tinbad

I don’t know. In the US, the cheapest brand new iPhone (7) is $449. I think it’s just more that Apple has heavily expanded their offering upmarket.

I recommend anyone interested in genome exploits to watch this talk at DEFCON by John Sotos[1] about why you should be very hesitant in giving away your DNA.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY

I don’t know about the others but in Russia, most employers will make you go and vote. Sometimes for a small reward, go vote for the “preferred” candidate and get $100. Which is significant for someone living off a median wage.

“It seems from those comments there that a lot of people on here were quite sceptical to their methods from the start.”

This is no different for literally every HN post.

This is completely off topic but the headline made me immediately think of this: https://youtu.be/TGkPMZxWPpA

Since most here are not Dutch it requires a bit of explanation , this was a parody video made in the early 2000’s of the countless “QVC” style info/commercials that used to be aired during the day or late at night on dutch television to fill airtime. They would take some b-grade TV products from US (and possibly other countries) and just poorly dub it over for the Dutch market, often by the same guy. These “Tellsell” (which I believe was the actual name of the company) commercials everyone would know about and sometimes joke about the crappy products and commercial style. This parody has all the typical cliches of these commercials like every time the name of the product was mentioned it would be extra sloooow and disadvantages of “alternative” products exaggerated to comical extremes. I believe this video came out before YouTube was mainstream, and circulated on USB drives and shared on LAN parties. Ahh the old times (when not every piece of content ever made was instantly available).

"Some were investigated, but only superficially, the government just really isn't enforcing our antitrust laws. And that's what's happened. None of these acquisitions have been challenged."

Behemoths like Google emerge every time new inventions lead to the creation of new markets followed by mass adoption during a relatively short timeframe, when regulations don't exist yet. It has happened in history time and time again (Standard Oil, Detroit Big 3, etc.) It's not entirely preventable, but it requires awareness foremost and then the (political/societal) will to deal with it.

Why is this surprising? Any spiritual practice is a way to better ones "self". My yogi friend put it well: the difference is with yoga and meditation the goal is to get rid of things, while in "the west" we generally associate happiness with having more things.

Possibly. We were/are lucky in that we both have good job prospects and plenty of opportunities to pursue, at the time we just wanted to enjoy our family time and the last thing we wanted is to engage in a legal battle. I'm sure we could've gotten more out of it had we wanted it (at least financially), not sure if same can be said for the time and energy put in though.

It wouldn't be much of a problem if there are better government organized programs in place. In fact, California's paid parental leave is funded by employees and is a relatively small tax of 0.9% (over the first $110k of wages only)[1] that includes other disability pay.

[1] http://www.edd.ca.gov/Payroll_Taxes/Rates_-_Historical.htm

a) 2 years, b) ~4 months in

And yeah, I would understand it better if she had just joined or it was a smaller company. We we're in extra shock because the company goes out of their way to publicly promote these benefits and the work-life balance blabla.

Personally experienced it. Wife worked at Google, had always positive performance reviews. Come pregnancy time she informed her manager, 3 days later they put her on a performance improvement plan. It didn't take long for them to realize they were making a big mistake, risking an expensive lawsuit so they let it go and let her have her paid 12 month leave. After returning she got the choice to do the PIP or take severance and leave. We had twins so she wasn't going back to work anyway but the fact that they tried left us with a bad taste.

EDIT: Let's call the company by name indeed.

It always infuriated me that Tesla called the same tech (Mobileye) "Autopilot", while Audi (and other OEMs) have used the exact same tech but didn't go as far to call even semi-autonomous driving. Audi & Mercedes systems do exactly what you mentioned, the tech is used to warn the driver (audio/visually but even with vibrations in seat and steering wheel) of impeding danger. It's a good case of Silicon Valley's "break stuff fast, iterate quickly" mindset that may be acceptable if it's the latest photo share app, but absolutely despicable business practice when human lives are at stake.

Disclosure: I currently own an Audi vehicle with this technology that has been available since 2009.

It feels if though they went for the YC/HN minimalism thing but executed poorly. A dark/black background can be pleasing to the eye, but combined with the yellow and hard white texts it's almost unbearably hard to digest. When I clicked to the application form, the white input boxes blinded me to the point where I had to close the tab almost immediately.

“you need brakes”

According to the latest Consumer Reports test the model 3 failed pretty hard in that department:

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2018/05/pump-brakes-consume...

I had high hopes for Bank Simple some time ago when they came out. Then they got acquired by a bigger bank. This industry is nearly impossible to disrupt. Just like the Oil companies back in the day, these banks are so big and powerful that it's impossible to innovate in the current market conditions.

