alpos

My understanding is that they own some properties and rent others on long term contracts. Therefore, WeWork lives off the arbitrage between long term and short term obligations so it's basically a REIT. Most REITs are highly leveraged and almost entirely debt funded. I think it's actually weird that they have VC and try to act like a tech startup.

There is no new technology in WeWork and there are no legal ways to create or corner markets in real estate; people have been trying for millennia. Unless they have a highly scalable revenue stream hidden somewhere, we can expect that their valuation will, at best, grow on a similar curve to other REITs.

If I owned their equity, it would be because I got it super cheap and expected them to start paying a dividend sometime soon.

I would not own their debt except through a broad based ETF. It's really hard to make long term profits on junk bonds except by playing the law of averages.

There's a gambler's case to be made for almost any new debt issue.

It's really just a matter of sorting out where the notes one is considering are in the pecking order and estimating the probability of the issuer going bankrupt to put reasonable bounds on expected return of principle if they fail. A similar estimate can then be made on the probability of default or restructuring for the notes under consideration.

Given that information and a big enough coupon, a quarter-Kelly or half-Kelly bet may not be unreasonable.

At this point there are too many unknowns to make that case however. We'll have to see what coupon they decide on and enumerate the things that could knock them out or severely limit their free cash flow.

To your quote from the CEO, it's not a great way to market debt issues tbh. WeWork really isn't any different from any other REIT and one does not lend a REIT money because they are great people.

I know that feel :)

It's just as bad in any discussion of graphics techniques, operating system features, and again in security approaches/features. Migrating to devops and security spaces has been like a conceptual "Groundhog Day".

I'm starting to think our industry is actually not so innovative and fast moving as we all like to say it is. It may be that software is merely a new engineering field and new fields begin with a wave of invention followed by reflections of reiteration as boundaries are found and concepts get refined.

> it's something you don't find much these days

This is approach is available with all of the JVM languages too. Putting that with what others have noted about the CLR, C, and LISP implementations, this may be more common than rare.

https://zeroturnaround.com/rebellabs/reloading_java_classes_...

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/2018.1/debugger-hotswap....

It may not be so much the case the people are being uncharitable as that there really isn't much that is new or unique in software.

For my own part, I have hit that wall so many times that I now begin with the assumption "if I can imagine how it might work, someone has probably already done it".

That is actually nice in the sense that I nearly always have a starting foundation when solving problems these days but also frustrating to the point of cynicism when discoveries or inventions I put a lot of time in to turn out to be minor variations on something 1k+ people already knew about.

>programmers with little experience in a domain...write software to solve problems in that domain and iterate...Disruption!

I don't think that will change much until the overwhelming demand for more software is mostly met with a sufficient number of properly trained Software Engineers. At that point we should start seeing real competition on the quality of the solutions. (and a move towards professional licensing)

It seems likely that the first civil engineers saw a similar pattern. When you have a creek to cross and no one around is qualified to design a bridge, someone gives it a shot anyway. If it collapses they try to build a better one (iterate). Hopefully this can be accomplished without killing anyone.

Now that the world has a decent number of properly trained Civil Engineers though, we don't need to wing it most of the time; especially for the big, consequential projects.

>In choosing between learning Haskell or learning 3d programming...

This is a false dichotomy: https://wiki.haskell.org/Game_Development

As the linked response from Rich Hickey pointed out, you can do anything in any (Turing complete) language.

I agree with the notion behind your decision to focus on real results though. I think that is actually closer to the mastery part of the progression from beginner to master. I think when one can deeply realize that programming is just a tool to achieve other things, then one is leaning towards the mastery end of the scale.

That's not a hard rule though, I think part of the problem we all have discussing this sort of thing is that we have a hard time consistently measuring where a person is on that progression.

Microservices + Chat Ops

Neat! I didn't know you found a way to revenue share with users. "Make money off of your own browsing", that's a really cool hook.

Have you all considered an option to have Brave mine coins and split those proceeds? That could be an even better form of the experiment Salon.com is running.

