ryaniscool

In 2011, most of what the USPS delivered was junk mail[0] and it's only gotten worse[1]. Junk mailers pay less per item than first-class mailers (actual mail). The USPS operates at a multi-billion dollar loss every year. Intuitively, we're subsidizing junk mail.

If you get lots of important items 6 days a week via first-class mail then I can see you having the perspective of junk mail is actually subsidizing this important service.

However, my guess is that most people don't. This is based on my own lived personal experiences and those of the extended network of people in my social circle. It's not made in a vacuum. Therefore common sense is that we're subsidizing an errand of cleaning trash out of our mailboxes several times a week.

I get that people are sensitive to government services under the current political climate but there is no reason we couldn't cut back service to say 5 days a week instead of 6.

[0]https://stateimpact.npr.org/new-hampshire/2011/09/27/how-jun...

[1]https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/2062562/junk-mail

Yep, same here, and it's bizarre that people seem offended and are downvoting this comment.

The only reason I can this being downvoted is people see this as a political discussion. It really isn't. As people have turned to email and bills get delivered online, we're subsidizing junk mail in a sense because the USPS operates at a loss.

As I've already stated, the only point I was trying to make is that every stock compensation program is structured differently. This was in response to an article that tried to offer very specific financial advice. I've consistently advised to not follow random internet article's advice and speak to an attorney. Are you saying that is bad advice?

On the other hand, you seem hell-bent on winning a pointless argument about my own personal experiences. We both know it has nothing to do with bad financial advice since I've offered none except to speak to an attorney. Again, do you disagree with that advice?

Also, IANAL but my impression is that modern RSU's are a construct created by the legal community to get around and/or comply with the legalities of securities rules around employee compensation. There is not a singular approach on how they are structured. Your experiences may have been the result of lazy legal teams. I have no idea, but I don't doubt them.

My comments on my own experience were only relevant to my point of the OP should speak to a lawyer because every employee stock compensation plan is different. It feels like you are trying to discredit my personal experiences and I don't understand why. Do you not believe me or is your point that you know more about the topic than I do?

It's very much a grey area where you can't apply set of hard rules because each corp will do it a little differently. This is why OP needs to talk with a lawyer. I have four data points to your one over my career and I'm only counting the ones that ultimately paid out.

- Microsoft - straight straight stock award and options

- Atlassian - Pre-IPO straight stock options

- Company you never heard of 1 - RSU pseudo-options

- Company you never heard of 2 - RSU pseudo-options structured a little differently from company 1

Sure, but let's be real. Most people replying to my comment never knew it existed either. They're getting upset because the article is designed to elicit a reaction.

I'm sure the agency is doing some worthy and interesting things but will the average person notice their disappearance? My educated guess is probably not.

A better approach being "The press says we should be upset and afraid, therefore we should be" ?

Writing an alarmist piece on every little thing this administration does is the exact same thing that Fox did for the previous administration.

I can only speak from my experience but I've worked for two companies where the RSU's are structured as a pseudo-option.

Essentially, their price is set at FMV at the time of issuance. Since your net is zero at the time of issuance, you pay no taxes until there is a liquidity event and you can pay to cover.

Since this happened to me at two unrelated companies, I imagine it's a very common structure because it follows common sense and it works out great for everyone.

This is inaccurate. I'm not going to litigate it with you though. Google it. It's a common strategy for a company to perform an 83(b) election on your behalf when they grant you RSU's. This way, you don't have to pay taxes as the RSU's vest.

Also, typically, your shares do not just vest all at once. There is a cliff (typically a year) followed by monthly vesting. That's why the OP's situation doesn't make a lot of sense. They are former employees, therefore a liquidity event would not have triggered any type of vesting.

I think this illustrates perfectly why they should talk to a lawyer. I read through the link you posted. They don't mention anything about sec. 83(b) elections. It's a common strategy to avoid paying taxes until the RSU's are liquidated.

I know about it because my current employer structured the RSU's this way. Every ESOP and RSU plan I've ever participated in has been slightly different. Your link focuses on a very specific set of circumstances.

Half moat-building, half marketing. The need for "safety" implies some awesome power.

Don't get me wrong, they are impressive. I can see LLM's eventually enabling people to be 10x more productive in jobs that interact with a computer all day.

I'm gonna disagree and say that rocket debris from exploded launches is not "hilariously common" without some citation.

The case could be made that it's similar to other debris that washes up on most beaches every day though.

I feel like the author glosses over some nuance in the point he is trying to make and his conclusion doesn't incorporate the nuance.

The nuance is that even though AI researchers have learned this lesson, they are still building purpose built AIs because it's not possible to build an AI that can learn to do anything (i.e. AGI). Therefore, building on top of an existing AI model to meet a vertical market demand is not that crazy.

It's the same risk when building on any software platform. That is the provider of the platform may add the feature/app you are building as a free addition and your business becomes obsolete.

You're saying a human would also offer bullsh*t suggestions that seem right but are in fact wrong?

Humans who make lots of mistakes with confidence that they aren't mistakes usually get fired or steered into a position where they can do the least amount of damage.

It's not that AI needs more background info for this type of of thing. It needs the ability to iteratively check it's own work and make corrections. This is what humans do better.

What I want to know is how accurate was the comment? I've found AI to frequently suggest plausible changes. Like they use enough info and context to look like excellent suggestions on the surface but you realize with some digging it was so completely wrong.

Hasn't ad supported media been the model for like 100 years or longer? The retail cost of print newspapers was to cover the cost of delivery and pay the retailers.

