schlumpf

Another example: I use Screen Sharing to manage multiple Macs on my network. Each host gets a Screen Sharing window, and I maximize each window (whose virtual resolutions are forced to my physical monitor size) and then toggle between them and other workspaces using Spaces. I need the screen real estate so I would never have multiple host windows in the same workspace.

The accounting fraud was a response to vanishing profitability brought on by the Dot Com bust [0].

[0] https://harbert.auburn.edu/binaries/documents/center-for-eth...

Lead cyclists take turns riding at the front of the pack (the peloton, from which the company took its name), blocking the apparent wind and allowing teammates to ride in their slipstream. The protected riders use less energy to maintain the same pace.

Using gimp as a verb can also be a sly reference to Pulp Fiction: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bring%20out%...

This would in turn cause a different group of PMs (portfolio managers, in this case) to borrow Netflix stock and sell short. Paying up-front production costs on an asset being provided only to users whose revenues the company has already captured is a suboptimal use of equity capital -- to put it gently.

Good questions. Two differences to consider vis a vis past late cycle moments: US corporate profits haven't peaked, and the politicians could have a better claim on being part of the problem than on being part of the solution. I was tempted to add "leverage" but that's too slippery for a concise discussion.

Profits: it took about two years peak-to-trough for profits/GDP to correct during the past two recessions. Unless you see sudden stop risk, this suggests the US corprorate sector isn't staring down the barrel of a massive deleveraging...yet.

Politics: public support for legislative non-compromise does not speak to the kinds of policy fixes applied in 2008-9. Executive belligerence toward the Fed doesn't seem helpful either. As much as markets may have appeared to ignore US political risks while momentum was positive, it seems credulous to think this more of a divorce than a separation.

There are other quantitative arguments that the turn in the cycle is not here yet (e.g. employment, notwithstanding participation rate). But the prospect of a return to political gridlock is, to me, the most important risk contrast with recent past cycles.

Your retail store analogy is a red herring. A browser plugin that “maximizes the chances of bypassing paywalls” is attempting not to be party to a transaction, because if it succeeds, the user has expressly not agreed to the seller’s terms.

Instead your position appears analogous to arguing that altering a driver’s license to gain free admission to a cinema by misrepresenting oneself as entitled to senior citizen terms of entry is justifiable despite being prohibited by law in that jurisdiction.

It’s clear from this and other posts that you have articulate, principled view on many issues. So why aren’t you addressing the underlying economic issue? Publishers, like any business, need to earn revenue. If technological barriers to accessing intellectual property — and the legal protection thereof — are not valid (your claim of “frivolous overenforcement”), whose economic rights supersede the content producers? And why?

You are being unnecessarily abrasive.

I ride the streets that I'm speaking about. San Francisco has a team of engineers who redesign road infrastructure, markings, and signage to promote safe cycling. I think they do good work and I benefit directly from their work. I think the infrastructure is better suited to cycling than your dismissive comment implies.

I disagree with your characterization that the risks to motor vehicle-bicycle interactions are fairly small risks as long as motorists are diligent. But I don't suggest that you accept my risk assessment. My equivalence is grounded in California law[0]. Cyclists have equal responsibility with other drivers. Both groups of vehicles need to be operated diligently.

[0] http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection....

I don't follow your argument. Grandparent had pointed out correct cyclist behavior at intersections to avoid accidents. Parent had commented that both motorists and "especially" cyclists made mistakes resulting in violations of traffic rules and expected behavior. I added the observation that many cyclists' incorrect behavior in San Francisco is willful, not only accidental.

Both parent and I agree with GP's point that, "Turning conflicts...are a significant hazard to cyclists"; I simply argued for vigilance in the presence of deliberate rule-breaking by cyclists. Surely you would not argue for less vigilance by motorists? SF drivers are a whole other rant...

If you meant to say that I am making a hasty or sweeping generalization, I did no such thing. I make no claim as to the proportion of two-wheeled scofflaws. Anybody who rides in SF can see it, and some riders have owned up in child comments herein. If your complaint is against motorists who justify their own shitty driving with claims that cyclists are 'always' flouting the rules, then I agree that this is dangerously fallacious. But such a sweeping generalization nonetheless starts with cyclists who clearly break traffic rules.

