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christopherwxyz commented on Block: Inflated user metrics and “frictionless” fraud facilitation   hindenburgresearch.com/bl... · Posted by u/boh
numlocked · 2 years ago
"CEO Jack Dorsey has publicly touted how Cash App is mentioned in hundreds of hip hop songs as evidence of its mainstream appeal. A review of those songs show that the artists are not generally rapping about Cash App’s smooth user interface—many describe using it to scam, traffic drugs or even pay for murder."

Hindenburg made a music video compiling the references that is...uh...worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StjWk3Mj-M4

christopherwxyz · 2 years ago
That mix is fire.
christopherwxyz commented on Twilio is laying off 17% of workforce   twilio.com/blog/restructu... · Posted by u/akmittal
qqtt · 3 years ago
The thing is, the companies didn't overhire given the expected growth rates they were forecasting. Companies doing layoffs now are doing so with the same reasoning they used when they did hiring during the pandemic - they are forecasting their growth based on current economic realities.

The pandemic years saw companies accelerate their growth, even those who didn't have a clear 'pandemic angle' like Twilio. 2020 Q4 saw Twilio revenue growth 65% which encouraged them to hire more. Again, this is just the flip side of the current growth they are seeing (20-30%) which is causing them to re-balance their cost structure for lower growth.

There is risk in hiring during high growth periods - the risk being potentially these employees either won't deliver the value you expect, your strategy is wrong, or your growth rates won't continue. If these things happen, you might have to do a layoff. There is risk is NOT hiring during high growth periods too - if the company doesn't structure itself to capitalize on the current growth it is seeing, competitors could come in and sweep up market share.

At the end of the day, no one has a crystal ball for when high growth rates will stop, or when low(er) growth rates will pick back up again. In these cases, companies will hire during high growth periods and might have to lay off during low growth periods.

Many people seem to want to frame "layoffs" as a de facto failure, but it really isn't a failure as much as it is a company responding to dynamic market conditions (again, the flip side of hiring when growth is high). It's hard to say if the pandemic era hiring was really a bad idea - that hiring did fuel many of these companies to rapidly expand their revenue base and capitalize on many growth opportunities. Now that their future growth is expected lower, they are re-balancing their cost structure to respond.

christopherwxyz · 3 years ago
Agreed. It appears then they were averaging up, and now they are averaging down.
christopherwxyz commented on ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks   nbcnews.com/tech/tech-new... · Posted by u/boratanrikulu
xwowsersx · 3 years ago
What is a "knowledge reservoir of truthiness"?
christopherwxyz · 3 years ago
The only knowledge this system knows is whatever it can scrape and regurgitate that appears truthful. A whole bunch of positively true, but also many cases of falsely positive.

This system can’t prove its own work (at least not yet) before publishing the results. It just publishes, which is similar to Wikipedia and Google.

christopherwxyz commented on ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks   nbcnews.com/tech/tech-new... · Posted by u/boratanrikulu
dumbfounder · 3 years ago
ChatGPT is just a tool, like a calculator. Calculators are banned in certain circumstances and required in others. At first they were probably seen as cheating, but then the system realized they could be used to enhance what kids learn. Why take away a tool that could be used everywhere in life? That's not how progress should work. The system should evolve to embrace such tools, but the obvious problem is that it just won't happen quickly enough, and in the short term they will be used for illegitimate purposes, and so we just ban.
christopherwxyz · 3 years ago
I see ChatGPT more akin to Wikipedia and Google than a calculator. We don't consider Wikipedia or Google as much of a tool as they are a knowledge reservoir of truthiness.
christopherwxyz commented on New York City hiring top rat killer   a002-oom03.nyc.gov/IRM/Ha... · Posted by u/yehudalouis
yehudalouis · 3 years ago
Any good ideas on how you'd implement a rat extermination strategy?
christopherwxyz · 3 years ago
Basically Robert Patrick’s T-1000 from Terminator 2, but instead of hunting humans it will optimize for rats.

Deleted Comment

christopherwxyz commented on US judge blocks $2.2B Penguin Random House merger   theguardian.com/books/202... · Posted by u/mindracer
Yawnzy · 3 years ago
If only they’d blocked Disney’s acquisitions
christopherwxyz · 3 years ago
Disney doesn’t have as great of pricing power in its much larger relevant market.

Plus, United States v. Paramount in 1948 prevents a lot of the vertical integration that could be achieved in their former markets.

The only other place they can go is the even more crowded market that is online.

christopherwxyz commented on Where are all the crypto use cases?   evanjconrad.com/posts/cry... · Posted by u/neutrinoq
nappy · 3 years ago
Unless I'm missing something here, this is insurance, not lending.
christopherwxyz · 3 years ago
Both products are lotteries with premiums.
christopherwxyz commented on Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)   yesterweb.org/no-to-web3/... · Posted by u/memorable
phoe-krk · 3 years ago
Random thought - is Web3 a real danger to the currently existing web, where "real" means "plausible" rather than just "possible"?

I'm asking because every Web3 project I have seen so far has collapsed after getting just enough speculators (and therefore money) to make a nice rug pull/attack, but well before gaining any significant traction of non-paying users that are there to use the platform rather than speculate. It seems to me that it's completely unsustainable to keep a Web3 project running long enough to even gain these users in any way.

It seems to me that Web3 is, so far, only providing us with three things: the first is a way to speculate, the second is a way to waste our electricity, the third is laughing stock via https://web3isgoinggreat.com/ which only sorta sweetens points number one and two.

Are there any notable exceptions to my above observation? Am I wrong in some more fundamental way?

christopherwxyz · 3 years ago
Ethereum name service (ENS), which ties a wallet to a human readable domain name.
christopherwxyz commented on Vampire Attack Twitter   geohot.github.io//blog/je... · Posted by u/ProtonPower
messe · 3 years ago
> People will come for the free coins and nowhere to spend them, or will it cost coins to post or something?

That's where the 1B in buy-orders backing the coin is meant to come in, allowing people to exchange those coins for real currency.

christopherwxyz · 3 years ago
The system isn’t immune to spam attacks.

u/christopherwxyz

KarmaCake day81October 24, 2018View Original