Facebook is a huge organization and although to the outside world it's perceived as one, internally it's basically hundreds of separated teams and companies. So to your point, yes probably some are aware of all what's going on around the company, but there's probably an equal amount that are not. I work for a Fortune 50 company and I get much of the information about the company from the news, despite having a relatively senior level role.

It’s an outrage that people keep dying and Tesla is allowed to keep using its customers as guinea pigs calling their experimental set of driver assist features “Autopilot”. It doesn’t matter how many disclaimers you provide, an example should be made out of this and all the bro companies (yes looking at you Uber) with complete disregard for proper testing and safety. Testing such early technology on public roads using regular people tricked into thinking they are using mature technology should really be illegal and I hope they get punished harshly.

I was just going to say I never experienced any performance issues using a Gigabyte eGPU with the latest MBPro as well as an Intel 7th gen NUC. For $699, it’s the cheapest way to get “desktop like GPU performance” on a laptop or small factor PC.

Growing up in Russia I’ve seen the propaganda spread within the country, I have no doubt they use the same tactics abroad as it has become so easy/cheap to reach unwitting users on social platforms.

I don’t think Russia had/has a specific goal I mind other than disruption. I don’t believe they necessarily wanted Trump because of some evil plan/agreement. The evil plan is to take advantage of gullible Americans and create instability. Of course it takes more than just a Facebook campaign and it helps that the US is already pretty devided as it stands and there seems to be a perfect political storm to take advantage of.

If you see how they talk on Russian TV about the “decline of the West” and how bad every politician is, pretty much 24/7 you’ll probably better understand where it’s coming from.

Really?? Not sure what gen 7er you're comparing to but the interior quality of the Model S reminded me more of a Toyota than anything German. Interior-wise, BMW has stepped up their game in recent years but Mercedes/Audi interiors are still considered better overall, especially in the higher end models.

My usage of Amazon increased exponentially since we had twins. As a parent, the 1/2-day free delivery of anything from diapers to wipes to random items like kids cups or books, I can’t even imagine having to go to the store for these things anymore. Especially with one shout to Alexa. It really makes a huge difference in quality of life, when running out even for the smallest errand can be a multiple hour process.

Strange, my dentist doesn't show up there but I recognize the Cerec brand from his machine...

Both of my crowns from 2004-06 or thereabouts are still in very good shape. Your wife may have been unlucky indeed, or maybe they used different/weaker materials.

Endre Selmeczy DMD in Livermore. I can highly recommend.

Yes! My dentist back in the Netherlands had this technology in 2004 and both of my crowns were made that way. When I came to the US in 2011 and had to go through the ‘old way’ of getting a temp crown, sending mold off to lab, coming back 2 or 3 times over the course of a month I was genuinely amazed it hadn’t caught on here. I finally found a dentist in the Bay Area with new technology.

It's so obvious that social platforms with business models based on number of ads/impressions like Twitter/FB are not incentivized enough to remove fake accounts, yet there seems to be very little public discussion or outrage about it. I agree with Mark Cuban here [1], they should do more to make sure each account has a real user behind it, even if it means less revenue. It's just the right thing to do.

[1] https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/957686987229618176

It does. But after growing up in freezing winter Russia, then cold rain Holland and now living in California, even though I do miss some of those wintery things, I’m sure glad to be back to no season coastal California every time I spend even a few days in a cold/dark northern hemisphere place.

To me your comment seems to highlight how important it is to have good safeguards in place when founding (any) company. I’ve seen (and experienced first hand) things go south even when people knew and trusted each other for years/decades for an infinite amount of reasons: people change, you may not know them as well as you think, success/failure puts immense pressure and makes people irrational, etc. etc.

Have basic safeguards in place like backups, paper trials, make sure you have good contracts that cover what happens if one of you leaves, can’t work, doesn’t perform, etc. make sure you have an independent board member further along, etc.

And not just the Miata! Almost every Mazda is the best handler in its class. It’s somewhat tragic they don’t sell as well as they should. They are objectively better in many ways. It’s one of those that having an objectively superior product is not a guarantee to perform well in the market. I truly hope Mazda will be around for many decades to come.

I don't agree with your premise of "remote workers being worth less (even if slightly) because there's less efficient collaboration".

The last part is only true because most of today's organizations and processes are organized this way. Objectively, there's very little (outside of the individuals ability/willingness to work) that can't be optimized for remote work using modern technology.

I've been working remote for many years now and even many large enterprises I have worked for recently have adopted tools needed for working remotely efficiently (easy video/chat/screen share, collaborative productivity tools etc.). At this point, my impression it's mostly mental barriers (managers!) that stall any progress in this area.