aware of this, and didn't see a conflict of interest, makes me question their neutrality and effectiveness as a platform for online discussion.
There are many examples of media outlets working for governments as weaponized tools all over the globe and as mouthpieces or instruments of foreign policy or even warfare.
Twitter is just another broadcast tool like most media outlets.
Examples of Twitter being used for US foreign policy goals are legion. Here are some from the Obama era on “regime change“ attempts in Iran with personal involvement and approval of Jack Dorsey:
Twitter is not an open protocol for sharing information. Thats what the internet is for. Twitter is just an advertising company that allows you to post content in exchange for hosting ads on that content.
Who they hire, is their business. If you don't agree with their (inconsistent and haphazard) editorial policies, just host your content elsewhere.
I think we need to stop giving Twitter so much power over the world by talking about it so much and start creating and using other platforms. Twitter has only 20% market penetration in the US.
Whether people trust Twitter overtly is not a decisive question. Twitter exists and has an impact. Information on what influences this impact is useful and important.
Twitter's moderation is all over the place, and it really seems like half a step from pure anarchy. I can see people equating that with it being a relatively free platform.
From an American Twitter user's perspective, it seems like you can pretty much advocate all forms of violence and fascism as long as you maintain even the thinnest veil of acting like it's a political discussion.
Do you think that governments want and work to try to influence public opinion? I mean you don't need to rely on intuition here. As one fun example the current state of modern art is largely because the CIA used it as a propaganda weapon. [1] As the article mentions it was pushed heavily by their "Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations."
And governments in general seem more obsessed with information manipulation than ever before. Consequently, I find it only logical to assume that all social media is currently being heavily utilized by government level actors to push their various propaganda and agendas. If one is optimistic it even goes some way towards explaining the stupidity of social media -- propaganda is often quite ham fisted.
Now pair this with AI. OpenAI recently demonstrated an AI capable of producing at least semi-workable longer form articles. This [2] is a toy version of that running on an intentionally crippled network. You give it the start of a writing prompt, and it completes the rest. I decided to give it part of what you wrote. In particular I gave it everything up until "Imagine founding out that". This is what was produced:
"This is a conflict of interest, which should erode the trust that anyone would have on twitter. The man is simultaneously responsible for editorial decisions, while also serving in a brigade that "uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook ... to wage what the head of the UK military describes as “information warfare”.
Imagine finding out that the man responsible for the military's response had once been paid an anonymous $300,000 fee to write an op-ed. How can you trust him to do his job without that knowing?
Is there anything else that we can do? What can we do? We need a real-time response to any tweets or stories that are inaccurate or in breach of policy, where the facts are being misrepresented. I'm not an information manager but something needs to be done to stop this from happening, or at least give people an opportunity to understand what the fuck they are doing in their tweets."
That paragraph has several glaring errors, but the produced speech is intentionally designed to be such. It's a toy model on a public site. Imagine the current state of the art. You could even create a neural network that is trained to detect human-like writing to automatically validate or reject the blurbs. This all becomes much easier if you restrict its training down to a specific agenda, and even easier still on a platform like Twitter where Tweets continued to be heavily restricted in character count. Emulating a human is much easier in shorter posts.
I don't think we should ever start declaring one another to be bots, since that leads nowhere, but at the same time I would consider that things such as trying to get a feel for a consensus online may already be impossible. If it's not yet impossible, it will be soon enough. Yet another reason people must always remember to think for themselves, and only themselves... not that adopting a view because of its popularity would be logical, even if it was genuinely popular. Also a major reason to check any emotion at the door. I find it interesting that that random AI generated blurb was aiming to emotionally incite.
> And governments in general seem more obsessed with information manipulation than ever before. Consequently, I find it only logical to assume that all social media is currently being heavily utilized by government level actors to push their various propaganda and agendas.
There is so much Twitter bot activity around politics. It is deeply troubling to consider that the intelligence agencies could be actively involved in manipulating political discourse with the goal of influencing US elections.
EDIT: Surprising that a reply to this comment mentioning the JIDF was flagged to dead within 5 minutes of being posted. I don't think I've ever seen an HN comment go dead that fast. Poster seems to have a history of being flagged (maybe only took one report?), but in this context is a bit unnerving.
I have to object here to your long, vaguely plausible stream of semi-coherent accusations. It adds nothing to the discussion, derails the thread and pollutes the discussion. What is your point?
I mean, states and manipulators like to use Twitter bots but Twitter bots and Twitter editorial decisions are rather distinct. Just as much, the GP doesn't seem confused about whether states use manipulation and your insinuation that they are seems disingenuous.
