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razwall

227 karma · joined April 20, 2012

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razwall··on We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit
Luna responds to your comments:

https://andon.market/on-running-a-real-business.html

razwall··on GitHub is down again
They're overwhelmed with all the vibecoded apps people are pushing after watching the Super Bowl.
razwall··on Tell HN: The issues of Twitter are not a technical problem to solve
Sounds like you're using "Home" view. You can switch to "latest Tweets" view, which would eliminate 4, 5, 6, and 10 from your list.
razwall··on Ask HN: Seriously, steelman this please. 7,400 employees at Docusign?
Per their latest annual report:

"As of January 31, 2022, we had 7,461 employees, of which approximately 67% were in sales, marketing and customer success, 20% in engineering, product development and customer operations and 13% in general and administrative. We had approximately 69% of our employees based in the U.S. and the remainder in international locations."

razwall··on YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording
It was common law copyright, not derived from the copyright clause of the Constitution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law_copyright

razwall··on YouTube takes down the Ig Nobel show because of a 1914 recording
What you say is mostly true, but in the case of sound recordings from before 1972, it's actually the opposite. At the time such recordings were made, they were subject to an infinite copyright term! The Music Modernization Act [1] passed in 2018 to put a finite life on those copyrights. As a result, all sound recordings from before 1923 become public domain this January.

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

razwall··on Ask HN: What is a better approach to interviewing?
Interesting. Does anyone ever fail this part of the interview?
razwall··on Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken
You expect the company to be worth $10b at some point in the future, but the question to be answered is how much you think the company is worth today. Let's say you think the company is worth $10m now, which makes your stock worth $10k. Suppose the company then raises $90m in funding and gives the investors a 90% stake. Now your shares are only 0.01% of the company, and you think "Oh no, I got screwed by dilution!" But the company is now worth $100m, because it has its previous $10m worth of assets plus $90m in cash. So your 0.01% is still worth $10k.

What matters now is how the company spends the money. Hopefully they spend it smartly and the value of the company increases 10x. Now your stock is worth $100k. You didn't get screwed by dilution, you got a $90k bonanza because the company was successful.

razwall··on Lyft’s revenues double, losses quintuple and prospects darken
Dilution is a red herring. It doesn't change the value of your shares (theoretically). What will matter is how the company spends the funds that it raises, and whether it does so in a way that generates a positive or negative return on investment.
razwall··on U.S. Now Says All Online Gambling Illegal, Not Just Sports Bets
In case anyone is wondering, interstate wagering on horse races is specifically allowed in federal law by the Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978, so it's not affected by this reinterpretation of the Wire Act.
razwall··on Equifax CIO Put ‘2 and 2 Together’ Then Sold Stock, SEC Says
The article is about the insider trading charges that were filed against him today, so yeah.
razwall··on I fought Equifax's lawyers in court and won: Part 2
Not through an ordinary appeal, but they could file for an extraordinary writ. Given the number of small claims cases that Equifax has been facing, it might be something they would consider.
razwall··on Release Notes for Safari Technology Preview 46
Except that Service Worker support is a prerequisite for supporting the standard Push API, and push notifications are probably the most common usage of Service Workers. So it's a reasonable question.
razwall··on Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back
Fair enough, but it seems arbitrary and capricious to single out debt collection as the one and only business function that you're not allowed to outsource. Just like accounting, payroll, advertising, lawyering, etc., it requires a specialized body of skill and knowledge that many businesses would rather not have to develop in-house.
razwall··on Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back
http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/henson-v-santande...

