fanzhang

14 ms·

91.
by fanzhang 8y ago
Rent-a-miner attacks seems to be another amusing example of when the existence of a market can break the system. For example, voting works well in a democracy, but if we can sell votes, democracy would likely collapse because rich organiz
92.
by fanzhang 8y ago
It's still a good proxy for how easy it is to do. The attacker could buy hardware, rent from people not on nicehash, etc. It's like how companies' market caps are determined by the the last few trades, even though the last f
93.
by fanzhang 8y ago
Can someone with historical experience starting a company with both a friend and a nonfriend comment about this? We get a lot of advice (e.g. pg) to start a company with friends, but we also get a lot of comments one way or the other, but w
94.
by fanzhang 8y ago
Out of all the organizations that do bad for public policy, you're going after Google. And out of all the things you can get Google for, you're going after the latent heat of their servers?
95.
by fanzhang 8y ago
John Deere has about 66K employees and Google has about 85K. Also, the former literally makes money by altering the environment whereas the latter is generally web-based. I think this is the exact point the OP is talking about: Google seem
96.
by fanzhang 8y ago
I hope this dies just like many laws the US tries to pass on regulating the Internet in a way that promotes special interests versus that of the public good. But as a thought experiment, if you were a lawyer tasked to argue this was publicl
97.
by fanzhang 8y ago
Free markets aren't always good at pricing things. For example highways wouldn't get built because of the holdout problem if there wasn't eminent domain. There is also such thing as inalienable rights: the ability to sell yo
98.
by fanzhang 8y ago
Has anyone noticed that this is brilliant content marketing by apility.io? Generate a controversial headline, news-jack a current event topic, and then disclaim at the end to prevent the serious backlash.
99.
by fanzhang 8y ago
Given that Elon Musk has been arguing with the mainstream media over Twitter recently, I'm not sure a NYT columnist has the most thoughtful view of Elon.
100.
by fanzhang 8y ago
For size limits, as logicians, we would think that companies would just split infinitely but that doesn't seem to be the case. For example ACA 2012 (Obamacare) applies the most onerous terms on companies greater than 50, but not a lot
101.
by fanzhang 8y ago
I agree that the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica debacle should have been prevented. I'm not totally sure what's the best legislation to have helped that while having the minimum side effects. As mentioned before, size limits i
102.
by fanzhang 8y ago
In legal contracts "whereas" often expresses sentiment but it's really the actual terms that matter. Having drafted a number of contracts, I feel most contracts generally have a section that approximates "whereas everyo
103.
by fanzhang 8y ago
Reading the law, I only see a single exception for small companies: Article 30.1 and 30.2 doesn't apply for companies less than 250 employees. Out of an 88 page law, 1% of an auxiliary middle of the law is carved out for small companie
104.
by fanzhang 8y ago
And if getting your "act together" is a substantial cost for small companies, no matter? The word choice almost presumes the conclusion, that data privacy rules are obvious, and cheap, and akin to just washing hands after using th
105.
by fanzhang 8y ago
True. So if we presume all the opoids are from human bodily waste, we would need divide by 10% (the amount excreted out): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxycodone#Metabolism Probably the molecule does break up with a
106.
by fanzhang 8y ago
Just to do the Fermi problem math for fun, how much heroin is needed to reach detectability in Puget Sound? Assume 1 ppq detection rates (like many spectroscopic methods claim to do). Puget sound is 110 km^3 or 1.10E14 liters of water. Tha
107.
by fanzhang 8y ago
Isn't lactose the ingredient that causes discomfort with lactose intolerant people's stomach's? As someone lactose intolerant, I looked at the citations and none of them claim A2 milk is lactose free, as I understand it.
108.
by fanzhang 8y ago
I hope not, but I think it's normal for newspapers to maximize revenue by playing up potentially mundane events.
109.
by fanzhang 8y ago
The store is still getting the customer, the retail rep is still getting the same call. What's so horrifying? I see this as leveling the playing field -- upper middle class people can already afford real assistants a la Tim Ferris; th
110.
by fanzhang 8y ago
Is it possible that in a regulated airline market $20k roundtrip went not into the marginal physical costs but regulatory overhead/profits/recovering fixed costs? If I showed you that a can of Coke in a Disney world vending machi
111.
by fanzhang 8y ago
You see it all the time in the insurance business -- when you make a claim many times insurance companies verify it. Yet insurance is still a good business. Sure, it's a nuisance, but ipso facto a bad business?
112.
by fanzhang 8y ago
Wait, making sure they're not getting defrauded is a bad business model?
113.
by fanzhang 8y ago
Is that right? It's not just Cyrillic, but actually Russian language? If so, that's pretty funny.
114.
by fanzhang 8y ago
A lot of other potential tenants are small anyway and have the same problems as WeWork Subsidiary LLC -- they can default and go under.
115.
by fanzhang 8y ago
It may be also of interest to note that WeWork's leases with their landlords are not signed with WeWork Inc, but instead with limited-liability subsidiaries that WeWork owns. This means that when the cyclical tenants leave, WeWork is n
116.
by fanzhang 9y ago
One problem is that the EU regulation is a losing fight technologically. Not that they can't affect the outcome, but that the regulations are going to be only effective in a small subset of cases. It's like copyright. Right now,
117.
by fanzhang 9y ago
The B2B market is huge, but still somewhat smaller than B2C. Look at the top tech companies by market cap today. Each is one that I've used as a consumer: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook. If you think the measure of dollar
118.
by fanzhang 9y ago
What if you could be more productive and happy at the same time? I do think it's not good to have a culture where productivity is the end goal of everything. Yet I also think it's not good to have a culture where the first time t
119.
by fanzhang 9y ago
I tend to agree with the $10 phone battery example, but not necessarily the TV or fridge example. Perhaps I'm biased because I know how to repair the first, but the latter two seems like I need to take time to learn the specialized sk
120.
by fanzhang 9y ago
What if our intuition is wrong about the relative costs, both economical and environmental of some repairs? In particular, just because a small part of a larger whole is broken, doesn't mean repair is the more economical or environmen

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