alehul

> dwindling user base

Even if Facebook is shrinking, I don't think WhatsApp and Instagram are, and who knows what other companies Facebook may be able to buy up rather than be overtaken by.

What part of Texas, and how has it been better?

As someone from the northeast, I'm intrigued!

> If my data is going to be used to develop drug royalties, I want a % cut.

For those saying this idea is unrealistic, I was at an accelerator in Cambridge a while back and met some folks working on a version of 23andMe that, in my opinion, mirrors what the Brave browser has done to ads.

You can opt into your data being aggregated, anonymized and used by pharmaceutical companies, and you'll be given a percentage of what they sell that data for (IIRC, it was north of 20% and below 50%).

As industries become more crowded and there's an increasing number of services for a consumer to choose from, these sort of arrangements will likely become more common.

Crimea only appears as Russian if you're viewing it from within Russia, which recognizes Crimea as part of Russia, not Ukraine.

If you're viewing Crimea from Ukraine, it will appear as Ukrainian, because Ukraine recognizes Crimea to be part of Ukraine.

That seems fair, doesn't it?

The board supported him being ousted as CEO [1].

He can have a seat at the table, but the table is largely comprised of people who wanted him out, and can continue to make decisions he disapproves of.

This isn't a case of Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Google, or Bill Gates at Microsoft, where the founder is well-respected, left of their own will, and still maintains an influence in a meaningful capacity.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-ceo/uber-ceo-travis-...

> Co-founders are supposed to have confidence in the business they built

The business they built and still either run or largely preside over, however Travis was ousted— I'm not sure he'd agree with their current direction as a result.

I've had this same thought about cloud storage.

I had an older family member ask me "are you sure it won't go anywhere?" while I was encouraging them to use cloud storage such as Dropbox or Google Drive rather than a flash drive.

While I had naively never given it that much thought before, I wasn't sure the answer was "yes"— specifically that, if Dropbox or Google Drive were to shut down, they would give users the opportunity to take their files out.

I tried searching through their ToS but couldn't find any guarantees.

> we also ensured that 99.9% of all pages viewed by our customers were to products that had never received a counterfeit notice of infringement

While this initially seems impressive (i.e. 1 in 1,000 products are fake), Amazon has a power-law distribution to its sales, and thus likely to its views [1] [2].

This means that, as long as the products on the left side of the power-law aren't counterfeit, this claim can be true.

As a result, if you venture into niche product spaces, beware that you're looking at much higher odds of a counterfeit.

[1] http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/2010.09_Brynjolfsso... [2] https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/marketplaces-power...

This wasn't meant to be a question of ethics, but one of incentives— let's view it from a standpoint of "will this ultimately be bad for society."

> Is it ethical not to look at a billboard when you're walking down the street?

This is fine, you're in a public space where somebody paid for an ad on nearby private property, and society wouldn't be worse off if everybody ignored billboards, advertisers were no longer willing to pay for billboards, and we got rid of the lot of them.

> Is it ethical to mute the TV when commercials come up?

This is fine, you paid for the TV and you pay for cable, and there will be no consequences to many people muting the TV during commercials.

If, however, you're given something for free that could be taken away, and it is able to be offered for free due to the business model of ads, taking this concept to its conclusion where everybody automatically skips over ads will make the free and open podcast system no longer viable.

Advertisers will no longer be willing to pay for ad space on podcasts, and the podcasters will have to move to charging per episode, or more likely, getting tiny royalties from a company like Spotify.

> I guess it wouldn't be unheard of for a conglomerate like LVMH to acquire, but I'm not sure there's enough traction to justify a scenario like that.

+1. Worked on a fashion startup a while back, and being early-stage we still did end up in a meeting with a C-level at LVMH.

They're open to hearing a lot of ideas, but the conversations quickly fell apart at realizing quite how early-stage we were— they generally want validation in the form of success in integrating your product with other fashion companies.

From what we learned, fashion is notoriously behind in tech, and it's a slow climb up the chain if you're B2B.

> Because Facebook hired climate change deniers as fact-checkers.

