alexggordon

Haha, yes

> October 18th, and they were delivered October 27th

Just a comparison from a hobbyist. I live in Massachusetts, so hey, I would love to support a local company. I recently printed 5 boards through JLBPCB. Circuithub[0] came to $654.66 for the boards I uploaded, while JLCPCB[1] came to $228.45, with $52.48 in tariffs.

I placed the order on JLCPCB on October 18th, and they were delivered October 17th. To match that delivery timeline I would have to choose the higher service level which brings that total to $877.83 on Circuithub.

As a note, these are not complex boards--they're LED drivers with some custom features implemented via a ATtiny3216-S, which costs about $1 a piece in non-bulk orders. To buy the SBOM from DigiKey for prototyping it was about $100--obviously with more tariffs and shipping. Point being, this is not a complex board or something with complex parts.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/EHhMPU7

[1] https://imgur.com/a/s9aVJtU

Nothing stopping both from being true. The court judgements[0] aren't faked. It genuinely appears Underwood really was screwed over. That said, it doesn't take much for a CMO to look at the situation and figure out how to market the product from there. Something something lemonade.

Only reason I mention that is that is you're not really faking the grassroots part if you really do have a good origin story--you just got... lucky?

[0] https://cases.justia.com/california/court-of-appeal/2021-b30...

Archive.org link

https://web.archive.org/web/20250407131025/https://www.newyo...

I'm a huge supporter of GitLab, I love their product. Facilitated the use of it for my work and really admire how open their product development and company morals are. So when I say that this is probably one of the worst decisions they can make I hope you can understand I don't say that casually.

The problem with running an open company (check out their handbook[0] if you don't understand what I'm referencing) is that you can be held accountable to your values when you break them. All these blog posts regarding the "current macroeconomic climate" make it sound as though they've been blindsided by the downturn in the economy. To me, that's just a straw man. If you listened to any economist or financial adverser, even while the economy was doing okay in 2022, most knew there was a recession coming[0].

Even if they didn't know that, and they were completely ignorant (of which I would expect multiple executive level firings), they bragged in the Q3 Earnings Call on 12/05/2022 that "We added over 200 new team members in 3Q and we continue to experience lower attrition than the industry"[2], undoubtedly as they were planning layoffs. According to Wikipedia, Gitlab had 1,630 employees in January of 2022, so assuming they added 500 new employees in 2022, 7% layoffs would be about 150 positions. Given that, I love this quote from that same call[2].

> As Sid and I have said over the last several quarters, our number one priority is growth but we will do this responsibly.

The "I" that quote is Sharlene Seemungal, acting CISO[3]. I don't even have to research the layoffs to know that neither Sid nor Sharlene have suffered from the layoffs.

All that said, it's laudable the level of investment you took in ensuring the employees you laid off have a good transition--but it would be better if you didn't play the corporate bullshit shocked pikachu face game when the downturn everyone knew was coming came and actually hired responsibly.

[0] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/09/recession-will-hit-in-first-...

[2] https://ir.gitlab.com/static-files/96839a79-517d-4d92-989f-9...

[3] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/eba/

Note, these are not normal bikes. From the article:

> A major cause of head injuries is going over the handlebars, which is not possible with a 3 metre long bike. Another thing that makes us unique is our training systems, maintenance systems, and ability to track poor rider behaviour.

Made me curious what they actually look like[0].

Seeing that, I’d tend to reset my presumptions about wearing helmets with these. There’s definitely going to be a different injury profile with these bikes than the bikes you rode as a kid. Without seeing those injury profiles I’d probably say you can’t really deduce anything from this announcement.

[0] https://www.positive.news/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Pedal-M...

All due respect but this comment demonstrates a naive understanding of COVID and mask mandates. It's possible this comment is just trolling as it's the only comment your account has made but I'll attempt to address the issues with it regardless.

