logicalmonster

> But if you could buy a brand-new car here for $11,400 (the approximate list price for a BYD Seagull in China), I think many people would figure out a way to live with the fact that it's electric.

Besides largely handwaving away all of the infrastructure questions, I think this article might be built on a couple of mistaken premises.

1) I believe that China's EV market is heavily subsidized by their government as noted in some of the comments in the article. If China is willing to heavily subsidize US consumers buying cars, I'd be rather surprised.

2) I could be wrong on this as I'm not an expert in automotive regulations in China and the US. But a car that's made for the Chinese market might not necessarily pass US safety regulations without extensive and expensive changes.

There are simulation games that have extremely complicated and extensive UIs for taking various actions and analyzing in-game data. One good thing that some of them do is give tooltips and explanations when you hover over the button/graph/table/section/panel you're working with. Done smartly, I think this can be a great approach for managing very complicated systems.

Does that come before or after any reasonable human contact through the course of a respectful process?

A 2 hour take-home as 1 step of a fair hiring process isn't too bad.

But you applying and then automatically getting a homework assignment would feel pretty crappy.

Sorry for any confusion. About that Photography YouTuber link, he has one YouTube channel, and he uses that one channel to pump out a ton of videos about a few main topics: namely various Philosophy + Metaphysics stuff, Photography, and Physics/Magnetism. Some of that stuff might not be everybody's cup of tea, but he's an interesting guy.

But he really does have some great reviews on photography stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/@kathodosdotcom/search?query=lightin... https://www.youtube.com/@kathodosdotcom/search?query=fuji https://www.youtube.com/@kathodosdotcom/search?query=nikon https://www.youtube.com/@kathodosdotcom/search?query=lens

As an investor in crypto, I feel very confident that I am getting what I'm paying for. The basic facts about a coin or token, like how many are supposed to exist, are completely verifiable on some sort of public blockchain. That is the safest possible system.

In contrast, the stock market is a total mystery box as to even how many shares are even being traded with all of the tomfoolery with shares being borrowed and sold short, dark pools, and lots of crazy things that you'd need a decade in finance to even begin to understand.

For a limited amount of thorough science-fiction reviews with a heavy focus on Star Trek, I enjoy reading https://www.jammersreviews.com/

For general movie reviews, I am thoroughly entertained by https://www.youtube.com/@TheCriticalDrinker

For audio equipment, it's good for an initial first impression from https://www.youtube.com/@ZReviews

For photography equipment (particularly Fuji stuff), there's no reviewer I trust more than https://www.youtube.com/@kathodosdotcom

For reviews of sex toys, I prefer asking your mother. Just kidding.

That said, you pretty much have to listen to a few reviews from somebody and figure out if they think about things in a way that you can really appreciate, even if you disagree with them about some stuff. I've disagreed with all of these reviewers about different products and things, but almost always appreciated their perspective being based on something real.

> Ah yes, the last 30 odd years of increasing immigration has exerted tremendous downward pressure on US tech salaries.

I'm not 100% sure, so I have to ask. Are you being sarcastic about immigration not exerting tremendous downward pressure on US tech salaries?

> subjecting disabled people to more investigation is not OK

We all feel sympathy for poor disabled people who have a harder lot in life than most. But investigating a poor disabled person for fraud is only really a problem if the investigation is malicious, biased, unfair, disrupts their life, presumes their guilt, etc. How are these investigations actually run? Are they run fairly or not? That's what I'm really curious about.

So personally, I think you're conflating 2 different things. Simply a basic check for fraud in and of itself is a separate thing from a malicious investigation that's run horribly.

PS: Let's not forget that many poor people pay various kinds of taxes. Being a wise steward of their tax dollars and trying to fight fraud is not in and of itself anti-poor disabled people.

Maybe we can just agree to disagree, but I'm not seeing how looking into the possibility of welfare fraud, so long as it's done in a fair and reasonable manner, isn't a good intention.

> This system targets these people

Let's keep in mind that this algorithm isn't in and of itself punishing people. It's just the starting point for a human-led investigation. Isn't that a proper application of technology?

My bigger concern is that any human-led investigation is fair and reasonable and doesn't go hog-wild trying to punish people for minor misunderstandings of the rules and policies that are in place. (Somebody in this thread said that the rules just for how housing allowances can be used are like 80 pages long, so it's probably the case that it's pretty much impossible for any random citizen to know all of these rules)

> other types of fraud which are a larger source of fraud in terms of lost money

Surely you're not suggesting that welfare fraud shouldn't be investigated so long as say Military-Industrial-Complex fraud or Big-Pharma fraud is even greater?

Anybody notice that all of the word choices in the headline make this sound particularly dark and ominous?

Wouldn't a more accurate headline be something like "Here is the math behind how France's fraud detection system works"?

