Tech Nightmares: Ghostline the flux

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How many quarters after Q1 2016 till Marissa Mayer is unemployed?
	1 or fewer
	2
	4
	Her job is guaranteed; what are you even talking about?

eschaton: Mar 7, 2007; Don't you just hate when you wind up in a store with people who are in a socioeconomic class that is pretty obviously about two levels lower than your own?

WampaLord posted:

I think the difference there is that Disney just bought the rights to Star Wars, not an entire company with employees and offices and whatnot, as far as I'm aware.

Actually, all of LucasFilm Ltd. was sold to Disney, not just Star Wars.

For under 1/6 of a LinkedIn.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 03:10

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 18:39

eschaton: Mar 7, 2007; Don't you just hate when you wind up in a store with people who are in a socioeconomic class that is pretty obviously about two levels lower than your own?

MickeyFinn posted:

Does anyone know if this conference is recorded or live streamed or something? I want to watch this so bad. This isn't MBA bullshit hour, this is going to be a room full of experts on this subject and the only way she is going to escape direct and copious making GBS threads on her company's work (or lack thereof) is to say nothing of value at all.

Most scientific conferences aren't live streamed or anything like that, though many are recorded these days since the technology is so cheap and ubiquitous.

She's obviously going to present marketing fluff and get torn to shreds. And then go from that to a press conference with a hostile media...

I'm looking forward to tears.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 03:14

Liquid Communism: Mar 9, 2004; коммунизм хранится в яичках

eschaton posted:

Actually, all of LucasFilm Ltd. was sold to Disney, not just Star Wars.

For under 1/6 of a LinkedIn.

Yep. They got ILM and Skywalker Sound as well, already using them for their other movies.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 04:39

Coolness Averted: Feb 20, 2007; oh don't worry, I can't smell asparagus piss, it's in my DNA

GO HOGG WILD!
🐗🐗🐗🐗🐗

eschaton posted:

Actually, all of LucasFilm Ltd. was sold to Disney, not just Star Wars.

For under 1/6 of a LinkedIn.

Time will tell who got the better deal there!

# ? Jun 14, 2016 05:56

Tuxedo Gin: May 21, 2003; Classy.

Yeah, which is more valuable, an IP that made $700m in toy sales alone in 2015...

Or a third rate social networking platform that has never made a profit.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 06:04

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

Tuxedo Gin posted:

Yeah, which is more valuable, an IP that made $700m in toy sales alone in 2015...

Or a third rate social networking platform that has never made a profit.

Microsoft is trying to position itself as a very strong third player, after Facebook and....._^google+

# ? Jun 14, 2016 06:11

Tuxedo Gin: May 21, 2003; Classy.

I'm sure they'll find something to do with everyone's professional employment history.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 06:38

Peztopiary: Mar 16, 2009; by exmarx

Tuxedo Gin posted:

And, yet, young people being 63% less likely to have a credit card isn't age discrimination?

gently caress old people protectionism.

Are you really angry about protecting the elderly? Why?

# ? Jun 14, 2016 06:45

Tuxedo Gin: May 21, 2003; Classy.

Peztopiary posted:

Are you really angry about protecting the elderly? Why?

I am really angry about protecting one class of people but not another who are equally if not more at risk of discrimination in certain situations.

When you're 18-25, it can be very, very difficult to find safe, affordable housing. Hell, half the laws that enforce affording housing construction result in affordable 55+ communities.

I'm not saying kill the old people, but they are not the only ones subject to unfair discriminatory practices, and are not the only ones who deserve protection.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 07:03

Pochoclo: Feb 4, 2008; No...; Clapping Larry

B-but Lucasfilm is not TECH. It's all about being TECH don't you see. Headquarters in SILICON VALLEY! Ping-pong tables! Venture capital investors being the only source of valuation!
I'm sure it's all worth 26 billion because BIG DATA and BUZZWORD.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 07:23

MeruFM: Jul 27, 2010

i guess microsoft is a tech startup now

# ? Jun 14, 2016 07:30

eschaton: Mar 7, 2007; Don't you just hate when you wind up in a store with people who are in a socioeconomic class that is pretty obviously about two levels lower than your own?