First, calculating a theoretical number of deaths through end result statistics does not result in a number that can be used to support a logical argument. When approximating deaths for something like COVID, the things that matter are:

1. The fatality rate of COVID, assuming the hospital you're treated at has sufficient means to treat you.

2. The fatality rate of COVID, assuming the hospital you're treated at does NOT have sufficient means to treat you.

3. The contagiousness/ability of the virus and likelihood that you'll spread the virus to someone else once you've contracted it (R naught). Basically, think of this as the number of people you'll infect if you get the virus.

4. The number of people in a population who can be infected by an individual at any specific time (effective reproduction number)

You can't just take a slice of time and say "6" people will die, and remove mask mandates, as COVID spreads through exponential growth. The benefits of wearing a mask compound, just like not wearing mask compounds in a worse way. Think of it this way. If the R naught of a virus is above 1, (say 1.1) then the virus will continue to spread. If it continues to infect more and more people, unchecked, it will eventually infect almost everyone. If it infects everyone, with a fatality rate of 1.6% in Missouri, it will kill thousands, not 6.

The ways available to us to stop COVID are to attack all facets mentioned above. I won't go into all of them, as mask mandates solely aim to curb 3. The goal of mask mandates is to make it so if you have the virus, you infect less than 1 person, so that the virus stops spreading.[1] But the benefits affect all the above, such as, if the virus continues to spread (R naught above 1), then eventually we run out of hospital capacity. If we run out of hospital capacity, the death rate skyrockets, as many preventable deaths are no longer preventable. So, mask mandates now also potentially benefit healthcare capacity (flatten the curve, remember?).

So, to specifically isolate the issue with your argument, the number of cases per 100k with and without masks doesn't matter if the virus is still spreading. If it's still spreading, it will still infect everyone eventually, and take its 1.6% of the population at the end of the day. Mask mandates are one component (on top of vaccines, social distancing, hygiene, etc) to lowering the R naught below 1.

So, is it reasonable, to impose a mandate such as this that negatively alters people daily life to this extent, in order to prevent tens of thousands of deaths in the all-state from dying?

The answer is yes.

[0] Good introduction to R naught and R_e https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7751056/ [1] Thorough review of mask wearing statistics and benefits https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/4/e2014564118.full.pdf [2] A better introduction to modeling COVID 19 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1132-9

To clarify, this is not the auction for the VIN 001 Bronco, this is an auction for an NFT for the VIN 001 Bronco. From the auction page:

> This one-of-one NFT commemorates the sale of the VIN 001 Ford Bronco First Edition sold on March 27, 2021, and includes 1 x exclusive video, 1 x illustration and 3 x still images, all relating to the historic sale of this VIN 001 at Barrett-Jackson, for you to enjoy in your Motoclub digital wallet! The winning bidder of this Limited Edition NFT will also receive an exclusive Barrett-Jackson VIP Muscle Lounge ticket package for two to the 2022 auction of their choice.

This reminds me of a story from college, regarding a business law class (US laws mostly). This class was interesting for a variety of reasons, but also pretty humorous as the professor was a full time lawyer, and taught the class because he enjoyed educating people. Generally, I've enjoyed the classes most where the professor brought real world experience to the podium and this class fit that bill perfectly.

As part of the class we went over a variety of law case studies. The professor had a bit of a schtick or joke where he would ask "can they sue?"--and the answer was always yes. There was no plausible case you could not litigate. The followup question was always where the details were. "Will this case get thrown out?" or "Will they win" was usually where the discussion occurred. The reason for that, is in US law, the bar is incredibly low for being able to litigate a case.

This case is no different. According to the reversal[0], effectively the court found it's plausible that the known reward system snapchat has (popularity, endorphins, whatever you want to call it) in combination with the speed filter, is not unrelated to the accident. That's all they said, and I believe that's the correct decision--they aren't saying Snap is to blame--just that the very high bar to throw out a case has not been met.