That's why I wish they would stop. This is about saving lives. And if you are also a rider then you know the apportionment of blame becomes moot when 1800kg of SUV hits 80kg of cyclist. I think GP is absolutely right that good infrastructure design is key to avoiding such risks, but like all transportation systems it has to be built on the assumption that traffic rules will be followed.

Cyclists also willfully break traffic rules in SF with alarming regularity. Stop signs are generally regarded as ornamental, and even lightly traveled red lights. I am reminded of this every time my seven year-old cycling companion asks why such and such a person hasn't followed the rules when they blow past us.

Both classes of vehicles have to be diligent.

The press release hints strongly at their toolkit:

> improbably successful trading

Even before considering trading volume they can look at in-the-money trades as a proportion of total trades. Then I expect they would look at smaller denominators to see if timing correlated with the announcement cycle. The use of short-selling would have made it (relatively) easier still to pick up: assuming the company was ~200MM market cap at the end of 2014, of which 28% was held by management and their strategic shareholder [proxy statement 20150417], borrow could have been expensive enough to limit the holding periods of short trades.

As you and other commenters have pointed out, simple screens can indeed be effective. A short-term, infrequent trader (or small group of traders assuming, um, collusion) with a high win rate and presumably high risk-adjusted return would stick out.

How could the board kick out a CEO founder given the vertiginous increase in equity valuations said founder presided over? Because those valuations are only meaningful to end investors (i.e. the LPs) when shareholders experience positive cash flow. At Uber the opposite is happening. Why shouldn't we assume, then, that the board realizes Uber is headed for a fatal pinch[0] and has acted accordingly?

Bloomberg in April reported[1] Uber's cumulative cash burn at US$8 bn since its founding in 2009. You can argue that Travis Kalanick presided over rising valuations but so far there is no evidence of an increase in book value per share. Conversely that cash burn risks being crystallized as "value destruction" if revenue growth stalls.

The alleged personnel issues, the lawsuit, the bad press -- they are history and the firm has no choice but to cope with them. But failing to improve net margin can be quickly fatal and if that is happening then the other issues remain relevant. TK, who also presided over those, becomes part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

[0] http://paulgraham.com/pinch.html [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-14/embattled...

This. Particularly the need for a minimum standard project structure.

Pipenv shows its pedigree and looks like a great tool...that also overlaps significantly with conda. What are the use cases that Pipenv addresses better than/in lieu of conda?

Because, the IRS.

In our house the question is used to ascertain whether the child heard his parent and if so, the probability of compliance with the request/observation/dire threat to the well-being of a favored toy. At no time has it been construed by any of the parties as the parent (noun) requesting permission to parent (verb).

There were various related rumors circulating at the time. You can draw your own conclusions but please allow others to share what is only available as oral history.

My personal favorite (heard in Beijing in the early 2000s) was the story that the Chinese military were monitoring the newly deployed American stealth fighters during the Belgrade bombing and had managed to get radar lock on one (or more) of the F-117As from their embassy. The Americans, the story goes, wanted no more of this and bombed the Chinese embassy.

According to The Font of all Knowledge [0] three Chinese "reporters" were killed in what the CIA admitted was its own bombing operation. It has long been common knowledge that the Chinese government uses the Xinhua news agency as a cover for clandestine operatives [1].

True or false, it'still an inventive rumor.

[0] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_bombing_of_the...) [1] (http://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/20/world/in-watching-hong-kon...)

If it were Jet.com buying Wal Mart, then no you would not be alone. That it's a bricks-and-mortar behemoth buying a startup facing an uphill battle against a much larger online incumbent seems altogether more rational this time around.

We are talking about the Philippines. The guns do come from the US. The entire country is heavily armed -- compared to most countries -- especially Mindanao. Bullets are widely available. Some people would say this is exactly why the situation is not going to calm down and certainly not quickly.

Rephrase that juxtaposition as "teach everyone to read" and "only admit the top 1% [to elite universities]". Now you have gone from potentially contradictory normative statements to an uncontroversial description of the educational systems in most countries today.

Public education was a bastion of American liberal democracy [0]. But adult literacy is not merely an egalitarian project. It was and is an important source of average labor productivity gains. At the same time businesses practice elitism where it, too, is consistent with the profit motive.

I'm not sure what's to be gained from hiring C+ English graduates to staff the New York Times, nor from hiring 55th percentile CS grads to bootstrap your next startup. Let a business hire the best employees for the job to maximize marginal productivity, and by all means keep teaching people to code where it can raise average productivity.

