hobbyjogger

This vastly oversimplifies the notion of what is "good" or "fair" in a given situation. Just because we can generally agree on classifying simple objects like a boat or a house doesn't entail that we share a universal notion about the virtuous thing to do in a given situation. Humans (even in the same society/environment) have wildly differing ideas about moral issues like abortion, assisted suicide, medical testing on animals/stem cells, etc. Consider this chart from a 2010 Gallup Poll: https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Pro...

Agreed 100%. Essentially no employees (and nearly no founders outside of your unicorns) have anti-dilution protections against future investment.

Essentially explained by the timing of Git adopting this policy (and actually having a trademark to enforce): https://public-inbox.org/git/20170202022655.2jwvudhvo4hmueaw...

Sort of the opposite. The point I'm making (and the author misses) is that a business decision to make huge profits by representing a "bad guy" in society's eyes isn't remotely equivalent to a moral decision that even the worst (and poorest) offenders in our criminal justice system deserve to have a competent advocate on their side. The public defender is admirable precisely because he or she is driven by a belief in justice despite public criticism and low pay - not simply because it's a lucrative opportunity to generate profits.

Consider that Boies makes more in a (long) day working for Weinstein than some public defenders stand to make in a year. Boies has plenty of other clients he could work for and be paid lucratively - public defenders don't have the luxury of choosing their cases (and aren't in it for the money).

Agreed with ss108. Sure, there are a few law schools (among other higher education institutions) that have overreacted to "wokeness." But that plus a few anonymous accounts from (mostly junior) practicing attorneys doesn't at all mean that the movement has "taken over" America's legal system.

Consider that skilled developers might, on principle, prefer not to work at Facebook/Google or in the defense industry, etc. Maybe they just don't agree with the means and ends that a company uses to generate large profits (and salaries). So sure, a good attorney might prefer not to use his or her rare talents to support a business that gets paid millions of dollars to support/justify a cause/person/business/policy that the attorney doesn't personally agree with. Nothing wrong with that - and certainly not proof that the legal system (or tech industry) has been "taken over" by those who simply prefer to work at other firms with missions they believe in.

I don't at all disagree that Weinstein has as much of a right to effective legal counsel as the rest of us.

I'm just pointing out the obvious: there's an enormous difference between (i) an indigent defendant's right to a public defender in a murder trial and (ii) the "right" to be represented in a civil suit by one of the most successful, famous and expensive lawyers in the country. The first is a constitutional right - the second is a market transaction (on both sides).

Same here (M&A/VC lawyer for nearly a decade). Agree 100% on all of the above.

I became skeptical right off the bat when she compared Boies' civil representation of Weinstein (at ostensibly $2,000+ per hour) to the defense attorneys who volunteered to represent Guantanamo detainees.

Not affiliated but this AR tech seems promising:

https://carear.com/

Delaware (and all or at least most other states) requires at least one member on the board of directors for any corporation, whether it's private or public.

At a $0 valuation (assuming that's accurate) you'd be paying almost nothing to participate in the round (assuming you had a contractual right or were given the opportunity to participate).

It's much more sophisticated than just (a) do you or did you work there and (b) did you make money on a trade.

I work at a law firm that does public M&A deals and we occasionally get inquiries from the SEC about, e.g., people that went to my high school (but a different class year) who bought stock in a company my firm did work for in the months leading up to the deal. Obviously neither me or the other person ever worked at either company (or even had any connection to them), but they still identify us as a potential risk because I could have potentially obtained insider info through the firm and then passed it on.

> Even if there is some legislation that goes beyond that structure (honestly interested in seeing a few cases)

It's extremely rare, approaching nonexistent, for laws to have a precise, deterministic meaning because the vast majority of human language doesn't either. Here's a good example from CodeX (Stanford Center for Legal Informatics) that assesses an extremely simple law, which contains a surprising amount of ambiguity[0]:

> "One technical problem with Computational Law, familiar to many individual with legal training, is due to the open texture of laws. Consider a municipal regulation stating "No vehicles in the park". On first blush this is fine, but it is really quite problematic. Just what constitutes a vehicle? Is a bicycle a vehicle? What about a skateboard? How about roller skates? What about a baby stroller? A horse? A repair vehicle? For that matter, what is the park? At what altitude does it end? If a helicopter hovers at 10 feet, is that a violation? What if it flies over at 100 feet?

