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rapht

477 karma · joined September 26, 2012

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rapht··on Stepping Down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation
You're right, it's not there. There's vague paragraph about some plans going forward, but nothing that says why she is actually leaving. -- a disappointment, considering this was my only motive for reading the article...
rapht··on I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?
^ This exactly!

"Peer-reviewed" by whom?...

rapht··on Parisian Accent in 1912
As a native French speaker, what most strikes me in this recording is actually the contrast between:

- the language level, which is very much higher than what you would get recording anyone on the street today, with fairly rich grammatical forms, and few of the now common shortcuts or mistakes - in a way, a more beautiful and educated French than you can find in most of today's France, the kind you'd find only in older traditional upper class families

- the accent itself, which has kind of a lower-social-status conotation;

- the guy pronouncing everything, who is neither in the highs nor in the lows of society, but a middle class small busines owner who presumably did not receive higher (nor probably even high school) education

Were I not an optimist, I'd say this unfortunately is a sad illustration of what has become of education and language in our country, and more generally the acceptance by our society of everything and anything under the pretext that everyone deserves a chance even when they don't match the level previously judged as the acceptable minimum.

rapht··on Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
The problem is that revenue growth per se does not make a company valuable - or actually, it does while you can convince someone else to buy under the assumption that said growth will deliver competitive profits.

Selling to Wall Street is the "final sell": once it's done, you need to convince that profits grow, not just revenues.

rapht··on Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
I actually switched to OneDrive when Dropbox changed their pricing a while ago. Microsoft's offering was way more competitive on both price (€100/yr for 5x1TB) and features (Office access and integration, etc.)
rapht··on Sustained, high-fidelity quantum teleportation
Thanks for all the explanations.

I have to say I am always at a loss when quantum physicists start talking about "measurement".

In the classical world, measuring means looking at a particular variable x in a system S at time t, S(t) and via some process specific to x (which we want to measure), Mx, obtain the value of Mx(S(t)).

In QM by contrast, it seems that measurement itself has an action upon the system so that measuring in fact means looking at some Mx(Z(S,t)) where you actually never know S but only some kind of end product Z that is believed to reflect S but is itself the result of an unknown operation on S that QM people call "collapse".

So you seek Mx(S) but in fact spend your time looking at Mx(Z(S)) and draw conclusions on S... but I have yet to hear anyone explain to me, physically what is Z, how it works, etc. Lots of statistics, but no real understanding of that "collapse" process.

rapht··on No Cookie for You
The problem with cookie banners is not their intrusive ubiquity: it's that they keep going against the spirit of the law, which was to make any "non essential" (whatever that means) data collection opt-in.

If that were functioning, whereby the two buttons presented to you were a "Continue without cookies" and "I want to opt in", the annoyance would be worth it. But as it stands, most sites just _pretend_ their tracking is opt-in through an "I agree" button, with "I don't agree" generally leading to a mess of check boxes in front of partners the general public has no idea about.

I do hope regulators end up cracking on this...

rapht··on Slack wanted to stay independent, but was unable to compete with tech giants
I absolutely do not buy into the idea that "poor Slack" failed to "overcome giants" and that any harm was actually done.

$27bn is actually successful for a company that's just a few years old.

The competition that was stirred during those years ended up with Microsoft developing what is now a good product for 80% of use cases, with integration with tools (Office) that 80% of companies use, and all those companies benefitting from it did not have to shell out a single additional penny.

From the eyes of consumers, I would call it a success of competition rather than a failure. Sure, it has now run its course, but making $27bn out of it is not what I would call a bitter end - the dream of independence aside. But that's a for few individuals to dream about...

rapht··on "Equal pay for equal work" in remote jobs
^ This exactly. The market will actually tend to equal pay for equal work: this has already happened in numerous industries in the form of layoffs of people in one expensive location to be replaced by people doing the same work in less expensive locations, until people doing the actual same work, including notably dealing with the same kind of constraints, roughly have the same pay whenever/wherever possible. There are of course a lot of variables in what makes company consider that 2 people do "the same job": sometimes, a company will value a certain proximity of a team, which you could interpret as considering someone further away from where the team is based cannot actually do "the same job". Either way, there is no reason why geographically-independent jobs should not end up aligning to some global, geographically-independent wage... and as always, this will not benefit those who are highest-paid doing said job...
rapht··on Conservatives flock to Parler, claiming censorship on Facebook and Twitter
From the article: "Once you start fact-checking content, you introduce bias."

