barleyworth (u/barleyworth)

barleyworth commented on The Onion buys Infowars nytimes.com/2024/11/14/bu... · Posted by u/coloneltcb

swat535 · a year ago

Announcing something that hasn't happened yet makes it false.

The correctly should be something like "The Onion is attempting to buy Infowars"

Right, but one wonders why the parent commenter is not gleefully commenting about "fake news" on all of these articles: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=google+buys

This seems to be a notable story and doesn't need nakedly partisan hair-splitting.

barleyworth commented on The Onion buys Infowars nytimes.com/2024/11/14/bu... · Posted by u/coloneltcb

djfobbz · a year ago

I hate to burst everyone’s bubble, but this is fake news. This deal is not final. The judge in the liquidation case is holding an evidentiary hearing next week to understand how and why secret bidding was set up and why it was not open to the general public. Sounds like a BIG loss for The Onion, not to mention the potential defamation cases that could arise from news outlets publishing an unverified story about a sale that isn’t final.

Source: https://x.com/behizytweets/status/1857195724242329997

barleyworth · a year ago

I doubt you'd call it "fake news" if a corporate acquisition was announced, just because the deal hadn't yet passed regulatory approval.

But then again, you clearly seem to have a dog in this fight.

barleyworth commented on AI offers improved civility for polarizing online conversations newatlas.com/health-wellb... · Posted by u/webmaven

0xy · 2 years ago

How do you "reduce polarity" without censoring voices? If you do believe in 'just a little censorship', then absolutely you are a censorship maximalist. How else would you achieve your censorship goals?

The censor class have repeatedly censored discussion in the name of correctness that were later proven to be either murky or outright false (see: lab leak theory censorship, mask effectiveness censorship, Hunter Biden laptop censorship etc).

As history has repeatedly shown, censorship is principally used by those whose ideas cannot be backed up in public debate -- the opposing view must be forcefully crushed.

barleyworth · 2 years ago

Not everyone wants to go to a baseball game where 1% of the fans are constantly getting into screaming matches about the other team sucking. Similarly, I will politely nope out of an online community that won't stop clobbering me with Team Red vs Team Blue debates. Free speech is not the same as "I should be listened to in proportion to how much I talk".

barleyworth commented on Stripe Financial Connections stripe.com/financial-conn... · Posted by u/ianhawes

sergiomattei · 4 years ago

Reminds me of the HN thread full of anon $XB Fintech CEOs bashing Stripe.

barleyworth · 4 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29388310

barleyworth commented on Uber CEO to take leave bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/lyonlim

gammarator · 9 years ago

Why do you talk about "females?" The word you are looking for is "women."

("Females" connotes reproductive capacity [1], which is seldom relevant, and is also applied to animals. "Women" are human beings.)

[1] http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/69157?redirectedFrom=female#ei...

barleyworth · 9 years ago

Fair point; I will try and avoid using "females" in the future.

FWIW, the main reason I used this phrasing was that I had already used the word "guys", but wanted to steer clear of the analogous word "girls". Using the word "women" seemed like I would be suggesting some sort of age/maturity dichotomy between "guys" and "women", and it seemed to me that "females" didn't have such a connotation.

barleyworth commented on Uber CEO to take leave bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/lyonlim

dvt · 9 years ago

I really don't buy the Travis Kalanik hate. Yeah, Uber started out as your typical SV unicorn (bro warts and all). Yeah, Uber's entire business model can be described as "grey-area" at best and its business practices as sometimes exploitative.

But this is exactly how you're supposed to run a massively successful startup in its first decade. This is exactly how FB started out. And this follows every rule in the startup book to a tee. Look, we can't have it both ways, guys. The recent stuff about Travis has been downright witch-hunty. I mean, every single article about the "leaked" memo was headlined as "You can have sex with your coworkers -- if..." I mean, come on.

There was literally nothing wrong with the email, but every single paper covered it in some weird passive-aggressive way. Same with the previous story where TK gets in the altercation with the Uber driver on video. Travis was (yet again) 100% in the right there, but everyone spun it like he was being some kind of asshole, when the driver blindsided him.

To be honest, I'm no Travis Kalanik fanboy (in spite of sharing the same alma mater), but the guy obviously knows what he's doing. He found, by accident or not, a market desperately in need of disruption and absolutely nailed it. Uber is a cultural phenomenon that arguably has more longevity than something like Facebook.