Personally, wouldn't read too much past that. Will this case succeed? Most likely not. Will it get settled? Probably a fair chance.

[0] http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2021/05/04/20...

At least one lawsuit has already been filed[0] with most likely more coming. I really don't see how Robin Hood can spin this in their favor, or recover from this from a PR standpoint.

[0] https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.553175...

First, I believe that number comes from this article[0], which doesn't tell the whole story. Did some research and found some more info with the help of this article[1]. In Q1, Citadel paid $12,583,220.60 to fulfill orders from Robin Hood[2]. I can't put together the total percentage of their order fulfillment revenue, but this website seems to suggest 91 million[3], but if you add up the totals from[2] they don't sum to 91 million--so I can't quite determine the percentage of revenue it works out to, but it appears Citadel is their biggest order fulfillment client.

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-15/robinhood...

[1] https://fortune.com/2020/07/08/robinhood-makes-millions-sell...

[2] https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHS%20SEC%2...

[3] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/robinhood-statistics/

"Intentional financial harm" is not illegal, otherwise shorting stocks would be illegal. There is also no court precedence for normal market maneuvers that happen to have a significantly negative outlook on a company. Imagine if Gamestop sued TD Ameritrade for facilitating short market orders for Goldman Sachs? It would be a joke. Same thing for if Melvin sues--they over exposed themselves and paid for it.

There's nothing here that's illegal. Insider Trading, Pump and dump schemes, etc all require coordinated distribution or communication of false and/or non-public information. What's happening with GME is happening in the public, in full view of everyone, with a goal of exploiting a hedge fund that overexposed itself through a short squeeze. Short squeezes are legal, and have a large storied history over the last couple decades.

A stock market trading app, for consumers, trying to protect consumers by... not letting them buy stocks? If Robin Hood cared about consumers, they probably wouldn't have given them credit that they could then go buy options with.

Not disparaging IKEA at all--moves like this should be lauded--but this is a working forest, harvested for lumber. I can't speak to how sustainably it's harvested or anything, and while this is commendable, there is profit motive here, as IKEA is heavily dependent on wood for its products.

I think in general, supporting things like working forests from a government level (tax benefits) is probably something that isn't done enough, given forests are one of the best carbon sinks available to us.

I've been a big user of plex for a long time--and this seems like a very good direction for them to go in, especially the arcade console portion.

I'm curious though how this will work on all the different devices. One of the benefits of plex is that it's available on everything--iOS, roku, samsung TV, apple TV, you name it. However, most of those controls are not meant for arcade games.

If anyone from the plex team is reading this--I'd love to hear if there's any plans for controller integration or anything?

I disagree with this. This might be a solution, but it is not "the" solution.

I really, truly believe that any startup idea has to pass the child pornography test. Most B2C companies have to deal with this at some point if they allow user to user interaction.

A decentralized platform as advocated for could not survive if it's not capable of censuring things. You have to censure for child pornography--it's illegal to host it. Court actions around torrents have held that the sites hosting them are not decentralized--The Pirate Bay is at fault for hosting illegally obtained content. Same thing with this--as long as hosting child pornography is illegal (and it should be, not debating that) you won't have a mainstream "decentralized" social media site[0].

This follows for all the other stuff that's going on. Inciting violence is illegal. That, plain and simple, is why Trump was removed from Twitter. Twitter even waited until his violence actually killed people. Even Parler recognizes this[1] and has started censuring, because it could be sued into the ground for inciting violence. If you think that there's a technological solution for this problem--you're missing the bigger picture. Big social media tech _loves_ this stuff--people talk about it all day--they even donate to the groups that help organize it[2].

We're not missing a technological solution--we're missing a legislative one.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/02/parler-...

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/09/parler-reportedly-removed-...

[2] https://documented.net/2021/01/republican-attorneys-general-...

Relevant to this: Amazon has told Parler it's pulling the plug on its hosting midnight pacific time Monday[0].