As a European, I just stopped and wonder in what world America lives.

rapht··on The public has a right to know how companies that pay no taxes pull it off
Tax loopholes (and tax lawyers) exist only because there is sufficient complexity in the tax system/tax code.

This is because the tax system actually has 2 conflicting uses: (i) collect revenue for the gov't and (ii) create incentives/disincentives that are meant to push taxpayers in ways that are deemed beneficial, be it to the economy or to certain policy like environment, housing, etc.

If you drop (ii) you can end up with an extremely simple tax code as most of the tax code complexities deal with those incentives/disincentives.

So the question is: to what extent can you do away with (ii), or more generally with tax code complexity?

rapht··on The public has a right to know how companies that pay no taxes pull it off
The flaw is simple: you'll end up with only having as criminal defence attorneys those people who didn't succeed at being civil case attorneys, as everyone will prefer to earn more money with mostly the same training. So you won't have any outstanding criminal defence attorneys, which is equivalent to undermining the rights of those of need to defend themselves in criminal cases.

If you want to go this way, you have to go for the full-fledged solution: either the defendant choses their attorney (at a capped price) or an attorney shall be selected at random among all attorneys registered with the bar and must take charge of the case, the only exception being if they have a valid conflict of interest in that case.

rapht··on Don’t pay for 95% (2016)
Even setting aside the fact that the article is only really applicable if you live in a metropolitan environment where any asset-as-a-service is available on short notice, there's still this one problem: what price do you put on convenience?

If you don't own that 95%-unused asset, then either you'll always end up paying the highest price for the equivalent service because you need it now, and this quickly becomes un-economical, or you have to plan everything ahead, at all times. The difference is just the convenience of a readily available asset.

rapht··on Apple Terminates Epic Games' Developer Account
I have yet to find a compelling anti trust argument.

- if anti-trust is about consumer protection (kind of a European perspective), there's no basis. You buy an Apple device knowing full well that the only apps allowed on that device are vetted by Apple. That's hardly new. The rules have not changed. Few exceptions have been made, and I bet those few have been framed by the best lawyers there are to avoid any possible contamination. So there's no new event or situation that has consumers losing.

- if anti-trust is about protecting against market manipulation : no one forces any one to be on the App Store. The rules have not changed. Few exceptions etc. Apple does have sole control of the iPhone apps "market" but is that truly a market in the sense of competition law? The fact that it's called "App Store" should not obscure the fact that Apple could as well have decided to provide only their own Apple-branded apps, and develop themselves all of the apps they make available to iPhone users. Instead they chose to let third-parties provide apps under a restrictive set of conditions that include the "tax". Would it be any different if they actually licensed the apps from developers for a fee and resell them on the App Store to end users?

rapht··on Why Johnny Won't Upgrade
^ This, exactly.
rapht··on How to Write in Plain English
I just fell in love with this list. I'm considering handing it to the very expensive consultants who make shiny presentations but tend to be very vague about how concepts get transformed into tangible things.
rapht··on Independence, autonomy, and too many small teams
> The post makes a good case for why it's a bad idea to split a business problem into slices.

Why it's a bad idea is indeed demonstrated. But why it happens in practice is not just to obey the "small team" mantra. It's also because as organizations and products mature, the law of diminishing returns kicks in: once easy gains have been made, achieving more gains requires tackling more complex problems - either because they are actually more complex in themselves, or because of the environment has become more complex.

> Even though you have multiple small teams, they still need to closely coordinate with each other.

> But I can't find the next post in the series which proposes a better alternative. Anyone else had better luck?

That complexity actually means that whatever the way you organize, you're going to have more people involved. That's when you need good managers - what I call a good manager is not only competent to manage their own team, they're also good at making their team play in a more global picture without necessarily having a boss telling them to do so.

rapht··on I Know What You Download on BitTorrent
> They are both bad for society

I challenge you to demonstrate that copyright infringement per se is bad for society. This would mean copyright is good for society which is still to be proven at least in it's current acception.

rapht··on Ennio Morricone has died
> He was for me the biggest composer of the second half of 20th century, which just happened to do music for films (also for some Italian pop music, but it was less prolific there).

My thought exactly. He actually made film music a genre by itself - even though I like to think of film music the other way round and tend to consider that it's actually the last refuge of well-written, and in that sense "classical", music. Come to think of it, it's actually film music that unifies the wildly different, highly creative, rich and thoughtful music from Glass to Legrand, from Vangelis to Morricone, from Sakamoto to Metheny.

rapht··on Mathematical marketing: a piece of calculus to change the way you advertise
How more convoluted can this explanation be? The question is equivalent to just "Find the maximum of nb_conversion × (cost_per_conversion - margin_per_conversion)", and the only interesting question is the relationship between the cost per conversion and the number of conversions, which is not a matter of math but of practical statistics.
rapht··on Thoughts On a Year of Exercise
I second that.