I just think he's been treated unfairly because of his playboy flair, but he's actually a pretty smart, ruthless business leader. Even this story tries hard to dehumanize him (cut him some slack; his mom just passed away). I don't really understand why.

barleyworth · 9 years ago

> There was literally nothing wrong with the email

There were at least two things wrong with the email, from my perspective as a guy who's been around plenty of benign bro culture.

1. Explicitly mentioning "sex" as opposed to "relationship" or "dating", and talking about it so casually, sets a very aggressive tone. 20-something guys with lots of hormones will definitely hear that tone and push hard for sex during the trip (the implication is that there will be lots of it, and nobody wants to be left out). Females reading this surely know that they'll receive lots of attention and advances during the trip, whether they want it or not – even if you assume that the guys will be asking for consent, it's still uncomfortable for those who want to be professional and avoid work relationships.

2. "Yes, that means that Travis will be celibate on this trip. #CEOLife #FML." Implication there is that there are many people on the team that the Travis wants to sleep with. If you're a female subordinate of the CEO whom he speaks with somewhat flirtily, you can infer that he's thinking "FML, I wish I could sleep with her".

barleyworth commented on Options vs. Cash danluu.com/startup-option... · Posted by u/darwhy

paul · 9 years ago

"If you look at companies that have made a lot of people rich, like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, almost none of the employees who became rich had an instrumental role in the company’s success. "

100% false.

barleyworth · 9 years ago

The next sentence in the article does a better job at illustrating his point: "Conversely, the vast majority of startup option packages end up being worth little to nothing, but nearly none of the employees whose options end up being worthless were instrumental in causing their options to become worthless."

I interpret the point as being: the monetary outcome of a startup for the employee is a function of their individual contribution (which is what I think the author means by being "instrumental"), plus the contribution of the founders and other employees, plus luck. The magnitude of the individual contribution is small relative to the other factors, so it's difficult to say that a successful startup employee "deserves" a windfall and an unsuccessful one doesn't. The lower the correlation between individual contribution and monetary outcome, the less options should matter for motivating early employees.

barleyworth commented on Most Electronics Being Banned on Certain US-Bound Flights bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/BWStearns

goldenkey · 9 years ago

The TSA wasnt any better under Obama... Don't spin this into a Trump issue

barleyworth · 9 years ago

Well, both Obama and Trump inherited a pretty broken TSA. That doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to whether the organization is improving or getting worse.

Generally I doubt that a president deserves credit, positive or negative, for changes in random agencies like the TSA. Like, does Obama really deserve bonus points for us being able to use cell phones during takeoff+landing? But you have to admit that a country-specific ban has Trump written all over it. People are rightly pointing out why it's a misguided policy.

barleyworth commented on Wikileaks: Julian Assange's internet access 'cut' bbc.co.uk/news/technology... · Posted by u/dharma1

davesque · 9 years ago

Wow...I can understand that not everyone would agree with this comment, but how can this end up in the grey?? Have people actually visited /r/the_donald lately?

barleyworth · 9 years ago

Yeah, that subreddit is terrifying. I'm more afraid of the people in there than any other terrorist group. E.g. another comment on the same thread says very matter-of-factly: "Let's just say by now you should have already bought multiple guns."

barleyworth commented on Dropbox says it is cash flow positive, in no rush to IPO techcrunch.com/2016/06/14... · Posted by u/uptown

mankash666 · 10 years ago

Fair enough - 7X to be more accurate.

Well, you'd have to apply the same "risk" of [Box, Google ..] that dropbox faces in it's valuation which effectively cancels out that component. If anything, given that Dropbox is private, it probably amplifies those risks and lowers Dropbox's valuation.

Box's P/E is very much a fair indicator of Dropbox's valuation.

barleyworth · 10 years ago

Box has a negative P/E, so I'll assume you're talking about P/S here.

You seem to be suggesting that companies within an industry should all have the same price-to-sales multiple. (Or at least they'd "better have" the same multiple. Or else?) This is because, while all the companies have different quantitative and qualitative aspects, the mutual competition "effectively cancels out" those differences when it comes to valuation.

Snark aside, here are things that actually matter for valuing these sorts of companies:

* cost to acquire a customer (Box's S-1 notoriously had sales+marketing which was greater than their revenue)

* customer churn, or relatedly, lifetime value per customer

* subscriber growth

* margins (i.e. storage costs)

Perhaps your conclusion about the relative values of these companies is correct, but the fact that you're not mentioning any of the points above means that it's very difficult to give any credibility to your argument.