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Microsoft is trying to position itself as a very strong third player, after Facebook and....._^google+

LinkedIn: The Windows Phone of Social Media

# ? Jun 14, 2016 07:42

Absurd Alhazred: Mar 27, 2010; by Athanatos

eschaton posted:

LinkedIn: The Windows Phone of Social Media

LinkedIn: Get Hired (If You Install Windows 10 by July)

# ? Jun 14, 2016 07:57

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

Solkanar512 posted:

There's no way that the employees and leased office space makes up for the cost difference between these examples.

I think Linked In owns their buildings. They're right next to Google, so they gotta be worth something.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 10:18

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

I'll laugh if they chop them up and sell it in tiny bits as "economy start up spaces"

# ? Jun 14, 2016 10:55

rscott: Dec 10, 2009

Don't firms like Microsoft have hundreds of billions of dollars in cash on hand? In that context I guess $26b for LinkedIn makes a little more sense with all the data in their system

# ? Jun 14, 2016 12:57

Mozi: Apr 4, 2004; Forms change so fast
Time is moving past
Memory is smoke
Gonna get wider when I die; Nap Ghost

It's probably more that whatever financial institutions represent each party are in cahoots with each other to get as high a price as possible for their own cut and there are a lot of credulous people in upper management who want to believe that they're onto something really special.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 13:04

pangstrom: Jan 25, 2003; Wedge Regret

nachos posted:

Uh why is she doing this again?

asdf32 posted:

50% chance she's operating under the delusion that some breakthrough test results will come through between now and then and when it doesn't she'll back out last minute.

I'd say "desperation" over delusion, but yeah. Word gets out nothing works so she had to throw out something concrete, and she kicked the concrete can down the road because what else was she going to do.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 13:07

Goa Tse-tung: Feb 11, 2008; ;3; Yams Fan

Mozi posted:

It's probably more that whatever financial institutions represent each party are in cahoots with each other to get as high a price as possible for their own cut and there are a lot of credulous people in upper management who want to believe that they're onto something really special.

but... that's illegal!

# ? Jun 14, 2016 13:24

Solkanar512: Dec 28, 2006; by the sex ghost

ShadowHawk posted:

I think Linked In owns their buildings. They're right next to Google, so they gotta be worth something.

Heh, kind of like how Yahoo is only worth money because of the Ali Baba stock they hold?

# ? Jun 14, 2016 13:29

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

They can write it down as a loss :v:

# ? Jun 14, 2016 13:53

Shifty Pony: Dec 28, 2004; Up ta somethin'

pangstrom posted:

I'd say "desperation" over delusion, but yeah. Word gets out nothing works so she had to throw out something concrete, and she kicked the concrete can down the road because what else was she going to do.

But why are they sending the CEO and not one (or more) of their lead researchers? She doesn't even have her BS and has by all accounts her involvement in the research is limited to ignoring people when they say something is physically impossible. She's going up against PhDs who live and breathe this stuff and have managed to float to the top of the research community which usually requires a keen eye for opportunities to point out where someone else hosed up. These people are going to eat her alive in Q&A.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 13:56

MickeyFinn: May 8, 2007; Biggie Smalls and Junior Mafia some mark ass bitches

eschaton posted:

Most scientific conferences aren't live streamed or anything like that, though many are recorded these days since the technology is so cheap and ubiquitous.

She's obviously going to present marketing fluff and get torn to shreds. And then go from that to a press conference with a hostile media...

I'm looking forward to tears.

Most of the conferences I go to have a secret link for people who can't be physically present. I assume that link will make it in to the wild.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 14:04

WampaLord: Jan 14, 2010

neonnoodle posted:

They can write it down as a loss

Yea, isn't this just a nice legal way of offsetting income for tax purposes? While simultaneously acquiring a shitload of user data.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 14:07

pangstrom: Jan 25, 2003; Wedge Regret

Shifty Pony posted:

But why are they sending the CEO and not one (or more) of their lead researchers? She doesn't even have her BS and has by all accounts her involvement in the research is limited to ignoring people when they say something is physically impossible. She's going up against PhDs who live and breathe this stuff and have managed to float to the top of the research community which usually requires a keen eye for opportunities to point out where someone else hosed up. These people are going to eat her alive in Q&A.