I think big tech regulation might become the new bipartisan topic de jour as a result of this. Ironically, given past positions of the Supreme Court[1], I really don't see private companies being forced to host whatever content people what them to being a thing at any point in the near future, so it seems as though they'd probably be against anything conservatives have been demanding for as of recent.

This might be the rye talking at this point, but one of the preceding events to the civil war was violence in the house of congress[2]. Don't need to tell anyone about Wednesday's violence, but that did cause us to miss the almost-fist-fight on Tuesday[3]. I don't think we're headed towards civil war yet, but I think how the people that instigated the recent events are handled, by the public and criminally, will dictate that.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/09/amazon-...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...

[2] https://www.history.com/news/charles-sumner-caning-cilley-du...

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/07/congress-fi...

If I could read a book of these stories I'd stop everything and read it now. Absolutely incredible. I love stories like these, but I also understand these hells are probably reserved for the special world of startups. The interesting takeaway from this for me is the question "Was the rewrite successful?".

As an engineer, I understand I'm a vehicle for success at a startup. Even if I ultimately get burnt out and quit. If I make important changes, that maybe only I could have thought of before I quit, it probably becomes a good investment to hire me.

Uber managed to hire enough of the "right" vehicles for success to get to the point where they shipped a platform rewrite at massive scale. By all high level objective metrics, this is probably success story.

The one metric I think could derail the projects success isn't really documented--what was the human cost to this effort? I bet you looking at a graph of turnover at Uber you could probably identify exactly when this project happened. I'm curious if the engineering turnover from such a massive effort was enough to offset the benefit.

Attempted to max out the ingredient list, and got a recipe that would probably feed 20 people[0]. Most impressive thing in my mind is it did correctly figure out it is a soup.

However, I'm not sure 60 cups of vegetables is useful for the common family ;).

[0] https://imgur.com/dL9mNVG

While I do agree somewhat with this article, keep in mind that ownership of things results in different realized costs. Owning a house is a very different cost than owning a car, not only in terms of longevity but usage and storage. The fact I don't have a place to "store" my house does not affect the resale value, compared to that of a car that was only stored in a garage.

If you want to maximize value of something, finding alternative uses for that item usually results in lower cost of ownership. My yard currently has about 200 square feet of garden in it, which provides a substantial amount of food to eat, at no additional cost than the water and minimal gardening supplies to keep it going. My kids can also use the yard, along side my garden, maximizing value. Once my house is paid off, my yard has a realized cost of close to zero. Friends can setup a tent in the yard with an air mattress instead of needing a guest room.

That fancy mini-van? I can also be the person that rents that out as a potential income source. Suddenly, something that was a liability is now a revenue stream, and I still have the convenience of using it basically whenever I want.

Most things you'll find you use only 5% of the time you own them, but their cost is low so they get no mention or attention. Other things are stupid to justify in terms of financial costs. Kids are expensive, and looking at them as an asset or a liability is laughable.

Instead of figuring out the percentage of time the item will be used, try and instead maximize value from it. Split the cost of a lawn mower with your neighbor. Rent out your car on a car-share app. Car pool to school and work. When trying to purchase a big item, try and figure out what you really need, and fight your ego. Can you buy it used? Is a specific color really worth thousands of dollars? Life isn't something that can be explained through an algorithm, don't try and run every decision through it.

This doesn't contribute to the discussion, besides the incredibly naive viewpoint that allowing ads is the only way to support to a website.

I, like the average person here it seems, fail to see the issue here, but that aside, this is most likely not a large enough sample size[0] to be a highly trusted statistic. That said, let's look at this from a different perspective.

> The Apple Watch abnormal pulse detection feature was designed to address asymptomatic (so-called silent) atrial fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia, affecting over 30 million people worldwide[0].