Source:

> Facebook has announced that it was teaming up with CheckYourFact.com, which is an offshoot of the anti-science media site, The Daily Caller

> The CheckYourFact website brags that: "Our mission is a non-partisan one. We're loyal to neither people nor parties — only the truth. And while the fact-checking industry continues to grow, there are still countless assertions that go unchecked. We exist to fill in the gaps."

Source's source:

> The Daily Caller, which has published misinformation about climate science for years, was co-founded by the science-denying Fox News host Tucker Carlson and is backed by major conservative donors, including Charles and David Koch, the billionaire fossil fuel barons who are the single biggest funders of climate science misinformation.

They use a source, which uses a source, which argues that CheckYourFact employees are climate change deniers because it's a spin-off of a site that was donated to by climate change deniers.

Looking at the evidence, one of the first links I saw on CheckYourFact's site was debunking a bad thing that Hillary supposedly said [1], which suggests it is not the same in agenda as The Daily Caller.

To the creator of this site: If you want this to have an impact, present the facts as-is, with no sensationalism or dramatization. Most of what you're writing very well may be true, and this seems like a noble cause, but if a reader can pick apart one questionable if not false statement, its legitimacy will be destroyed.

(If you're interested in a great piece on the importance of making claims conservatively and retaining legitimacy in reporting/writing, highly recommend checking out Spotlight, which chronicles the Boston Globe's exposure of the Catholic Church protecting pedophile priests).

[1] https://checkyourfact.com/2019/11/20/fact-check-hillary-clin...

This is actually 1.0 bad, apparently. :)

Each word added, "bitcoin", then "buy", then "now", drops the score lower until it hits 1.0 bad.

What are some?

Is there a definitive list of the largest industries in the world, when we think in an abstract sense (i.e. energy, transportation, communications)? Barring how challenging it would be to calculate, of course.

Or maybe a list that aims to encompass all major industries via abstraction? i.e. WhatsApp and Starlink could be layers in the “communications” bucket.

> The entire point of construction in space is to avoid launching from earth

This is true, but avoiding launching from earth could be done for one of two reasons:

(1) to increase the efficiency of what can be built

(2) to increase the possibility of what can be built

Your point is (1), and I agree with it. The point mentioned above is (2) — even if all the materials for the ISS were from earth, it still could not be constructed on earth and then launched as a whole, and so construction in space is viable.

Orbiting shipyards seems like a likely bet (assuming we want to explore and interact with space).

If we want giant, heavy spacecraft that are capable of interacting with their environment — the space equivalent of a construction vehicle or a tank — earth's high escape velocity makes it impossible to launch from.

We'd instead need to construct it in space, even if all the materials were from earth.

As the cost of launching from earth continues to fall, it'll also become increasingly economically feasible to launch multiple payloads to build a larger, more complex spacecraft.

(Think of the assembly of the ISS as a proof-of-concept here [1]).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_of_the_International_...

> Today, it shares the complex ‘just in time’ outsourcing and parts delivery model seen in the world of car manufacture. The drastic fall of Sterling, as well as the uncertainty over future trading arrangements with the European Union, have increased both present costs and future risks for the firm. This has made it increasingly hard to win contracts outside of the UK.

- low-valued GBP increases costs of parts from abroad

- uncertain trading agreements increases risk, likely increases costs higher

- uncertainty also decreases ability to win international contracts

Ditto here!

Spent over 1 year cruising through their free credits, now happily paying a couple hundred a month without a second thought.

It's really intuitive and easy-to-use to see errors, read text of emails, and so forth.

Side note: It's neat to see people come out of the woodwork on this thread for Postmark, which is normally one of those products consumed so quietly, and under-appreciated. I bet their team is really happy to see this. :)

Bankers can be financially driven, however, 'Central Bankers' [1] if you prefer that terminology, like those mentioned above, are generally not. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank

> Seriously, say I am building a company worth 100m on paper. You think if I marry someone she should be entitled to a large fraction of that? Why? Let’s assume she doesn’t do anything with the business. Say she was an accountant when we met and continues to be one after. Sure, she can’t tell me what mansion to buy, etc, but those are things to work out. Am I a guy to totally ignore her desires? If so, she shouldn’t marry me.