If it's a potential bloodbath it's probably better to have a person who knows some science but has media training/experience than to have a person who knows the science but gives talks/answers questions like a lot of scientists do. Obviously both would be ideal, but questions after talks are usually pretty predictable (other than stuff where your answer basically is unimportant, the "how does this relate to <thing I do>?" and the like) and to the extent she isn't already intimately, brutally aware of the difficulties etc. she can get coached up. It's probably going to have "look over here" field-limited stuff and/or it's going to focus on patient access and/or have "promising preliminary data" stuff and/or it's going to enumerate every single detailed thing their device CAN do. It's going to be a smokescreen, basically.

To put it a better way: lack of scientific or engineering knowledge is not going to be her problem. It's going to be finessing the fact that Theranos went live with bad tech and probably still has bad tech in front of an audience that is going to be giving her zero benefit of the doubt. The killer questions are going to be general -- "so just how big was the gap between your funding pitch claims and reality, and how badly did that snowball on you?" types of things that she's run away from to this point.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 14:37

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Tuxedo Gin posted:

I am really angry about protecting one class of people but not another who are equally if not more at risk of discrimination in certain situations.

When you're 18-25, it can be very, very difficult to find safe, affordable housing. Hell, half the laws that enforce affording housing construction result in affordable 55+ communities.

I'm not saying kill the old people, but they are not the only ones subject to unfair discriminatory practices, and are not the only ones who deserve protection.

Sounds like you meant to say gently caress the landlord.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 15:05

e_angst: Sep 20, 2001; by exmarx

MeruFM posted:

i guess microsoft is a tech startup now

After Dell went private they did this big in-company push with the tag line "The world's biggest start-up!" Like, they even changed the desktop backgrounds on everyone's work computers to that image.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 21:15

PT6A: Jan 5, 2006; Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane

I'm amazed Dell still exists at all, frankly.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 22:49

DoctorTristan: Mar 11, 2006; I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave, like this. Can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?

rscott posted:

Don't firms like Microsoft have hundreds of billions of dollars in cash on hand? In that context I guess $26b for LinkedIn makes a little more sense with all the data in their system

They have ~105bn in cash, but this deal is funded by issuing new debt.

# ? Jun 14, 2016 23:43

Paul MaudDib: May 3, 2006; TEAM NVIDIA:
FORUM POLICE

Sam Altman of YCombinator thinks this time is different:

quote:

A lot of people have been saying we�re in a tech bubble for quite some time. Someday they�ll be right, but in the meantime, I thought it'd be fun to look back at some articles from the last 10 years:

2007, Coding Horror -- Welcome to Dot-Com Bubble 2.0. �You might argue that the new bubble has been in effect since mid-2006, but the signs are absolutely unmistakable now.�

2008, Gigaom -- Is Linkedin worth $1B? �The valuation of $1 billion � not as insane as the [$15 billion] valuation placed by Microsoft on Facebook � was jaw dropping.�

2009, Wall Street Journal -- The Bursting of the Silicon Valley Bubble (2009 Edition). �Some think that this round of Silicon Valley blowups might be more damaging than the last.�

2010, Daily Beast -- Facebook's $56 Billion Valuation and More Signs of the Tech Apocalypse. �One analyst predicts Facebook will easily be worth $200 billion by 2015. Right on! And by 2020 it could be the first company with a $1 zillion market value, so buy-buy-buy, everybody!�

and, famously, Signal v. Noise, Facebook is not worth $33,000,000,000. "But the bullshit monopoly-money valuation merry-go-round has to stop."
2011, The Economist -- The New Tech Bubble (cover story). �Some time after the dotcom boom turned into a spectacular bust in 2000, bumper stickers began appearing in Silicon Valley imploring: �Please God, just one more bubble.� That wish has now been granted.�

2012, The Guardian -- Facebook�s IPO and the new tech bubble. �So yes, the collapse is beginning even as the bubble is filling. Some of us call this fun.�

2013, Gawker / ValleyWag -- The $4 Billion Secret: Don�t Bother Making any Money. �[Pinterest and Snapchat] were both recently, insanely valued by investors at around $4 billion . . . how is this not a bubble, and why aren't more people saying this is crazy?�

2014, Wall Street Journal -- David Einhorn: �We Are Witnessing Our Second Tech Bubble in 15 Years�. � �There is a clear consensus that we are witnessing our second tech bubble in 15 years,� said Mr. Einhorn.�

2015, TechCrunch -- The Tech Industry is in Denial, but the Bubble is About to Burst. �The fact that we are in a tech bubble is in no doubt. . . The tech startup space at the moment resembles the story of the emperor with no clothes.�

2016 -- And now Trump thinks we�re in a tech bubble too, so maybe it�s true.

http://blog.samaltman.com/were-in-a-bubble

The actual populace of YCombinator thinks he's crazy, but will keep on doing the dance as long as he's handing out the big bucks

# ? Jun 15, 2016 03:21

ShadowHawk: Jun 25, 2000; CERTIFIED PRE OWNED TESLA OWNER

DoctorTristan posted:

They have ~105bn in cash, but this deal is funded by issuing new debt.