So, assuming there's 8 billion people in the world, this affects .375% of the population. Assuming this was a statistically significant study, that means that if everyone in the world had an apple watch, this would only let 300 million people know they potentially had an AFIB event. Now, an excess of 270 million might seem excessive--but I would weigh excessive with the burden this event puts on the medical community. The primary means of diagnoses for an AFIB event is an ECG[1], which costs $150 on Amazon. Assuming they don't have to buy an ECG for each individual, I would assume the cost to most health care clinics for diagnosis is around $100. However, this test

1. Does not have to be administered by anyone other than a nurse. 2. Only has to be administered once in a lifetime for a diagnosis.

So now 10% doesn't seem that bad given that the burden is distributed to the global healthcare system over time. Keep in mind too, even if every single one of these people visited the ER, then this would be completely in line with the fact that only 10% of ER visits result in an admission[2] to the hospital.

[0] https://academic.oup.com/jamia/article/27/9/1359/5911974

[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/atrial-fibril...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/emergency-department.htm

My home inspector worked exclusively in my town, with the most common housing construction type that my house was built with. I live in a town with a lot of 19th century homes. Not only was he able to tell me most of the common problems that occur in the homes, but exactly what remodels had been done to the home (like what was cheaply done, and what was done 'right'). He also gave me a fairly extensive list of contractors and maintenance people from around the area that he trusted, and encouraged me to contact him if I had any questions or concerns over the next couple years. Looking back on it, as a first time home buyer, I would pay 10x more for the service he gave me than what he charged.

Most of the discussions here are talking about the downsides of alternative home designs. In general, while there's going to be some failures, exploring new home designs should be encouraged--most of the world can't afford the construction style common in NA, and material science and advanced robotics lead to incredibly cheap alternative home construction possibilities. There's a ton of improved life statistics tied to home ownership. Especially with alternative home designs though, home inspections should absolutely be the most important and time consuming thing you do during a purchase.

I discovered this by lucky happenstance during my first home purchase, but a good home inspector will save you thousands of dollars, and sometimes more. While any sort of home inspection is not discussed in the article, I believe that an alternative construction building inspector (while costing more than a normal inspector) would have caught some of the more major issues mentioned here. If it's true that the leaks in the concrete were covered up long enough to sell the home, then most leak detection equipment would easily have caught it. Water damage, foundation issues and leaks are standard home inspection protocol. Additionally, it sounds like a fair amount of the termite issues could have been caught before the sale of the home, which is also a standard part of home inspections.

In the event of purchasing an alternative home like this, I would not hesitate to even hire multiple home inspectors, especially ones that know the house and the area. Even having a quick conversation with them ahead of time (Are you familiar inspecting concrete roofed homes?).

Per the specs on the dell website, it's a milled aluminum chassis. Guess that could technically mean there's plastic somewhere, but they seem to be selling the fact it's not plastic.

Given my experience with non MS Surface touch screens, I'm not really sure if I consider that a strong pro--if I were writing the sales pitch for the laptop yeah, it's a pro, but in terms of day to day use, I'm not sure how much I'm looking for a touchscreen on a laptop.

Regardless though, the gesture support on MacOS touch-pads would probably cancel it out as anything I'd probably do with the touchscreen frequently could be supported through a gesture.

The best way I can sell Thunderbolt 3/USB-C to myself is that at Apple's size, they need to be able to sell (to consumers, courts, governments) that they aren't being anti-competitive, so by switching to designs that are open and standardized (Thunderbolt 3 is a spec, not a patent) they can better sell their market dominance as not driven by patents and lawyers.

I would definitely agree with that. Having bought into the Apple ecosystem brings software features that you can't get elsewhere.

Yeah, that's the stupid part about tech specs honestly--so many hidden caveats--I always thought it was interesting that Apple benchmarks usually outperform competitors when comparing similar hardware, usually to things like this.

Mostly annoyed now, because you are correct, it's running at 15W[0][1].

[0] https://imgur.com/a/ry5eAIy

[1] source for [0] (pg 11) https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/xps-13-7390-2-in-1-laptop_se...