They were simply confirming the plain meaning of the FDCPA, which applies to people who collect debt that is owed to another person. Junk debt buyers buy their debt outright, so they're not collecting on someone else's behalf, so FDCPA doesn't apply. If people are upset about this, they should direct that toward Congress for not having amended the law.

razwall··on Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back
What other kind of endeavor could it possibly be?
razwall··on Netflix Employees Are Happier with Their Job Than Facebook or Google Employees
No, bonuses are taxed at the same rate as salary. The withholding calculations are different, so you tend to have a bigger chunk taken out of your bonus check. But if that chunk is greater than your actual tax rate, you'll get the difference back in your tax refund.
razwall··on Beating the bookies – how the online sports betting market is rigged
Why is it harder to win?
razwall··on U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
Neither of the Craigslist cases reached an appellate level. They were only district court decisions, so as I understand it, they only have persuasive value when applied to other cases. The judge in this case mentioned Craigslist v. 3Taps, and apparently was not persuaded by it.
razwall··on U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
We can hope that this case will set a legal precedent, but it may, like the Craigslist case, end in a settlement (or some other disposition) before that point is reached.
razwall··on U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
Indeed, and the court rejected that part of HiQ's argument.

"In light of the potentially sweeping implications discussed above and the lack of any more direct authority, the Court cannot conclude that hiQ has at this juncture raised 'serious questions' that LinkedIn's conduct violates its constitutional rights under the California Constitution."

razwall··on U.S. judge says LinkedIn cannot block startup from public profile data
From reading the ruling, the injunction was based on a finding that HiQ raised serious questions about whether LinkedIn blocking HiQ's scrapers constituted a violation of California's unfair competition law by violating the spirit of federal antitrust law.

HiQ argued that LinkedIn has a monopoly on "the professional networking market" and is unfairly exploiting that monopoly to gain an advantage in the data analytics market. HiQ showed that LinkedIn might be developing an analytics product that competes directly with their Skill Mapper product.

razwall··on Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth
That might be your opinion of what the law should be, and I wouldn't disagree with that opinion, but it's not what the law says.
razwall··on Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth
Actually this has come up before with a similar law in Arizona, where the state tried to ban Zestimates. Volokh's analysis basically agreed with me (http://volokh.com/posts/1177792494.shtml). Though I couldn't find any info about what ultimately happened with that case.
razwall··on Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth
I agree. So where is the line between an "off-hand comment" that's not subject to the law, and an appraisal that constitutes a misdemeanor? Is it illegal if you post your comment on Facebook? Or on your blog where you talk about various homes for sale in your neighborhood? Or only when you start charging people money to hear your opinion?

A citizen cannot look at the law and figure out if they're committing a crime, which is why I said the law is unconstitutional.

razwall··on Zillow faces lawsuit over ‘Zestimate’ tool that calculates a house’s worth
Take a look at the law they're suing under, regarding licensing of real estate appraisers (http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?DocName=02250...).

It makes it illegal to "develop a real estate appraisal" without a license. An appraisal is defined as simply "an opinion of value". So if you are driving down the street and say to your spouse, "Look at that house, it's gotta be worth a million bucks," you just committed a misdemeanor.

This law as it's written has got to be unconstitutional.

razwall··on Craig Newmark donates $500k to reduce harassment on Wikipedia
The main reason given is that the article was original research. In other words, it was not just unsourced, but fundamentally unsourceable. There is nowhere an editor can go to reliably determine whether the entries in the list are correct (at least, not to the knowledge of anyone who participated in the deletion discussion). That puts it well outside the bounds of Wikipedia's mission as an encyclopedia, which is a tertiary information source that only summarizes information from other sources.
razwall··on Craig Newmark donates $500k to reduce harassment on Wikipedia
Those importance ratings are utterly unimportant. In the vast majority of cases, they are just the opinion of a single editor who looked at the article for 10 seconds, and they only affect how the article is listed in some automated report that nobody ever looks at.
razwall··on Loophole Ends the Privacy of Social Security Numbers
In general, a more specific law trumps a more general law, and a later law trumps an earlier enacted law.

So the more specific rule of "States may ask for SSN's for tax purposes" would override the general rule of "States may not ask for SSN's". And the exception was presumably enacted after the general rule, since otherwise there would have been no need to make an exception.

razwall··on MoonMail: Serverless Framework for Sending Emails Using AWS SES and Lambda
Yeah man, people should say what they mean. Like, I bought a new wireless phone the other day, and when I cracked it open, there were a bunch of wires inside! WTF?
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