Comment by 29athrowaway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 29athrowaway | Hacker News Reader

It seems the MBAs are at it again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4

Twilio is now another Xerox.

MBA programs should be illegal. You can thank MBAs for spreading PFAS everywhere, single use plastic, profiteering from insulin, making every American a diabetic by adding sugar into everything, selling glyphosate for residential use, killing all the pollinators, moving all manufacturing to countries with no environmental laws, and other consumer and planet-fucking initiatives.

The number of extinct species, diabetic patients, number of employees on minimum wage with no health insurance, policitian revenue from lobbying activities, dead bees, cut trees, lost topsoil, former Roundup users with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, revenue from weapons, atmospheric temperature increase, ocean acidity, plastic waste, pollution, every form of ecocide and every other measure of things going wrong is directly proportional to the number of MBAs.

Why? because if shareholder value is everything, then the employee, the environment and society at large becomes irrelevant.

Alright fine. Twilio has largely saturated the communications space. You can now send an API request for a phone call, SMS message, and WhatsApp notification in a lot of countries.

If you were calling the shots, what would your next growth move be? What should Twilio expand into?

Not spam-calling elderly people and causing them to fall and die could be a good start.

Source?

Your comments in this thread seem to me to be heavily laden with the cognitive distortion of catastrophizing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion#Magnifica...

> Catastrophizing – Giving greater weight to the worst possible outcome, however unlikely, or experiencing a situation as unbearable or impossible when it is just uncomfortable.

---

Hopefully it goes without saying that talking about elderly people falling and dying due to a supposed spam text originating from Twilio is...a bit farfetched...

My grandpa had a pulse-dialing phone (aka rotary dialing) and he was strongly against learning how to use a different type of phone. I tried to have him use a cordless phone but he strongly refused.

So each time the phone rang the guy had to stand up, then slowly walk to the phone and answer. He did fall a few times as he got older.

That was not his cause of death but I can imagine that if you call enough people for long enough as those robocallers do it is not hard to imagine it happening kind of often. A lot of older people have no idea how to use a smartphone and new technology is particularly hostile to them (small fonts by default, complex menus, tech jargon, etc.)

As robocalls became more frequent he was really pissed off at the situation.

Just call your grandparents and ask them what they think of robocalls.

> If you were calling the shots, what would your next growth move be?

In biology, tissue that keeps growing indefinitely is lethal to the organism.

> selling glyphosate for residential use

What's wrong with glyphosate?

There's a lot that can go wrong when unqualified and untrained people are given a powerful pesticide for residential use.

Can you list some of that "wrong", since there's a lot of it?

Read the safety data sheet, see what precautions are needed and then ask an average residential roundup user if they care at all about following those instructions.

The precautions for glyphosate are basically "don't drink that". My dishwasher detergent has sterner warnings. Heck, Tide pods are just as dangerous.

That's because the principal "danger" of glyphosate formulations comes from surfactants.

Pure glyphosate by itself is pretty benign.

Then you didn't read the SDS.

Here's an MSDS for glyphosate: https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/agrian-cg-fs1-production/...

* No more than slightly toxic and no significant adverse health effects are expected to develop if a small amount (less than a mouthful) is swallowed.

* May be slightly irritating to the skin.

Here's an MSDS for dishwashing liquid: https://hesco.ca/pdf/msds/J429%20MSDS_E-5%20%20DISH%20MACHIN... When working with it, you're supposed to:

* Wear appropriate protective equipment.

* Wear protective clothing as necessary to prevent skin contact.

* Chemical goggles. Wear a face shield if splashing hazards exists.

* Repeat or prolonged exposure may cause damage to lungs.

* Harmful if swallowed. Causes burns to mouth, throat and stomach.

* Corrosive to skin. Causes severe burns.

* Corrosive to eyes. Causes severe burns.

This is the one sold to residential consumers, and the one used by most lawn care companies.

https://labelsds.com/images/user_uploads/Roundup%20Pro%20Con...

"Remove soiled clothing immediately and clean thoroughly before using again. Wash thoroughly and put on clean clothing. Keep working clothes separately. Garments that cannot be cleaned must be destroyed (burnt)."

"Chemical-resistant gloves (barrier laminate, butyl rubber, nitrile rubber or Viton) Wash gloves when contaminated. Dispose of when contaminated inside, when perforated or when contamination on the outside cannot be removed. Wash hands frequently and always before eating, drinking, smoking or using the toilet."

"Use tightly sealed goggles and face protection."

"Wear long-sleeved shirt and long pants and shoes plus socks"

No residential user cares about any of this.

MSDS in general are crap. They require wearing full PPE to work with table salt (not kidding, see: https://www.intrepidpotash.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Mo... ). Manufacturers use them to cover their asses.

Glyphosate is a true victim of post-truth society. It has not been shown to cause any harm in multiple well-controlled experiments, yet a jury in San Francisco (no brains allowed there) found Monsanto liable for a cancer that they attributed to glyphosate use. Because Monsanto is bad and does GM food which is bad for you because glyphosate causes cancer.

And now "everybody knows" that glyphosate is somehow bad.

The toxicology section of the MSDS with actual information is great, though:

  SECTION 11: TOXICOLOGICAL INFORMATION
  Eye Causes moderate eye irritation.
  Skin May cause slight irritation.
  Ingestion Not expected to produce significant adverse effects when
  recommended use instructions are followed.
  Inhalation Not expected to produce significant adverse effects when
  recommended use instructions are followed.
  Information on toxicological effects
  Acute oral toxicity LD50 (Rat) > 5,000 mg/kg
  Acute dermal toxicity LD50 (Rat) > 5,000 mg/kg  No deaths
  Skin corrosion/irritation Slight irritant effect - does not require labelling.

Basically, they have not managed to cause dermal toxicity even after slathering rats in glyphosate. Yet you must burn clothes if glyphosate gets on them.

Here's an overview from NIH: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5515989/

MSDS are crap but HN comments are truthful.

What's next? The earth is a flat disk?

> MSDS are crap but HN comments are truthful

I see you have never worked in chemistry. The total BS of MSDS is very well known.

Here's a piece from Derek Lowe: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/uselessness-msds

> What's next? The earth is a flat disk?

If you believe in MSDS, then you probably think that the Earth lies on the back of a turtle.

Italian here.

I HOPE this a sarcasm filled question.

Nope. Glyphosate is the most maligned compound. "Everyone knows" that it's "bad", but nobody actually knows why.

I know the "proof" is scarce (as seen here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5515989/), but frankly I'm in the "overzealously cautious" camp when it comes to food safety.

It's not even about food. The thread here is about glyphosate for household applications. I guess you might be growing food at home, but that's probably pretty rare.

Preach.

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