I can very much relate to the author's thoughts about the whole exercise routine, including a lack of general enjoyment of it, and when I set out to improve my body in the gym, I lasted a few months or so and gave up: too much time and effort and motivation and money needed at the same time for something so dull - and that was e few years ago and I stopped doing much exercise except for some week end walks and the like.

Now for a few months I have been commuting to work by bike, driven by the time gain vs car or subway, and I have to say even though it's a bit of an effort on rainy days, it's really a very good combination of low cost, low friction, useful in its own right, means of doing exercise.

rapht··on Verizon/Yahoo Blocking Attempts to Archive Yahoo Groups – Deletion: Dec. 14
I have trouble understanding how Yahoo's moves are GDPR-compliant : if just one European citizen was part of the group to be archived, at least some if not all data in the group can be considered part of their personal data (as they were either sender or recipient of messages) and therefore there should be a mechanism allowing them to download that data. Am I getting it wrong ?
rapht··on “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”
Agreed in principle, however from what I get :

(i) it seems this "non-ionizing radiation" has many parameters that can modify significantly the way it propagates in the environment (and in human bodies), so I'm not sure speaking of non-ionizing radiation in a general way is sufficient to address the problem

(ii) following this reasoning and your comment about "a single study, bulletproof and large": it does seem that it is in fact what is being asked by this group - that time be given for a meaningful and large study of the specific radiation from 5G tech

and therefore requiring that kind of large study before widespread implementation actually seems warranted.

rapht··on Major book publishers sue Amazon’s Audible over new speech-to-text feature
A company sells audio books and provides its consumers with an app that interprets the speech in the audio books on the fly back into text to show on the screen: publishers claim copyright infringement.

A company sells an app that, given speech in any form by a user, including any audio book format, interprets the speech on the fly back into text to show on the screen: what's the difference? what do publishers claim in that case?

Please, enlighten me.

rapht··on Privacy Sandbox – Open standards to enhance privacy on the web
I for one don't believe 100% privacy is even possible, and you've got to keep some kind of reality principle to decide what's "acceptable".

But anyway, as someone else said, I don't trust the fox to guard the hen house - even though again there's some kind of reality check that says if (one of) the most powerful actor starts doing something, there _will_ be some traction, so yeah, let's see concretely what it is about...

About the privacy budget: if I understand well, they want to count API calls that return device/environment-specific data, probably giving some set of weights to each of calls and stop accepting requests after a certain threshold. I'm a bit skeptical with that kind of complexity but why not.

rapht··on Privacy Sandbox – Open standards to enhance privacy on the web
I couldn't resist laughing out, just as I think if this guy Justin Schuh had been presenting this in-person at any non-adtech gathering, he would have been laughed out of the room.
rapht··on Tech Interview Handbook
I don't work in tech (though I sometimes think about uuyýjmq
rapht··on Cloudflare S-1
You actually have that option but there is a limit to how much you can delay - I'm not familiar with US regulation but in most jurisdictions I know about you could delay for max 3 months after your public submission (mostly due to the fact that you present quarterly numbers on the prospectus, which means you need to update it X days after closing the quarter).
rapht··on Madoff whistleblower Harry Markopolos calls GE a ‘bigger fraud than Enron’
This actually has got a name in treasury circles: it's called "reverse factoring". One of the very nice side effects is that when you're a big publicly traded company, you can generally afford to set up a dedicated entity to handle this business, which gets to be considered a financial entity by IFRS reporting standards, which (through a complex reasoning I won't bother you with) magically enhance your operating cash flow - one of the more important reporting metrics when you're not actually not a bank but e.g a retailer.
rapht··on What you may have heard about the dispute between UC and Elsevier
Everyone here who holds a grudge against Elsevier (and even those who don't yet) should have a look at the group which owns Elsevier (where it only represent a third of the profits). [1]

Truly, a fascinating business combination including science's rent seeker in chief Elsevier, a number of privacy-dubious services under the banner "Risk Analytics" - including for instance your insurer-imposed GPS car tracker, and a service dubbed "Active Insights" that "keeps track of changes in [client's] households" - and another nice looking rent seeker business, LexisNexis, which is if I understand correctly an Elsevier-like gatekeeper to law information and references.

[1] https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/re...

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