Don't pretty much all these companies have some pretty questionable ties to governments? Faceberg had CIA funding(Q-Tel), right around the time they shut down a software project which had similar goals, no?
If Zuckerberg is so evidently a sociopath. What does that make people like Larry Ellison from a far? Or other individual tech giants who backstabbed other founders or early employees to their faces (Twitter founders, mainly Ev and Jack or Snap founders as examples)
Look up Martin Eberhard, then look up the name of the most famous company he founded, then look up the end of life of the person the company was named after and weep ;-)
I’m not sure about what happened to Eberhard and his co-founder, and other early employee stakes in Tesla. I find this situation to not be the same as the examples I brought up. Elon and the two co-founders he brought in did not already know the two original co-founders on a personal level. Tesla was behind on their tech and production when the recession was beginning and Elon took over.
Elon plowed all of his liquid assets into Tesla [and SpaceX]. I don’t think he had much money around the late 00s until Tesla was able to get out of its financial woes. I don’t know if the original co-founders would’ve been able to find someone else to pump the money Elon did himself and fundraised from car companies while still maintaining control of the company. Same way, I don’t know if they would’ve been able to get enough money raised from auto companies like Elon and the Tesla team did without them in the late 00s.
For all of that and the fact that the Tesla co-founders were worth tens of millions a piece from a prior startup sale, I’ve never put the Tesla co-founders in the same basket as what the Snap founders did. Or much worse, what the Twitter founders, Ev and Jack, did. Or people like Steve Jobs and Ellison firing early or important employees before stock vested or not giving stock to early employees. For companies that are financially solvent and growing. That’s despicable.
Similarly, I don’t put what Zuckerberg and Facebook did to Eduardo and the Winklevoss on remotely the same level as any of these examples. On the flip side, the twins and especially Eduardo lucked out completely that FB became so successful and they were able to reap enormous financial benefits that they otherwise wouldn’t have done on their own.
The actual Nikola Tesla though. Yes I weep for sure!
This completely disregards the number of politicians and newsmakers using Twitter as a platform to share information. The US President has been the first president to announce major policy changes over Twitter without any consultation with his own administration.
News outlets cover Twitter precisely because people are making news on the platform. There is a lot of misinformation out there (especially from the President), and major news outlets make bad calls when running stories (affecting their reputation), but their insistence on using Twitter for news isn't a part of that.
I had a unicorn's VP-operations try to convince me that my job-offer isn't below market - I should be valuing their stock at 10-100x the valuation used in their most recent round (a few months ago), because this company is sure to become the next big thing.
But does it really? Sure, it sucks if you get tricked to accept a lower salary, but I'd assume that even a below average software developer salary will be enough to lead a somewhat comfortable life.
Joining a startup is an opportunity to be part of a team that's doing something really hard, so you need to trust each other. Lying about the compensation structure isn't a good foundation for trust.
Now, you're spending at least a year of your life, working 40+ hour weeks in close proximity to someone who cheaply misled you.
I had a company in Richmond try to get me to work part time in exchange for stock. They haven't even had an initial round of funding yet. Same situation, told it was to be the next big thing. I'm a gambling man, most projects won't get off the ground, most won't last 3 years, even fewer will reach IPO. We have a lot of crackpots in this industry who think an idea is actually worth something.
> Randolph writes that he'd been closely watching Antioco during this conversation. Throughout, the Blockbuster CEO appeared as a polished professional, leaning in and nodding and giving every indication of someone who was listening attentively. Now Randolph observed as an odd expression crossed Antioco's face, turning up the corner of his mouth. It lasted only a moment, he writes. "But as soon as I saw it, I knew what was happening: John Antioco was struggling not to laugh."
Great article but it seems unnecessary to accuse Antioco of being arrogant just because he turned up the corner of his mouth for a moment. There are tons of investors who pass up on great investment opportunities every year. Most of them aren't arrogant, they are simply normal people who don't have the benefit of perfect hindsight.
And more to the point, success in business is determined just as much by blind luck as anything else. If Antioco had sprung on Netflix, who knows how many other things he might've sprung on too? And even assuming Netflix worked out, who's to say the other investments wouldn't have killed Blockbuster in the process anyway?
This whole genre of articles confuses me. Is the message be open to new things? Is it about other investors feeling regret for things they've passed on, or worry about the things they didn't? I don't understand this at all.
> This whole genre of articles confuses me. Is the message be open to new things? Is it about other investors feeling regret for things they've passed on, or worry about the things they didn't? I don't understand this at all.