[0] https://law.stanford.edu/2016/01/13/michael-genesereths-comp...

That line in the summary is a bit misleading. The authors didn't find a "bug" in any law - instead they found a corner case that wasn't coverred by an online tool hosted by the French government to estimate family benefits under French law:

> After close inspection of the OpenFisca code, a discrepancy was located with the Catala implementation. Indeed, according to article L755-12 of the Social Security Code, the income cap for the family benefits does not apply in overseas territories with single-child families. This subtlety was not taken into account by OpenFisca, and was fixed after its disclosure by the authors.

Here's the pull request for their fix to the benefits simulator: https://github.com/openfisca/openfisca-france/issues/1426

My uncle sometimes puts his shoes on the wrong feet and once managed to put his jeans on backwards (buttoned but not zipped behind him). As he walked past the doorway my mom (his sister) said, "Your pants are on backwards!"

Without missing a beat, he countered, "Maybe I was going the other way..." and sort of moonwalked back the way he came.

That's tragic--but let's keep it in context. It happened before WWII. Some of these young boys were wearing shorts and sandals (without hats) in a blizzard, climbing up a mountain slope with a 70% gradient (black diamond ski slopes start at 40%), without any sort of topological or detailed map, no lights, no ability to communicate with the outside world and one adult to supervise 27 students. I can't imagine any of those things are true for Gumby's trip.

> What is curious to me is that elite marathon runners "jog" at what I would consider being a sprint for myself. So, I wonder if sprinting would be an anaerobic or aerobic exercise for myself?

Everyone has an anaerobic threshold (the level of exertion at which the body transitions from aerobic to anaerobic systems).[0] But your AnT is much, much lower than an elite marathon runner's due to years of training designed to increase running economy.[1]

So what is a sprint to you (e.g. anaerobic exercise) would be a jog to Kipchoge or Bekele (e.g. aerobic exercise). If you are able to run fast enough to make yourself gasp for air, you've just done some aerobic exercise!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactate_threshold#Lactate_meas... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Running_economy

> In many US states, the frequent problem is that the agent who is showing you homes (and who you tend to think of as "your agent") is not actually your agent (with fiduciary duty to you), but a subagent of the seller (with fiduciary duty to them).

Subagency was common up until the 90s but is exceedingly rare in today's market (and outright illegal in many states). In 2019, it is not at all a "frequent" problem.

Great comment. Here's a good page from CodeX: The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics[1].

> "One technical problem with Computational Law, familiar to many individual with legal training, is due to the open texture of laws. Consider a municipal regulation stating "No vehicles in the park". On first blush this is fine, but it is really quite problematic. Just what constitutes a vehicle? Is a bicycle a vehicle? What about a skateboard? How about roller skates? What about a baby stroller? A horse? A repair vehicle? For that matter, what is the park? At what altitude does it end? If a helicopter hovers at 10 feet, is that a violation? What if it flies over at 100 feet?

> The resolution of this problem is to limit the application of Computational Law to those cases where such issues can be externalized or marginalized. We allow human users to make judgments about such open texture concepts in entering data or we avoid regulatory applications where such concepts abound.

> A different sort of challenge to Computational Law stems from the fact that not all legal reasoning is deductive. Edwina Rissland [Rissland et al.] notes that, "Law is not a matter of simply applying rules to facts via modus ponens"; and, when regarding the broad application of AI techniques to law, this is certainly true. The rules that apply to a real-world situation, as well as even the facts themselves, may be open to interpretation, and many legal decisions are made through case-based reasoning, bypassing explicit reasoning about laws and statutes. The general problem of open texture when interpreting rules, along with the parallel problem of running out of rules to apply when resolving terms, presents significant obstacles to implementable automated rule-based reasoning."

[1] https://law.stanford.edu/2016/01/13/michael-genesereths-comp...

> In many jurisdictions of the United States, promissory estoppel is an alternative to consideration as a basis for enforcing a promise. It is also sometimes called detrimental reliance.

Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel#Promissory_estoppel_2

PDF: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refe...

The dividend provision just says that the common won't get a dividend unless the preferred has already received their 6% (per year). It doesn't mean that you couldn't issue the preferred a smaller dividend--that would just count toward the 6% but still wouldn't allow the common to get a dividend until the remainder is paid out to the preferred.

