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aslkdjaslkdj

108 karma · joined April 22, 2017

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aslkdjaslkdj··on MoviePass has changed people’s moviegoing habits
It's a quote from the CEO of AMC from their recent investor call.

"Fast forward to today, in March and April, MoviePass paid AMC $12.02 per ticket on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of tickets each month, hundreds of thousands of their subscribers came through AMC theaters to enjoy our product. They did so at a frequency of 2.62 times in March and 2.75 times in April. Now, I took the calculator out and I multiplied 2.75 times $12.02, and I got to a number that was considerably larger than 995. So just as we were hearing that -- the MoviePass price point was unsustainable in August, we have the same questions today. And apparently we’re not alone in that view. Our doubts are now shared and articulated by MoviePass's orders."

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4170917-amc-entertainment-h...

aslkdjaslkdj··on Guccifer 2.0 Slipped Up and Revealed He Was a Russian Intelligence Officer
The Clinton boogie man at it again eh?
aslkdjaslkdj··on YouTube Will ‘Frustrate’ Some Users with Ads So They Pay for Music
Wanting to do targeting for the specific user makes that really hard. They would have to do real-time transcoding of the ad into the video. Makes more sense to transcode the video once at upload then dynamically insert just the ad.
aslkdjaslkdj··on Suspending Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group from Facebook
Story from March 2017 about this:

https://theintercept.com/2017/03/30/facebook-failed-to-prote...

>In late 2015, the turkers began reporting that the Global Science Research survey had abruptly shut down. The Guardian had published a report that exposed exactly who the turkers were working for. Their data was being collected by Aleksandr Kogan, a young lecturer at Cambridge University. Kogan founded Global Science Research in 2014, after the university’s psychology department refused to allow him to use its own pool of data for commercial purposes. The data collection that Kogan undertook independent of the university was done on behalf of a military contractor called Strategic Communication Laboratories, or SCL. The company’s election division claims to use “data-driven messaging” as part of “delivering electoral success.”

>Shortly after The Guardian published its 2015 article, Facebook contacted Global Science Research and requested that it delete the data it had taken from Facebook users. Facebook’s policies give Facebook the right to delete data gathered by any app deemed to be “negatively impacting the Platform.” The company believes that Kogan and SCL complied with the request, which was made during the Republican primary, before Cambridge Analytica switched over from Ted Cruz’s campaign to Donald Trump’s. It remains unclear what was ultimately done with the Facebook data, or whether any models or algorithms derived from it wound up being used by the Trump campaign.

>In public, Facebook continues to maintain that whatever happened during the run-up to the election was business as usual. “Our investigation to date has not uncovered anything that suggests wrongdoing,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Intercept.

>Facebook appears not to have considered Global Science Research’s data collection to have been a serious ethical lapse. Joseph Chancellor, Kogan’s main collaborator on the SCL project and a former co-owner of Global Science Research, is now employed by Facebook Research. “The work that he did previously has no bearing on the work that he does at Facebook,” a Facebook spokesperson told The Intercept.

aslkdjaslkdj··on Flight Sim Company Embeds Malware to Steal Pirates’ Passwords
The EU study does not say what the pro-piracy crowd wants it to say.

The study only looks out the count of games and not the dollar amount spent. A non-pirate who buys a $60 game and all the DLC and microtransactions is counted the same as a pirate who buys one $0.99 steam sale game. It does say that sales for blockbuster movies are heavily impacted by piracy.

aslkdjaslkdj··on 2018 Stellar roadmap
A company is valued in terms of the currency in it's stock exchange. A company in US has it's market cap in USD and a Japanese company has it's market cap in JPY. If you want to calculate the market cap in USD for a Japenese company, you have to use an exchange rate.

Now since cryptos are currencies themselves, it makes no sense of talking about a market cap. The market cap of stellar is the number of stellar available.

The market cap of a real currency like USD is the money supply. The money supply has probably a couple dozen different definitions depending on how you want to look at it and the fungibility of different representation of money. (Eg does it really make sense to consider burned bitcoin or satoshi's supposedly "never moving" bitcoin as part of the "money supply")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply#United_States

There is a reason forex market economists/analysts don't talk about the "market cap" of the Japanese Yen or market cap of the British pound.