[0](http://tjrs.monticello.org/letter/334)

At least mgnacl's nick is explicit in telling you to take his/her comment with a grain of salt.

Parent was likely referring to the prevalence of stage races e.g. Tour de France in pro cycling. Unlike one-day triathlons, recovery is a crucial determinant in stage racing success. That's where anabolic steroids do their work.

> almost all of the value capture takes place way before a company is worth it

Then almost all of the investment risk must similarly take place way before a company is "worth it". Unless you are proposing the divorce of expected risk from expected return.

As you say, many cyclists fail to stop at signed intersections. Clearly the knowledge that "I have to stop" isn't having its desired effect. So who exactly are you worried about not complying with a relaxed standard?

Surely not the cautious people who stop at the Muni tracks on Church and Duboce while a torrent of riders streams past them across the middle of the intersection. The cautious ones already have enough common sense to observe the laws of physics.

Surely not the people whose goal is never to dab (put a foot down) between SoMa and Outer Richmond. They don't care much for stop signs -- or red lights, or lanes, or the product of mass times velocity.

So is there really a constituency of borderline nut jobs who currently observe stop signs but would suddenly turn into reckless maniacs on two wheels if yielding were "legalized"? I'm probably in this camp and I can tell you that I already roll through the Wiggle when the coast is clear...and assuming a car hasn't already waved me through. Sorry but it's hard to believe that allowing bikes to yield would turn me into a social menace.

Leaving aside the difficulty of finding living Holocaust survivors in 2015.

The answer to your question probably lies in the old joke, "Why are bureaucrats so vicious? Because the stakes are so love."

At investment banks the stakes are high -- particularly at junior levels. So people endure. Or at least they try to.

The workhorse experience you're asking about doesn't exist at senior levels, which makes surviving long enough to move up the food chain an objective in and of itself. But what typically motivates people to accept such persistent sleep deprivation is expected future income. E($$$), for you operator fans, increases pretty much monotonically for each day you don't quit or get fired or succumb to a more tragic outcome.

If you're curious as to how this behavior became so deeply ingrained in "Wall Street" culture, start with real-time news. M&A work is often done overnight because priorities change as stock prices move, and because regulatory disclosures during quiet hours are often preferred to the middle of the trading day. Bankers and clients want to act while they have breathing room before news "hits the tape". And during the day, propaganda -- sorry, pitch books -- has to be updated to reflect the market moves and latest news.

This circularity hits the trading side of the business, too. Research analysts are paid to have a fresh view on the markets every day. In my experience this is institutionalized nonsense but it also pays the bills for said analysts. So you spend as much time as humanly possible trying to find quantitative fig leaves to dress up those new things you are obliged to say.

Consider also that a building full of smart people has a skewed and thin-tailed distribution of brain power. Unless you are Mensa material, it can seem easier to establish your claim on a (you hope) fat bonus through back-breaking work than by sleeping well and acting creatively. Naturally this idea has occurred to some of your colleagues as well and pretty soon it's a race to insomniac oblivion.

The guys (and it is almost exclusively guys) who make it to senior levels and get back their sleep while still getting paid have usually figured out how to take credit for others' efforts. That's not meant as a cynical comment but as an observation of what is sometimes euphemistically called "getting lift" from one's team. For a much more entertaining description of this pattern, I highly recommend Stanley Bing's "Sun Tzu Was a Sissy"[1].

[1]http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Tzu-Sissy-Stanley-Bing-ebook/dp/B0...

A company’s valuation multiple can be highly sensitive to the choice of denominator. You are making an apples-to-grapefruits comparison by trying to equate “seller discretionary revenue” with US GAAP net income per share.

The SDR calculation [1] excludes compensation and looks like a generous net revenue measure. Earnings per share -- from which P/E multiples on public companies are typically calculated -- includes compensation, interest expense, various non-cash adjustments, and adjustment for dilution.[2] Generally you would expect the SDR number to be higher than net income and correspondingly attract a lower multiple in estimating firm value.

As others have commented, there are additional reasons why valuation metrics for large-cap listed companies don’t make for useful comparison with SaaS startups. See also Heidi Roizen’s cautionary tale [3] about the perils of multiple envy.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9589223

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earnings_per_share see also ../Net_income

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9516910