Bingo
Readit Newscbtacy commented on I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing evhaste.com/blog/silenced... · Posted by u/kistaro
cbtacy commented on I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing evhaste.com/blog/silenced... · Posted by u/kistaro
Without taking any position on this post itself or flagging of it:
flagging has just become abusive. It needs serious reform, @dang.
I can't speak for the original rationale, but it seems like the intent must be to remove posts or comments that are clearly offensive on some semi-legal grounds (obscene, advocating violence, etc.) Now it's become just "I don't like this."
There are many possible reforms, but off the top of my head, changing "flag" to be nothing but a suggestion to the mods might fix it. It would do nothing unless a mod agreed. And the flagger's id should be public and it should cost them something (karma points, maybe).
Reforming "flagging" to make it less open to abuse and brigading is obviously overdue.
Dead Comment
cbtacy commented on I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing evhaste.com/blog/silenced... · Posted by u/kistaro
cbtacy commented on I was laid off in retaliation for anti-discrimination whistleblowing evhaste.com/blog/silenced... · Posted by u/kistaro
Seems it was flagged again, and then was unflagged again? How common are these kind of seemingly coordinated attempts to manipulate HN (assuming there is indeed nothing actually wrong with OP)?
sadly, very common. See: anything critical about Elon Musk. See: anything about LGBTQ+ issues.
cbtacy commented on Presentations and pitch decks by failures and frauds slidebook.io/blog/article... · Posted by u/oyster143
> Fraud and corporate collapses were always part of business landscape, but they became more frequent and severe in the late 20th and early 21st centuries
Is this actually true? No citation is given and my gut sense was that corporate collapses used to be far more frequent. Think railroad manias, tulip bubbles, wildcat banks. If anything economic conventional wisdom has lately become that there aren't enough corporate collapses due to the flood of endless cheap money propping up zombie firms that endlessly lose money.
The Theranos deck is interesting though. Even the first slide appears to be a word salad that makes no sense. "Our immediate goal is to become the standard for improving the efficacy and risk/benefit and safety profile of every therapy"? That's an (over-broad) mission statement, not an immediate goal. Then slide 3 "Theranos Today" they're talking about assumed future deals not the state of the company in the present, and somehow "Existing deals: $120M - $1.5Bn in revenue"!?
Then a bunch of graphs that look like they must have come from a real patient but nothing is stated about what's really happening.
Also, "Drivers for success: management and culture" lol.
I don't know if anyone has done the deep analysis to determine if fraud is more frequent and severe and agree this seems like a doubtful statement, but I suspect it's likely that corporate collapses have in fact become more common and more frequent -- but due simply to the fact that the global total number of corporations has increased exponentially since the mid 20th century.
cbtacy commented on Why I'm not worried about AI causing mass unemployment understandingai.org/p/sof... · Posted by u/jger15
1) AI is Software. Marc was just a little off on market timing, and the eating starts for real right now.
2) I worked for a large private equity company on contract for a bit. The team I worked on was doing analysis about what the likely impact of AI, robotics, and automation on true unemployment in the US was likely to be as of 2030. Largely due to the impact on food service, retail, agriculture, customer support, and entry level corporate jobs the conclusion was that we'll see true unemployment in the 40% range at that time.
cbtacy commented on Twitter Circle tweets are not that private anymore techcrunch.com/2023/04/10... · Posted by u/danso
This is bad. This should result in more EU fines, and the Consent Decree is obviously in play. SMH.
cbtacy commented on Sam Altman didn’t take any equity in OpenAI, report says cnbc.com/2023/03/24/opena... · Posted by u/SirLJ
"The nonprofit, OpenAI Inc., is the sole controlling shareholder of OpenAI LP" from Wikipedia.
Clearly Microsoft has a large stake as well. It sounds like equity was distributed to employees, but according to Fortune some was sold: "OpenAI’s other investors include Hoffman’s charitable foundation and Khosla Ventures. Last year, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, Bedrock Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz reportedly purchased shares from preexisting shareholders in a sale valuing the company at around $20 billion, according to The Information."
https://fortune.com/2023/01/10/microsoft-investment-10-billi...
Investors include Y Combinator, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Microsoft, Amazon, Infosys, Tiger Global, Elevation Capital, Bedrock Capital, Wikus Ventures, Social Discovery Ventures, Pre IPO Club, Matthew Brown Companies, Change.org, and Fenrir.
Been a Hacker News user since this launched, but have been feeling increasingly like I'm not part of this culture and don't want to be part of this culture anymore. So I'm out.
It's sad and kind of tragic to see what was once a thriving, diverse community that embraced all types of marginalized people (nerds, engineers, geeks, and so on) become a cesspool of bigotry and hate speech.
And the real tragedy, of course, is that Hacker News is just a microcosm of the developer culture -- which has become disgusting and hateful.
I hope those of you who are not bigots manage to fix this place. I hope the developer culture becomes healthier and less toxic. But I'm not going to be around to help or see it. Y'all are too exhausting and depressing.
Peace out.