> the model targets vulnerable making mistakes in claiming benefits rather rather than actual fraud

Please keep in mind that this algorithm doesn't actually punish anybody for wrongdoing, it's just a starting point for a human-led investigation.

Personally, I'd be more interested to know how a human-led investigation works. Is the process fair and reasonable? Do they go after poor people for minor problems with their following of the rules or do they go after them harshly? Is there a presumption of innocence and do they have an opportunity to appeal and have a fair shake in arguing their case?

Contact this YC startup posing as an employer doing a background check and see firsthand what they'll say about if you're so concerned.

1) Is this a government program or some kind of industry effort? It seems like there's some Council involvement, but it's a little unclear about if industry or government is running this thing.

2) Are there payment options available in this system with cash? While digital payments are often convenient, it should still be possible to use a nation's legal tender.

3) If this is some kind of centralized system, how is user data provided to law enforcement? The cynic in me thinks that some kind of system like this would enable law enforcement to too easily go fishing and cast a very wide net for anybody parking in a particular area.

I'm all for "green shipping" and using technologies like sails or electric boats to do things more efficiently.

I'm just wondering why "manufacturing more things locally" isn't really discussed more. Doing something like growing cotton in America, shipping it to China, and then shipping shirts back to America seems a lot more wasteful than just using cotton to manufacture stuff here.

> So saying “I oppose this ideology” comes across as “I oppose the existence of people who aren’t their assigned at birth gender”, given that those people do exist you can see how people might find your statement offensive.

I'd very kindly like to offer an alternative explanation than your interpretation.

People who don't want their kids exposed to this ideology don't necessarily want trans people to not exist, they might just not want that outcome to be more likely for their own child.

You can support the rights of people to do whatever they want with their own bodies and still think it's one of the least optimal life decision one can make.

With respect, I think your take on this particular matter sounds awful.

Negotiation and persuasion are very important parts of being a wise leader in technical and creative fields, but it sounds like OP followed exactly what you advocated to no effect.

None of us were in the room with OP and know both sides of the story, but it sounds like he gave them 2 months of the very kind persuasion and negotiation that you're advocating, and the employees persisted as willfully insubordinate and not following the processes that their boss wanted to enact.

Do you keep negotiating for another 2 months? 2 years? Or do you have to make a choice at some point that people aren't even attempting to try and learn the processes you were hired to implement?

First you said "You don't need a car to have a family in NYC" and now you're talking about "the vast majority of people". Which is it? Your thesis is changing.

How do you know everybody's needs?

Some people do need a car for work, healthcare, education, living with disabilities, or many other reasons not mentioned.

1) I'm not cancelling the Sphere. I'm just telling you I don't like Dolan but still like the Sphere and think it's worth seeing. That point of view is pretty close to the opposite of cancelling somebody.

2) As far as criticizing people, maybe a reasonable rule of thumb is that if you're either in public office or wealthy enough to have "fuck you money", you're a reasonable target of receiving public comments on your behavior?

I despise giving an endorsement to anything Dolan is associated with and can profit from as he is an awful and genuinely petty human, but the Sphere is a technology worth seeing.

I wasn't super impressed with the sphere's screen when I went in there with the thing turned off and saw the very steep stairs to the seats. It initially looked like a bigger movie screen.

But once it's on, with the right shot, it completely envelops your field of view and is quite mesmerizing. I'd love to see some action movies specifically shot for that screen. The way that it wraps around you and can potentially show you a full field of view in front of you and to the sides would be quite exciting for a chase or combat sequence for a movie.

Good for you if you never need a car, but other people need cars for work and family needs. What do you propose that they do?

There's always a cost and a tradeoff. The real question might not be choosing rats or no rats, but choosing between rats or parking. As far as I understand the proposed solution, the containerization proposed would take up somewhere in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 parking spots in NYC.

I can understand the legitimate concerns about sustainability (who knows if those wells are going to be maintained and in service a year or two from now) but some of the criticism of these charitable actions is truly bizarre and disturbing. And I'm saying this as somebody who's not a fan of MrBeast at well.

> Have responsive customer service. Some potential chargebacks can be prevented simply by being very accessible. Analyze your UX to see that customers have everything they need to understand how to get in touch with you easily in all emails. Even so, some percentage of customers will just do a chargeback and never contact you.

> Make sure to include your service name in the bill. Some chargebacks happen because a company operates off of a website like "example.com" but then does the credit card billing through "ABC Jones Incorporated". It's very easy to forget a service if you see the wrong thing on your credit card statement.

> This might be a little off-putting to some potential customers, but if part of your business involves having a live video chat with them, it seems like there might be a way to get fairly convincing proof that they used it somewhere in the process of a call. Even so, you'll lose some percentage of chargebacks just because credit cards generally side with their own customers.