Bond rates have been so low in recent years firms have been doing really strange things such as issuing new debt and then immediately using it to do a stock buyback.

# ? Jun 15, 2016 04:05

Coolness Averted: Feb 20, 2007; oh don't worry, I can't smell asparagus piss, it's in my DNA

GO HOGG WILD!
🐗🐗🐗🐗🐗

Paul MaudDib posted:

Sam Altman of YCombinator thinks this time is different:

http://blog.samaltman.com/were-in-a-bubble

The actual populace of YCombinator thinks he's crazy, but will keep on doing the dance as long as he's handing out the big bucks

"If this is a bubble then how come it hasn't burst? :smug:

" Yeah that's never been said before.

edit: Ha! That comment section is a goldmine, there are crazies who totally agree with him and flat out said "A bubble has to burst to be a bubble"

My favorite

quote:

The main difference between today and 1999 is that digital products are actually generating value in people's lifes. Please don't compare pets.com to WhatsApp

Yeah pets.com at least got Michael Ian Black a paycheck.

Coolness Averted fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Jun 15, 2016

# ? Jun 15, 2016 06:09

I would blow Dane Cook: Dec 26, 2008

T
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D
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# ? Jun 15, 2016 07:50

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Blood tests can't melt steel beams

# ? Jun 15, 2016 12:32

Freakazoid_: Jul 5, 2013; Buglord

PT6A posted:

I'm amazed Dell still exists at all, frankly.

They make good monitors.

# ? Jun 15, 2016 18:07

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

MickeyFinn posted:

Most of the conferences I go to have a secret link for people who can't be physically present. I assume that link will make it in to the wild.

If not, we should chip in to buy one of the people in the front row a GoPro. Disrupting the conference paradigm!

# ? Jun 15, 2016 18:56

Armani: Jun 22, 2008; Now it's been 17 summers since I've seen my mother

But every night I see her smile inside my dreams

Coolness Averted posted:

Yeah pets.com at least got Michael Ian Black a paycheck.

Timely: http://www.adweek.com/news/television/michael-ian-black-says-playing-petscom-sock-puppet-was-literally-painful-171867

# ? Jun 15, 2016 19:06

Halisnacks: Jul 18, 2009

Inspector Gesicht posted:

So, against the going price for LinkedIn and Candy Crush, was the Star Wars sale to Disney at 4 billion a steal? And it is it the only multi-billion property that will realistically turn a profit after it changes hands?

It's almost as if all capital, and not just venture capital, in the "tech" space is delusional.

# ? Jun 15, 2016 19:29

Quandary: Jan 29, 2008

I wholeheartedly agree with the thread title.

# ? Jun 15, 2016 19:43

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 18:39

JamesKPolk: Apr 9, 2009

Halisnacks posted:

It's almost as if all capital, and not just venture capital, in the "tech" space is delusional.

There's a rationality to it from a certain perspective... (or all capital in general is delusional).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11906691 posted:

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"

Or perhaps the more apt way of putting this in our times is: "Multiples will be crazy high as long as central banks keep interest rates crazy low"

Rather than thinking about this in terms of bubbles I think it's fair to say that the probability of getting very high ten year returns on the US stock market at these valuations is low.

The problem is there's no other asset that will give you the chance of a better return. That's no coincidence.

Apple's P/E is 10.85 according to Yahoo Finance. That's low given current interest rates.

EDIT: The average Nasdaq P/E is 22.55 ... This is historically high but is ~4.4% vs. the 10 year treasury being 1.61% (and I say that painfully as I attempted to go short at one point).

That is basically the story right there.

(Bolding mine).

Not to say there isn't a bubble, but this explains why a bit.

# ? Jun 15, 2016 21:51

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