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/60862/salon-offers-users-cryp...

>we need to continually to develop novel ones

That hits pretty close to what I think I am seeing here.

There are a few assumptions built in to Eroom's "law" which I think we have learned to avoid when looking at Moore's "law".

One is that we will not come up with an alternate or more effective way to address the problems drugs are currently addressing. Another is that we will not come up with a drastically cheaper or more effective way to invent new novel drugs. Still another is that we will not invent a drastically cheaper or more effective way to verify a drug's usefulness and safety.

With Moore's observation, I think people have learned to assume that any observable slow down will be corrected by the invention of some previously unimaginable technique or other machine that will keep things on track. (nothing really makes this have to be true, but we seem to think of it that way)

Similarly, any number of future inventions could completely reverse Eroom's observation.

As we get better at editing genomes, making nanomachines, and increasing the resolution of 3d printers, previously impossible techniques may suddenly make it easy to invent novel drugs, address the same issues without drugs, or change the game in any number of other hard-to-predict ways.

Given these increasingly plausible possibilities, I am inclined to see Eroom's "law" as the mere observation of a relatively short lived trend in human history.

I agree on all points. I merely wish to point out that the proper term for these is "strong trends" not "scientific law".

Scientific laws typically do support a tendency or trend in effect but the accurate description of a present trend is not sufficient to call the observation a "law". To consider that upgrade we need universality and persistence.

The fact that we know Moore's "law" and Eroom's "law" must both stop working at some point in the relatively near future means that they both fail this test.

Salon.com's new experiment is a great example. https://www.tweaktown.com/news/60862/salon-offers-users-cryp...

It's brilliant, most people probably won't care about the extra workload as long as it doesn't make their computer "slow down" or get too noisy and it realigns the content providers incentives from "collect more/better data and pack in as many ads as possible" to just "keep people on the site as long as possible". The cost is also just the price of electricity which, while not totally trivial, is cheap enough for this to work and something people are already paying for.

I found it intriguing enough that I actually let them have a go at it rather than disabling Javascript (my usual response to ad-blocker-blockers). So far it works "as advertised", the only way I notice is through the system monitoring I have on my desktop.

I get it, just trying to provide ammunition for you. :D

The reality may be that there is a decent amount of brain power to go around but I can easily agree that any brain power spent of ads would have been better used if such a money printer were not allowed to exist.

With that, I can see the continued existence of advertising work as something that ultimately removes more value from the economy that it creates.

Good catch, I had to correct that bit upon re-reading. What I am truly aiming at is the quality of universality (applicability throughout time and space) that these observations lack.

With gravity we see a principle which, when mathematically described in sufficient detail, is consistent throughout space and time. What we know of it, we know only due to the observations we can make locally and in our timeline thus far; however, even with such a limited view, we can already see that gravity very likely is as it has always been and is the same throughout the universe. This is certainly not true of neither Moore's law nor Eroom's law.

As much as I'd like to avoid criticizing "moore's law", this is a good example of why we shouldn't be using the term unless the effect described is a properly scientific description of a universal truth.

Both of these statements are mere observations of trends (short term ones in the grand scheme of things). Nothing about the trends observed in "eroom's law" must hold true in the future and, similarly, nothing about the trends observed in "moore's law" must remain true in the future.

There are no causal links behind either of these "laws", nothing to make them universally applicable throughout time. Indeed, both are stated as functions of time with an implied start date. These qualities make both mere observations of trends rather than proper scientific laws.

In the case of Moore's "law" the implied outcome seems optimistic and I think that is why we have so far given a pass on calling it a "law". In the case of Eroom's "law" the implied outcome is much more pessimistic so I am betting that we'll be unlikely to want to recognize it. However, if we accept Moore's observation as a "law", we'll have a hard time pointing to a distinction that prevents Eroom's observation from being a "law".

In my opinion, the right answer is to stop implying that either of these observations are inevitable or representative of a truth about the universe. Then we can properly recognize that both trends are easily subject to disruption through hard work and breakthroughs in related fields, or the lack thereof.

