ytx (u/ytx) - Readit News

ytx commented on Nvidia founder tells Stanford students their high expectations is a hindrance fortune.com/2024/03/13/nv... · Posted by u/Netherland4TW

COGlory · 2 years ago

It's not rich hating, it's that there's a billion poor people who weren't passed a silver spoon, worked hard, but ultimately failed in the one key element: luck. Rich people never understand that most of their success came from luck. In general, it makes them very unqualified to tell other people how to get rich.

And no I'm not saying rich people are too dumb to understand it, I'm saying that they're trying to rationalize survivorship bias, which pretty much everyone on planet earth does, knowingly, or unknowingly.

I'd highly recommend Fooled by Randomness for more on the topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fooled_by_Randomness

ytx · 2 years ago

I agree that there is a huge component of luck. But that does not invalidate the work, risk, and talent involved. Nobody "succeeds" (in the sense of creating a trillion dollar company) just by "working hard" or "being smart".

The fact is it's a lot harder to create a company or build something new, than to be an employee and "work hard" all your life. There's nothing wrong with that, but to pretend that everyone rich (especially this guy!) is just luck is ludicrous.

ytx commented on A generalist AI agent for 3D virtual environments deepmind.google/discover/... · Posted by u/nuz

LunaSea · 2 years ago

> chess club

How? A lot of games could be seen as a sort of 3D chess.

ytx · 2 years ago

Specifically meant in-person chess clubs as opposed to only playing lichess from home for hours every day. I'd probably have a less negative view of "time wasting" if video games were played more in-person too.

I have fond memories of LAN parties growing up, where socializing was as big a part as the actual gaming - it's not like we were sitting there harvesting wood for hours on end!

ytx commented on Automakers are sharing consumers' driving behavior with insurance companies nytimes.com/2024/03/11/te... · Posted by u/xnx

thfuran · 2 years ago

In an ideal world, such data harvesting would be illegal, with liability adhering to the executives pushing for and approving the initiative as well as any legal counsel involved. Acquiring the data should require explicit, truly informed, and revocable consent not buried in a bunch of BS and not required for the purchase of a vehicle or insurance.

ytx · 2 years ago

I wholeheartedly agree that the dark patterns around consent are atrocious. But I also think hn is probably biased in its valuation of an individual's data.

If companies offered say a $50/month discount on car insurance premiums in exchange for gathering data, I imagine a large proportion of people would indeed opt in to that (setting aside issues of selection bias or trust in this ideal world)

ytx commented on A generalist AI agent for 3D virtual environments deepmind.google/discover/... · Posted by u/nuz

LunaSea · 2 years ago

They are about as much a time waster than any other hobby really

ytx · 2 years ago

But in terms of other benefits of that time spent, (imo) they're probably somewhat better than micro-transaction-gambling-mobile games (or just plain gambling), but likely worse than a sports league or chess club.

Not sure how it'd compare against similar amounts of youtube/netflix though.

ytx commented on Automakers are sharing consumers' driving behavior with insurance companies nytimes.com/2024/03/11/te... · Posted by u/xnx

ytx · 2 years ago

  > "More specifically, automakers are selling access to the data to Lexis Nexis, which is then crafting “risk scores” insurance companies then use to adjust rates. Usually upward"

In an ideal world, such data-harvesting might lead to cheaper prices / a more efficient insurance market - which would make the privacy loss worth considering from a trade-off standpoint, at least in theory.

Unfortunately it's instead likely to just lead to higher margins for insurance companies. And the only way to compete would be to harvest more data for better predictions.

ytx commented on Detect when your installed Chrome extensions have changed owners github.com/classvsoftware... · Posted by u/ben_s

josefresco · 2 years ago

To combat this wouldn't malicious extension buyers simply keep the developer name the same? Or is developer name strictly policed by the Chrome Extension store?

ytx · 2 years ago

Also there's not much practical defense to an unscrupulous extension author "exiting" with an under-the-table password transfer or "oops we got hacked" to a shady buyer.

<tinfoil hat> One could imagine a nefarious state actor offering the author of e.g. uBlock $XX million to get access to a lot of browsers. Not sure about the economics, but more niche extensions could probably be targeted for a lot cheaper.

ytx commented on Leaving LinkedIn corecursive.com/leaving-l... · Posted by u/wyclif

slimsag · 2 years ago

One way to read your story is that upper management applied heavy downward pressure, to the extent that relatively trivial changes in the organization were discussed as 'costly' - in an effort to get engineers like the senior staff engineer in your example to pull heroic feats of engineering in a few weeks all by himself, instead of using a small group of engineers / resources.

I think your argument is that 'it worked for him' because he is still there while the managers are not, but reality may be the managers were there to have that effect in the first place and the 50/50 turnover was because they were in the thick of it.

That'd be my cynical take, anyway.

ytx · 2 years ago

Especially if he wasn't rewarded commensurately for that feat.

ytx commented on Sell for half a billion and get nothing (2021) fundablestartups.com/blog... · Posted by u/BIackSwan

sb8244 · 2 years ago

I think it's worth it still. Depending a lot on the company:

  * Ask questions to founders if they raise on participating preferred (the worst). Don't take a job if they do or if they won't answer
  * Find a place with early exercise of options
  * Find a place with a healthy company culture. (I believe this correlates)

I made a lot off of options, while having a good salary. I know others that did the same.

ytx · 2 years ago

But is there any recourse to the founders telling you one thing and then raising differently later because "circumstances have changed?"

ytx commented on Sell for half a billion and get nothing (2021) fundablestartups.com/blog... · Posted by u/BIackSwan

hackernoteng · 2 years ago

I think all this is OK. The problem is when it's not transparent. Then you have early employees (even some naive founders) with a lot of stock/options who assume they are going to be compensated with the exit. Then it's quite a shock when they aren't. As a veteran of such things (both successful and unsuccessful exits), I make sure to educate my fellow engineers on how these things work and what their realistic expectations should be.

ytx · 2 years ago

Right, I suspect many people (including me) wouldn't even know what terms look up to research such things. I get a lot of my knowledge by osmosis from the hn comment section, for better or worse :P