Native Floridian here. In fact, I lived in this particular city for a few years.

In my opinion, the biggest challenge our waterways are facing is nitrogen and phosphate runoff from residential lawn fertilizer. As we bulldoze natural environments to build subdivisions, we're adding acres of pristine healthy looking lawns. I live in a coastal region. Depending on the type of grass, it's not possible to maintain a healthy lawn without adding some kind of fertilizer. This is because the soil is sandy and alkaline. Lawns generally want slightly acidic soil.

We want to be able to point the finger at large entities like municipal sewage treatment plants and large farms. That is easier than changing our own habits and expectations around what our yards should look like.

This is likely being blown way out of proportion. I'm not defending this behavior but the article listed exactly one example: Irish Wish. I'm sure it appeals to a certain audience but it's not what I, personally, would call peak cinema.

My guess is that this guidance was given to a specific writer or person in charge of a specific genre.

Came here to say this. I have a friend who is a manager for a defense contractor. He says that competition is fierce for people that already have clearance and they can't really hire someone to sponsor them because of how long it takes. There is a 2-3 year wait for obtaining security clearance because of a backlog caused by COVID.

The people that have it can write their own ticket and do very little work apparently.

It's excused because it's a piece of software and most people realize that. If you could carry on a conversation with a parrot at the zoo and it told you to kill yourself, would you laugh it off because let's face it, it's just a parrot or indignantly demand the zoo train the parrot better?

A real person has agency. They can see you, get to know you, contemplate your existence as well their own. Empathize with who you are, etc. And we do the same things in return.

This is why when a real person says something mean or hurtful, it matters to us. Or if they threaten us, they have a real body that can cause us harm so we get scared and call the police.

I feel like most people who get indignant about the latest AI rage bait story know all this but feel the need to protect the rest of the world from out of control AI. This is an elitist and patronizing attitude. Let people decide for themselves. As I said, children are a different story. They are impressionable and I can see them misunderstanding how this works.

You're assigning a persona to a piece of software that doesn't exist in the material world. It doesn't walk on two legs or drive a car or go to the grocery store or poop.

Everything it says is meaningless unless you assign meaning to it. Yes, I can see children thinking this is a real "being". Adults shouldn't have that excuse.

I see two weaknesses in this argument. First, you're assigning eventual superpower-like intelligence to these AI bots. I see this a lot and I feel like it's rooted in speculation based on pop-culture sci-fi AI tropes.

Second, restricting adult access to "dangerous ideas and information" is a slippery slope. The exercise of speech and press that the British considered to be treasonous preceded the American Revolution.

What's been productized is a software tool that can carry on a conversation like a human. Sometimes it's informative, funny, and creative. Other times it's ridiculous, mean, stupid, and other bad things. This seems like how people act in real life right?

I'm beginning to think that children should not be using it but adults should be able to decide for themselves.

Anesthesiology average salaries

US: $438k/yr Australia: $203k/yr UK: £112k/yr

That seems like a big difference to me.

This is a straw man argument. Yes they shouldn't deny a prescription if your doctor says you need it.

What I'm talking about is capping the costs of a supporting doctor for a surgical procedure. From my quick research, there is no significant cost basis for surgery running longer than planned besides the anesthesiologist's time. So the doctor would make $400k instead of $500k per year.

Here is some perspective. The anesthesiologist's bill for my wife's colonoscopy in 2023 was $2k. This is a routine procedure that takes less than an hour. Also, the place was just filled with patients and there was one guy handling them all.

Something to keep in mind is healthcare providers are the main drivers of healthcare costs. The insurance company was not going to tell the doctor how long to put you under only how much time they would pay for.

I don't think it's unreasonable to put a cap on the cost of one of highest paid healthcare specialties.

Of the surgeries I've been involved in as a patient or family member, the anesthesiology bill does not seem proportional to the work they do. I mean they do some calculations for the amount of drugs to put you to sleep and then monitor your vitals. Seems like something a responsible and well-trained nurse could do.

Yeah, I find the shock and indignant outrage at a computer program's output to be disturbing.

"AI safety" is clever marketing. It implies that these are powerful entities when really they are just upgraded search engines. They don't think, they don't reason. The token generator chose an odd sequence this time.

An internal model of self does not extrapolate to sentience. By your definition, a windows desktop computer is self-aware because it has a device manager. This is literally an internal model of its "self".

We use the term self-awareness as an all encompassing reference of our cognizant nature. It's much more than just having an internal model of self.

First of all, you should be aware that Stripe was founded by two guys from Ireland and it's based in San Francisco. This is the epicenter of the American political left. This is the side of American politics that cares about worker's rights, treatment, etc.

Ignoring that, your characterization isn't accurate at all for American software companies in my experience. I'm an American and I've worked overseas in Australia. In addition, most of the current technical team that I am currently on is based in the UK.

If anything, I've found other western cultures to be more discouraging of openly challenging management decisions. However, the differences are very very small. Working for a UK/Australia/German company is exactly the same as working for an American company. The day-to-day culture depends a lot on the people who run the company rather than their nationality. Trust me, there are jerks everywhere in the world.

A long time ago, I used Paypal to purchase a steam game. This was like 15 years ago. For some reason Paypal marked it as suspicious and immediately cancelled the transaction. Steam then locked me out of my account. I had several dozen games. I couldn't get anyone to reply to me from Steam. To this day, I'm locked out of that account and all of the games I had purchased. I started a new account but yeah it's scary.