Possibly irrelevant correlation: This is pattern is also observed in graphics techniques and programming styles. Yet, the incremental quantitative advances continue to accumulate to become qualitative differences.

Surely you do not assume that Tesla had done no testing at all before selling these things.

I forewent commenting on their pre-market testing because I assumed that flokie already knew that the cars and ML models they use had been extensively tested on tracks and in simulation before the first Tesla was allowed on California roads. And they would have be complete idiots had they not done such testing, no investors would have funded that. Reactions like flokie's were completely predictable the moment driver assistance techniques were thought of. The only acceptable response a company can have to such criticism is "we have tested this extensively and it is safer than driving manually".

Market forces aside, no car drives on roads in any US state without extensive testing and certification. All of the companies testing self-driving technology had to get special permits to do so.

Even just a reading of their actual statements offers some insight in to the amount of testing and data collection they are still doing. https://www.tesla.com/blog/what-we-know-about-last-weeks-acc... https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-week%E2%80%99s-accide...

I agree that it is a psychological difference but our behavior as a society suggests a recognition that the machine and it's makers have a role in whether or not people die in cars. This is why we demand safer cars and sue car makers when their designs failed or did not meet our expectations in protecting the occupants.

I can agree with the notion that the machine killed the person in all cases where the the machine does not include any controls for the person.

As a society, we currently recognize that the causes of accidents and the probability of occupant death are dependent on multiple factors, one of which is the car and it's safety features (or lack there of). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision#Causes

We also already have a significant level of automation in almost all cars, yet we are rarely tempted to say that having cruise-control, automatic transmissions, electronic throttle control, or computer controlled fuel injection means we are not in control and therefore the machine is totally at fault in every accident.

Operating a car was much harder to get right before these things existed and the difference can still be observed in comparison to small aircraft operations. Then and now we still blame some accidents on "driver/pilot error" while others are blamed on "engine failure", "structural failure", or "environmental factors".

I think having steering assistance or even true autopilot will not change this. In airplanes, the pilots have to know when and how to use an autopilot if the plane has one. If the pilot switches on the autopilot and it tries to crash the plane, the pilot is expected to override and re-program it, failure to do so would be considered pilot error. Similarly, drivers will have to know when and how to use cruse-control/steering-assist and should be expected to override it when it doesn't do the right thing.

Cancer research needs brain power. Of course, brain power costs money. However, funding cancer brain power by transferring brain power out of cancer seems like a broken window fallacy.

I think the part they miss has been the ease with which people can establish awareness of the major market players once they have a need. If anything ads are more useful for small/new companies than the big ones that currently drive all the pressure for targeting.

I have severely limited my exposure to ads for a few years now. No regular TV / streaming only, ad-blockers + disabled javascript by default, no daily commute. With all of that I am almost certainly on the low end of the "brand awareness" scale.

Even still, I just do a regular internet or maps search and I am suddenly aware of all the major market players for whatever I am after. In this sense, getting me to buy your product is more a matter of location and market share than the location or targeting of your ads.

I'm sure a lot of people currently operate this way and there's really nothing stopping everyone on earth from operating this way. With that in mind, I don't think it makes sense for ad studies to assume the information needs to be forced into my head or the product won't have a chance.

All laws are problematic like this. That is why we have courts, judges, and juries to sort of specific applications.

However, for the purpose of establishing a rule, this really is straight forward if we don't mince words.

The author of the article pretty clearly wants to eliminate the incentive for invasive data collection so the ad forms to be banned are the ones that require invasive data collection in order to be of value.

The precise selectors that enable Facebook's ad platform to target ads at specific types of people and provide feedback on who saw what ad are the ones to be banned. Ads placed on Facebook group pages and which do not track which specific users saw which ads, would not be banned because those are targeting a digital location rather than people who have specific characteristics.