It's relatively rare for venture backed startups to issue ordinary course dividends anyway (for the reason you stated, funding development/growth is typically seen as a better use of company cash to try to get to a big exit or IPO, etc.).

Comment above:

> Women also do remarkably well in ultrarunning.

Yes, a world record is always remarkable in the general sense.

But in this specific context (discussing the coach's claim that women are "more capable of long-distance peak performance"), I wanted to point out that women's ultrarunning world records are not particularly better or worse than women's world records at other distances, even sprints.

Camille's run wasn't particularly remarkable--about 10% slower than the men's 100 mile record.

Much more amazing to me is that this 10% performance difference holds remarkably steady for men and women's performance in a great range of distances, both running and swimming[0].

[0] - https://sportsscientists.com/2007/10/women-vs-men-part-ii-th...

> I replaced my Moto G3 with a 6S Plus

I have plenty of issues with Motorola (and the Android OS update situation) but you bought a budget $250 phone. Not particularly surprising that the customer care and updates etc. weren't on par with a phone that retailed for 3 times that.

Good point.

I worked one summer at a five-star hotel in a ski town in the rockies. At various times and for various clients (typically on short notice) we (1) hosted a banquet for a former U.S. president that involved locking down the hotel with the secret service, (2) drove 2 of the hotel's SUVs 100+ miles round trip to buy dozens upon dozens of suitcases for a member of the Saudi royal family, (3) turned a conference room into a fiber connected operations center for a team of high-frequency traders that was visiting from NYC for two weeks.

I am certain that the hotel manager would have told all of these guests that we would absolutely find a way to handle their requests, no problem. And we did. That is part of the reason they were at that particular hotel in the first place.

That's essentially Rayiner's point--focusing on large payouts is not an effective response to this concern.

In states with a cap on the maximum medmal claim, the cap often "saves" the defendant money in situations where docs/hospitals really did screw up badly. But that cap has not effect on small, frivolous lawsuits where the doc/hospital weren't at fault.

(marginally) improving traffic (a bit) ≠ saving us from our transportation woes

Austin still has a long, long way to go.

The scooters definitely aren't "ruining Austin" but they're not "saving" it from transportation woes either. The percentage of drivers who live close enough to downtown to hop on a scooter instead of taking car is pretty small.

For example, only 4% of Austin commuters live within 2 miles of their workplace [0]. Commuters in Westlake and P-Ville, etc. are definitely NOT trading in their cars to get on a scooter (if you could even find one) and then riding it down the highway for 30 minutes. Especially in 100 degree heat.

[0] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8eBZN5u...

None of those are donations, nor are they anywhere near being tax deductible.

Again, you're focused on a totally different issue. There's nothing wrong with splitting costs or reimbursing a friend who bought you something.

Splitting rent or cab fare, etc. is fine, but that certainly doesn't mean a H.S. kid can receive $50k in "donations" in his/her personal bank account without worrying about the tax implications. That's the issue the OP is trying to address.

Plenty of high school kids have bank accounts here. That's not the issue.

The problem is that a personal bank account doesn't qualify as a non-profit under U.S. tax laws. So donors can't write off the donation and the kid would be assessed income taxes on the donation.

True, judges often don't come right out and say it in so many words, but many, many courtroom decisions involve an underlying assessment of the "fairness" of the situation presented. The concept of fairness is a fundamental component of scores of legal doctrines and it simply isn't possible--in either the analytical sense or the psychological sense--to make these sorts of decisions without taking a view on what is "fair" or "just", etc.

For example, "unconscionable contracts" are unenforceable [1], custody disputes are resolved based on the "best interests of the child" test [2], and a cop's reasonable suspicion is judged by the "totality of the circumstances" [3].

All of these and many more require (some more explicitly than others) the judge to determine what is "fair" so that he or she can fairly apply law and precedent to a specific set of facts. This is much more common than you might think (and than many in the legal community would like to admit).

If you find this topic interesting, I would encourage you to read about the differences between deductive reasoning (like math) and inductive reasoning (like fairness). Some court decisions truly are deductive, but most are not.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability

[2] http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/134/Supplement...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totality_of_the_circumstances