Alternatively, say you are building a company worth 100m on paper, and as a result, when she ends up pregnant with kids, you insist that she should work less hours, or maybe stop working altogether, in order to take care of them. (After all, you are busy building a company worth 100m on paper).

You don't think she is entitled to a large fraction of that? Why not?

Marriage isn't meant for you to protect your winnings from the Silicon Valley startup lottery; it's meant to allow for partnership, which includes earning your way in the world together and making choices together, to benefit the family, with security for both partners in the worst-case event of a divorce.

To play devil's advocate, part of the reason that this business model survives is because of how much better it is for the creator of the service.

Receiving a steady flow of income from those who use your product every month is a great proposition. Additionally, if you build a product useful to more people, your monthly income increases (it's recurring, as opposed to being cash-flow based).

On the user's side, the argument is twofold:

(1) there's increased competition. Economically, the switching cost is lower if you're paying each month— to make an analogy, it's easier to convince someone to lease a new car at the end of a lease than it is to convince someone to buy a new car when they have already bought a car. This allows a lot of new and impressive SaaS companies to grow like wildfire.

(2) there's more freedom of choice, because you're entering a relationship with a company only for a period in which it benefits you enough that you want to continue using it (and as mentioned above, there's ideally plenty of alternatives). This motivates companies to improve their offerings.

While it isn't perfect, I doubt amazing apps like Notion would exist if not for a subscription model. It just isn't worth it to make a perfect note-taking app otherwise.

> under a new treaty between the two countries

> The U.K. and the U.S. have agreed not to investigate each other’s citizens as part of the deal

Agreed. People often overestimate the value of truth.

While it's immensely valuable to have factual information and put that information to use, truth (or objectivity, we could say) is less important in one's mindset throughout life.

Take those who believed they were destined by God to succeed: they include Rockefeller, who developed pipelines to bring kerosene (and thus light) to the masses for cheaper, and even a favorite in the history of tech, Ada Lovelace.

The validity of their beliefs, or lack thereof, had no impact on their inspiration to pursue their goals or their ultimate successes.

Got it, thanks! Wish I could delete this now.

We're based in Boston and the whole office isn't able to get on Google.

Error: This site can’t be reached www.google.com’s server IP address could not be found. DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN

Edit: It's a DNS issue from our ISP. :(

While studies like this are valuable, it's important to always consider context around data; highly recommend this article that explains why we should be skeptical [1].

In this case, the data is given to Eurostat by EU member states, who presumably collect income data for the purpose of taxation. This can create an inherent issue, as nobody would overstate their income, but many people would understate their income.

As a result, the percentage of Europeans who can't afford a 1 week annual holiday is likely lower. "By how much" is hard to tell, but it would be interesting to see if there's any anonymous income data collected for non-taxation purposes, from which we may get more accurate answers.

[1] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-data-is-neve...

Across major payment processors and subscription management systems like Stripe and through most of the stack, integers are used to represent how much to charge in the smallest currency unit. [1]

With that said, it's better not to reinvent the wheel here and follow the flow, and it's also the safer option— it's better to charge a customer $10 when you meant to charge them $1000, than it is to charge them $1000 when you meant to charge them $10.

[1] https://stripe.com/docs/api/charges/object#charge_object-amo...

Bostonian born & raised, never heard spa. Feels like an obscure thing WGBH wrote about, and looking at the article, appears it's mostly historical now.

We do call our liquor stores "packies," though, which comes from package store. :)

On the idea of leisurely pursuits:

"I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain."

— John Adams

I’m trying to understand and make this analogous to what you were replying to:

The reasons for the act (racist or not) does not affect it being racism?

In the top-level comment, the issue was presumably Iranian citizenship (not descent), or, in other words, nationality.

> Export restriction rules “essentially deputize FedEx to police the contents of the millions of packages it ships daily even though doing so is a virtually impossible task, logistically, economically, and in many cases, legally,” it said in a filing.

Then don't export? Leave it to another company willing to take that risk and inconvenience, and price international shipping in accordance with that risk and inconvenience.