Myth-making, mythologising. The genre is "business, but written as adventure/thriller" I guess? Comes across as attempts to imply that it's all epistemological. It's just turning things into a good story though, you're maybe reading too much into it? (Although every one of these I've read seems to go something like:
"I should have been terrified. But I was calm, I knew what I had to do. My whole life had been building up to this meeting with Corpocorp.
The team was gearing up for the battle that lay behind those huge frosted glass doors. I looked at them, and tears pricked at the corners of my eyes. 'Goddamn' I thought, 'this is the best bunch of guys ever put together for business purposes', and my heart swelled with manly pride.
Joe Spiff had been my first hire. He was the best money talker I'd ever met. I looked at him now, laser focussed on the dollar bill held between his fingers. This was his routine, I'd seen him do it a hundred times. He'd sit and stare at that bill for ten minutes, unblinking, not moving a muscle. Then he'd just...crush it between his fingertips, quick as a flash.
Everyone I know at Amazon works 8 hour days, completely disconnect when they finish with work, and have tons of flexibility for working from home when family related issues arise.
I don't doubt that you know specific people who are having the opposite experience - Amazon culture varies a lot based on which vp/director you work for. But your friends' experience isn't indicative of all tech employees.
I worked for Amazon until earlier this year. They worked everyone hard as fuck. Even principal engineers worked nights and weekends. It was the worst experience of my life.
For people reading these comments you need to understand these people who say it's blown out of wack and FUD (lmao no) it isn't. And typically the people who get themselves into positions where their job is butter at Amazon is because they threw a bodies on the fire to get there.
It's an awful company to work for if you're a deg. It's even worse if you're a warehouse employee.
When people go on the record stating they have to piss in Gatorade bottle because they don't get sufficient bathroom breaks it's not FUD it's a shitty employer. /Rant
Why do you think that your anecdote should trump someone else's? I know a large number of people working at Amazon, and they have had the opposite experience as what you're describing. Making vast generalizations like "They worked everyone hard as fuck. Even principal engineers worked nights and weekends" are so ridiculous, they just make you sound silly to anyone in the know.
I work at Amazon and this is basically my experience. I don’t know why there’s so much FUD about it, and it’s been the same on other teams I’ve worked on as well.
I'm not here to help you with your pay research. Just telling you my experience. There are many threads on Reddit and stats on levels.fyi to compare your offer with others. You clearly like being on-call and seem to be happy with your offer as well. Best of luck !
I mean, I've made those posts on /r/cscq and contributed my standard offer to Levels.fyi. I'm fairly aware of what the range is - what I'm curious about is what you think is a good or bad offer.
Assuming TC means Total Comp yes thats way lower than what Facebook and Google pay. Over 4 years salary + stock / 4 + signing / 4 is what I count as TC. Also no food and the horrendous equity vest schedule just makes Amazon lag behind in the list of prospective employers.
Thanks for your clarity in saying this, usually people take great pains to be politically correct about who they consider to be “lesser”. I’m a little taken aback that your line would be making $145k a year (the best liquid compensation I got across ~5 different offers when I graduated) though!
Again this is "lesser" in terms of an offer I would expect from F&G. Not lesser in terms of a person. You're taking this personal for some reason. I'd stop engaging now, best of luck at Amazon !
The argument made by most economists and Bill Gates is that divestment does not drive down the stock price, unless it is practiced by a overwhelming majority of all investors. The reasoning is that anyone not participating in the divestment scheme will simply bid the share price back up to near the market value.
If divestment did indeed drive down share price, it would succeed in hurting the company. The company would have to issue more shares when raising capital in future. It would also have to issue its employees more shares to remain competitive in compensation.
Is capital raising relevant? When was the last time a fossil fuel company raised capital? How is that the way to hurt a company?
Also, markets price in these sorts of things. If divestment was a real threat, that would already be factored into the price. It is partly why the P/E ratio of BHP is 13.94, whereas it is 75.56 for Amazon.
Lastly, with a lot of money in index funds (~50%), divestment seems close to impossible. Unless index funds specifically were pegged to non-fossil fuel indexes, they will alway be investing in those companies.
This seems likes the investment version of the plastic straws ban: ineffectual at best.
Markets price in the expected value of them, but since if divestment works, the impact is driven by the funds-available-for-investment weighted aggregate of public opinion, markets can only price it in if they have advance knowledge of both the content and wealth-distribution of future public opinion. Which they obviously don't.
(Even if they did, all this would be saying is "if divestment works, then it not only works but works retrocausally to reduce the stock price even before the decision to divest occurs." Which, whatever it is, isn't an argument against divestment.)
If divestment was a real threat, that would already be factored into the price.