> Your business caters to people who are looking for work and are probably a little financially desperate and can't afford an immediate hit to their wallet. Understand that this might mean more chargebacks than normal, partially out of desperation. And consider if this is an opportunity in disguise: maybe you can offer a free service but then figure out a way to get paid more once they are employed?

> Consider if offering payment through some unchargebackable options such as crypto might be feasible.

I'm glad it's legal to film, particularly when you want to protect yourself when reporting a crime and you fear police reprisal for some reason.

However, I can see some truly asshole-ish behavior resulting from this if the influencers get wind of this decision and they decide to use it to make content. Imagine some Instagrammer gawking at a crime victim on the worst day of their life as they go to the police for help and they sit there smugly saying "It's legal, fr fr bruh, no cap. on god".

EDIT: IDGAF, just curious, why the downvotes?

A few short points, all of which are personal opinions.

> Inflation is a commonly misinterpreted phenomena. What is happening shouldn't be thought of as "prices are going up" but should be seen through a lens of "the value of the currency goes down". This is why a nickel used to buy a candy bar, but a nickel can't buy you anything today. The currency (and your savings) is "inflated to worthlessness" (stolen, some might say) by politicians looking to buy votes.

> Overall prices are unlikely to go down (that would require deflation, which mainstream Keynesians greatly dislike and work against), but the rate of price increase might go back to more normal/palatable levels sometime in the next couple of years as that is the current goal of fiscal policy to work to reduce inflation and why interest rates are high. As to how we get there, I have my doubts about really reducing inflation in an environment of money printing without experiencing a true economic depression. The most realistic best case scenario if current policy is followed might be a multi-year period of no big economic crash, but this current malaise persisting for an uncomfortably long time. Some people argue that a harsh, but swift correction, might be the best overall thing for the economy in the long run, but of course no political party would ever be willing to think along these lines.

> Certain prices like oil/gas and food (because fertilizer and fuel are big parts of the cost of food) may go down in the future, but that would be more about supply/demand changing than the currency and inflation. Personally, I think increasing world tensions, as well as a lot of environmentalist hostility to oil/gas exploration/transportation/refinement has a lot to do with the spike in a lot of prices. And so long as unrealistic environmentalists and people with certain foreign policy beliefs that are not conducive to peace are running the show, there's nothing about this supply issue that might dramatically change in the short term, particularly with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve already tapped.

IANAL or board member or anything of the sort, and I would refrain from arguing with his personal political opinions just because there's no winner in arguing politics with him, but it might be prudent to have a little discussion about avoiding politically charged topics when in a position to publicly represent the company.

Tell your board members to do what other famous people do when they want to vent and shitpost on Twitter: create an anonymous burner account and have fun going buck wild with no trace back to you.

> Wikipedia should be a tree of various interpretations

I don't disagree, but this doesn't seem to be remotely compatible with Wikipedia's ostensible mission. Anything hinting of a "point of view" (or that an editor can justify as being a POV) gets swiftly shut down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About

> What is written is more important than who writes it. The content must conform with Wikipedia's policies, including being verifiable by published sources. Editors' opinions, beliefs, personal experiences, unreviewed research, libelous material, and copyright violations will not remain. Wikipedia's software allows easy reversal of errors, and experienced editors watch and patrol bad edits.

> Are you going to die practicing?

Probably not, but it's bullshit in the sense that solving leetcode problems on the fly is not typical day-to-day programming work in ~99.9% of jobs. And even when creating a complex algorithm is a part of a job, it's usually for a big project that's the core of some business problem that you will have a considerably longer amount of time to research, think about, test different solutions, and implement than the space of video coding interview.

Would you hire a divorce lawyer by testing them about the intricacies of Constitutional law? Would you hire a heart surgeon by quizzing them on the complications of laser eye surgery? Would you hire a civil engineer to build bridges that support trucks and trains by asking them to solve some underwater pressure equation involving submarines?

> Is this going to make you a worse developer?

In a certain sense, yes, because there's an opportunity cost to every human activity. If you spend 500 solid hours of intense effort grinding out leetcode solutions, that's 500 hours you don't get to put into practical stuff you might use on a day to day basis: learning about servers and web services, deployment, different software architectures, databases, design patterns, security, accessibility, etc.

> There is like literally 3-5 patterns that you can compose together to solve most of the problems.

This is somewhat misleading to me.

You can learn some of the common elements of solutions like trying to break up a problem into smaller parts, using a hash table, sorting an array, recursion, or other common elements to leetcode style solutions. But solving a type of problem you haven't seen before in the span of a video interview is pretty much a crapshoot, particularly when you have somebody just staring at you and typical problem-solving approaches you would take like doing Internet research or trying to diagram a solution out on paper are probably out of the window.