Similarly, there is no reason to say of a given billboard "that is regionally targeted, let's ban that too" if the billboard is not currently capable of conducting eye gaze tracking on every passerby and matching car occupants to their license plate numbers and building a profile on where those people travel every day for the purpose of showing similar ads along their routes. Any billboard that could do such things, should also be banned.

The Brave browser case would probably be borderline but so long as it is not providing feedback to the ads in the form of "this person-id saw your ad-id because they previously looked at x, y, and z" then it's probably fine. If they start sharing the data they collect "locally" then that, too, should be banned. However, if they were to prompt the users with something like "would you like to submit feedback on this ad to the advertiser", that would of course be acceptable.

I think of it this way: Most car manufacturers are releasing their products on the public year after year, knowing full well that a decent percentage of people that drive away from the dealership will be killed by the thing they just bought.

Tesla is merely trying to take the next step in reducing that percentage.

Their strategy is sound and we so far have not come up with any alternatives that stand a remote chance of improving safety as much as self-driving. Even if they are largely unsuccessful, they are indeed trying to ensure the safety of the public.

How should one deploy such a product at all? Actual usage is really the only way anyone will know if the models are trained appropriately to handle most/all situations they will encounter in the real world.

This seems like you are being argumentative for no good reason. You may have misread the above post.

It seems to me that jacobolus was not defending vaping but merely wondering if we're all being a bit over-reactive at this point.

That position is not so much comparable to your referenced four-dog-defense as it is to something like "you've got a better chance of being killed by a lightening bolt than killed in a terrorist attack".

And that is a valid point to make when discussing any issue involving risk. Humans are prone to reacting to perceived risks without considering comparative risks factors. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/11/perceived_ris...

An "infection" in this case would be the execution of some other person's code on my computer. Browsers have been designed specifically to do this since Javascript was invented.

The only difference between malware and "regular-ware" is whether the code meets certain user expectations about what it will and will not do.

I think the point would not be to crash the market. The point would be to use the unregulated market to harvest money from people who don't know better.

This happens all the time even in well regulated markets. Whether it's tricky fund rules, hidden fee structures, selling bogus investment strategies, ponzi schemes, market manipulation, front running, or simply choosing a trading strategy that plays off of other trading strategies, if there is a way to separate the pigs and sheep from their money, someone will try it.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/wall-stre...

They spent a year and a half on this fairly obvious thing only to conclude nothing new here and offer no useful advice beyond common best practices.

Are they going to waste the next year on how Twitter, Facebook, etc. can be used by criminals?

Not really feeling sold on this.

It's called "Mastering PostgreSQL" but the site reads like it's trying to convince beginner programmers that SQL iteself is useful.

Even the case made here: http://tapoueh.org/blog/2017/11/mastering-postgresql-in-appl... seems like it would only be convincing to someone who has never had to write much SQL and also has not already had to do a pattern like that in an API call.

Best not to sneak an email collection scheme in on people even if it really is only for your newsletter. Most people have more than enough spam in their inbox already, if someone wants to get updates it's very easy for them to just click a button that says "Click here to get updates".

Universities, like most other schools in general, maintain huge block-lists and heuristic filters for things like piracy, porn, malware, and anything else they deem to be unacceptable uses of their networks.

On top of the network censorship, most schools and libraries also engage in or are pressured to engage in censoring books and other print material for the same reasons. http://www.pfaw.org/report/schools-and-censorship-banned-boo...

Kind of ironic that the official forefront of education is also the foremost consumer of censorship tools but I think the concerned parents are still winning on this one.

Actually, the more I think about this, the more it seems like this could be a good open-source project.

The idea would be to translate everything on Sci-Hub from PDF to MediaWiki and convert all of the references to links. That could be tough, probably loaded with edge cases. If it works though, not only would Sci-Hub be hosting all the papers but this site could make them all easy to find/navigate. Seems like it'd be super fun to go spelunking through a network of related science papers in a similar way to diving Wikipedia.

As an open-source project, it would also be possible for anyone to re-host the site in case it gets blocked.