There is also the whole intrinsic value of a company part. People buy stock because they believe the company is worth more than other people do. They (except for minor exceptions in the case of small investors) judge the companies future ability to generate profits and cash to decide on whether the buy or sell the stock. People buy crypto on pure speculation that other people will buy crypto in the future.

aslkdjaslkdj··on Inside Amazon Go
They are testing that in Seattle as well.

https://www.amazon.com/afx/nc/aboutpickup

aslkdjaslkdj··on Peter Thiel Is Exploring the Creation of a Conservative Cable News Network
Do you have an example of a biased news piece from the NYT? (Not their editorial section or op-ed section).
aslkdjaslkdj··on Linux page table isolation is not needed on AMD processors
That's not true. Changing a stock sale plan in any way is considered insider trading. The window has nothing to do with whether it's legal or not. It's only used a risk mitigation and is up to company policy.

https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2013/02/05/rule-10b5-1-plans...

aslkdjaslkdj··on India’s IT industry laid off more than 56k employees this year
Their main national sport (cricket) is really only played in handful of countries. And in those countries (AU/NZ) soccer is still more popular.
aslkdjaslkdj··on Blink has been acquired by Amazon
That was over 3 years after they purchased Twitch. Brightscript and the Roku SDK aren't easy to work with.
aslkdjaslkdj··on Goldman Sachs Is Setting Up a Cryptocurrency Trading Desk
A simple trading desk does not create the kind risk that caused the financial crisis. The nature of the CDS/MBS contracts the bank owned in their name caused the counter-party risk. Buying and selling bitcoin on behalf of customers does not come with anywhere near the amount of risk as signing a CDS that says Goldman owes a pile money money if AIG defaults.
aslkdjaslkdj··on Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
What corrupt shit? What specific action did the DNC do that caused Bernie to lose?
aslkdjaslkdj··on Amazon now has a billion-dollar ad business
That is only part of Amazon's advertising business. If you read their 10-k:

"Vendor Agreements We have agreements with our vendors to receive funds for advertising services, cooperative marketing efforts, promotions, and volume rebates. We generally consider amounts received from vendors to be a reduction of the prices we pay for their goods, including property and equipment, or services, and therefore record those amounts as a reduction of the cost of inventory, cost of services, or cost of property and equipment"

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=97664&p=irol-sec...

aslkdjaslkdj··on Professors can’t stay silent about this extremist moment on campuses
This is a good summary of the entire situation without the emotion of an op-ed:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/11/reed-college-...

aslkdjaslkdj··on Tesla's mass firings spread to SolarCity
Because the stock price would drop and Tesla wants to do another round of funding (aka issue more stock) soon.
aslkdjaslkdj··on AMD Announces 307% Increase in Q3 Earnings
The several dozen people playing AAA games on linux must be thrilled.
aslkdjaslkdj··on AMD Announces 307% Increase in Q3 Earnings
Depends on the margin. Nvidia pulled out of gaming consoles due to the margin MS and Sony dictated. AMD was fine with fulfilling demand at almost any margin.
aslkdjaslkdj··on Tesla fires hundreds from headquarters, factory
Amazon and Google both do PIPs before firing low performing employees. That means several months (usually 6 or more) of pay and time to find a new job. It also means your employer isn't in the news with "Everyone who left in October is a low performer you shouldn't hire."
aslkdjaslkdj··on Simple Step-By-Step Guide on How to Buy into an ICO
How to lose your money to a stranger in 3 easy steps!
aslkdjaslkdj··on Can Anyone Beat Jeff Bezos?
Because their library gets smaller and smaller every year especially their library of non-Netflix produced content.
aslkdjaslkdj··on Justice Dept Files Suit Against Company for Not Hiring Americans
So I assume they'll also go after the Trump Organization then.

http://www.npr.org/2017/07/20/538387033/trumps-private-clubs...

aslkdjaslkdj··on The Equifax Chief Security Officer Received a BA and MFA in Music Composition
You mean she might have had to memorize a simple formula? Such "rock solid" mathematical chops.
aslkdjaslkdj··on The Equifax Chief Security Officer Received a BA and MFA in Music Composition
Math is not arithmetic. What are the odds she can prove basic theorems in undergrad math like rank-nullity or intermediate value?
aslkdjaslkdj··on Amazon is hiring the most MBAs in tech, and it’s not really close
His last sentence mostly. "project planning, reporting, managing expectations, coordinating teams and delivering on time. It's not terribly rewarding or creative work, but it's what MBAs can reliably produce."

Aka stakeholder and expectation management. The above sounds easy but requires a large number of "soft skills" to do well in a large organization.

aslkdjaslkdj··on Doomsday planning for less crazy folk
"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Eisenhower

The idea being that the process of planning makes you more easily able to react when everything goes to shit. Eg don't treat a plan like a recipe for success.

aslkdjaslkdj··on Intel Reveals Post-8th Gen. Core Architecture 10nm+ Ice Lake
Intel's are actual measurements. TSMC, GF, and samsung are all marketing bs.
aslkdjaslkdj··on How I wish Sundar Pichai had responded to James Damore's memo about diversity
Do you assume that the people who disagree with the memo don't have the capacity or will to read through a mere 10 pages? How patronizing can you be?
aslkdjaslkdj··on Cal State will no longer require math and English placement exams
If someone is studying computability or formal languages or algorithms or ML in a CS department, they don't really need to be programmers.
aslkdjaslkdj··on Disney acquires own streaming facilities, will pull Netflix content
CDN costs of serving HD movies at scale aren't trivial.
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