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?

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Gazpacho posted:

I hope the current crop of online "do my chores so I can bask in bourgeois awesomeness" companies all get screwed.

Cripes, I didn't know this was a thing. I hate everything.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2016 07:14

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 01:30

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

This very thread is full of future unicorns.

OR ELSE!

I'm proud to announce a new cloud-based executive HR app.

It pings you when

there are so few women employed in a division of your company that you will start to have PR problems,
when press articles about your company and selected terms, such as "women", "chicks", "discrimination" "atmosphere", "it all", and "rape" appear in news feeds.

Our new product fully interfaces with your HR systems to automatically generate job listings, move individuals between divisions to balance quotas, hire female applicants without dependents, and (of course) "recycle" those female employees when their healthcare costs change, harassment complaints are lodged or benefits are close to vesting.

All of these useful tools are run using a proprietary algorithm that combines "set it and forget it" convenience with a lack of transparency or direct user accountability- everything a busy tech executive needs.

Bindr is going live in Q3 2016. We're now looking for investors to help scale up our systems and improve cross-platform access and synergy.

We're also looking for partners for an expanded app that interfaces with employee ID and profile image systems. Using new facial recognition and skin tone detection metrics, we'll soon be able to provide similar employment/disemployment services for a much broader range of troublesome image groups. ~~IndenturaSlavr~~Kooli will also generate press-friendly mixed-demo employee gathering photos on the fly.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Feb 9, 2016

# ¿ Feb 9, 2016 19:59

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Peel posted:

_{Traitr is purely a matchmaking intermediary and accepts no legal liability related to the content or nature of the information transferred by users.}

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 03:52

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

I talked to a corporate lawyer once, and they full on admitted that once they decided they had a market in a certain area, it's nice to have the tax cuts, but them not passing through the County/State Legislature wasn't expected to stop them from building their latest storefront. Anecdotal, I know, but I think about it every time another company threatens they're totally going to take up root and move to X if sweet deal Y doesn't come through.

Companies absolutely will do this. It's dependent on whether the costs of moving seem to outweigh the benefits, and in particular there's a secondary benefit of moving- it adds to your company's reputation as a ruthless negotiator. Larger companies are more able to toe this line. Walmart is infamous for forcibly rearranging whole legal regimes, then pulling multiple stores on a pretext if something doesn't go their way.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2016 18:34

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

blowfish posted:

Who is pdp anyway, one of those guys famous for being famous?

Scarecams, LPs, pulling facial expressions, wacky voices, rampant misogyny and rape jokes until it threatened his revenue due to goons calling him on it.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2016 21:02

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

eSports Chaebol posted:

The utopian ideal of free software is quite feasible, just not in a society with pesky stuff like "copyright law". If publishing software were treated the same way as say, publishing scientific findings (guess we're leaving drug studies out of this one!), then ideally everyone would be contributing to a shared corpus of software that everyone could build upon and improve over time. While in the big picture, information (in the computer sense) is pretty dang far from the base of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, it is the first technology we've developed where scarcity is almost purely artificial; and of course, as a society we choose to enforce that artifice.

Then again, pointing out that copyright is an artificial monopoly is cutting it a lot closer to, "La propriete, c'est le vol" than most anyone wants to.

That's, um, not how scientific publications mostly work, either. It's an area of massive conflict in academic publishing as well, but "open access" is still very, very far from universal-particularly because open access frameworks have had difficulty shouldering the costs of maintaining, editing, and hosting publications. Of course, this has led to the emergence of a "let's crowdsource editing and have no pre-publication review" movement, which is a colossal nightmare- but at that point we're back to talking about entrepreneurs trying to "disrupt" scientific research as a whole.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Feb 13, 2016

# ¿ Feb 13, 2016 22:37

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Gabe Newell's an incredible businessman. Has he ever invested in anything that wasn't a huge suc

# ¿ Feb 13, 2016 23:08

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Pope Guilty posted:

Ricochet was a free mod so idk what you're on about.

It was released as a free mod because after they made all its systems work(and there was a lot involved to get the kind of collisions they wanted working, for the time) they realized it was janky and deeply unfun, and could not be incorporated into any sort of profitable product. It's why "Richochet 2 announced" jokes are still made. The only other thing that came close from Valve was Alien Swarm, but they actually got a lot of indirect benefit from that- I actually think some of its systems went into Dota et al.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 22:12 on Feb 14, 2016

# ¿ Feb 14, 2016 21:21

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I am an idiot. Someone explain alibaba to me. Everything I read about it is unapproachably dense.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2016 21:45

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

duz posted:

Wouldn't that just be whatever app Sovereign Citizens use?

That would be Joindr.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2016 21:05

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Armani posted:

Can someone explain to me how something like Etsy works with it being almost entirely knock off fanart stuff? The quality isn't the factor but licensing and intellectual properties. How is that place not sued into oblivion by someone like Nintendo?

A couple things:

1. The DMCA has a safe harbor provision for content hosts that says they can host infringing material if they qualify. Qualifying involves jumping through a lot of hoops, and involves having a specific process for reporting infringing content. Youtube does this.
2. Nobody, including IP holding companies, really cares about Etsy.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2016 03:08

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Uber is about to get a massive publicity boost.

Money quote:

quote:

Authorities said they are investigating whether Uber driver Jason Brian Dalton may have given a harrowing ride to a passenger shortly before embarking on a shooting spree in Kalamazoo, Mich., that killed six � and that they are looking into whether Dalton may have continued picking up fares in the middle of his rampage.

That's the opening graf- the whole article is basically Voldemort seeking sustenance in the Dark Forest. I strongly recommend giving it a read.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Feb 22, 2016

# ¿ Feb 22, 2016 20:36

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Arsenic Lupin posted:

How to make your PR team cry from the Guardian

The other .27 are dead.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2016 01:59

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

axeil posted:

so who do we all hate more now, finance or tech?

Tech, because they made the finance people that much worse/more powerful.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2016 21:22

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

What we need is an app that helps VCs identify projects to invest in, like a closed-system kickstarter for sociopaths. Ventur?

# ¿ Feb 23, 2016 22:34

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Subjunctive posted:

It's called AngelList. Or maybe YC.

drat. I shoulda known it already existed...that's ok, it's ok. Ummm... here.

Ventura is a promising new app that helps you select the startup company funding selection app that best suits your needs.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 00:03

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

OwlFancier posted:

Does it include a premium "Ace" service that gives you exclusive investment deals?

Subjunctive posted:

"Stanford mode"

"VirginView" gives you early access to our exclusive in-house big data algorithm for unicorn selection. Let the unicorns that lay golden eggs come to you!

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Feb 24, 2016

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 02:08

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Belongs in the OP. I think this thread is gonna stick around for a while- it sounds like the parade of dead unicorns will last.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 00:05

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

What would a private Yahoo do, exactly?

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 22:33

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Is stack ranking and equivalent bellcurve-based employment metrics a means to this sort of raiding practice?

# ¿ Feb 27, 2016 00:24

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I'm familiar with what stack ranking is, I just wasn't sure if it was specifically a way to justify gutting a company while extracting value. It sounds like the answer is "hell yes".

# ¿ Feb 27, 2016 00:49

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Don't forget the part where Apple aggressively overstated and litigated a variety of IP claims to keep their "innovation" "unique".

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 03:02

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

ayn rand hand job posted:

rounded corners

Circular interface buttons in the lower center of the face. Slide to unlock. The layout of the icons on the menus, and all of the actual icons. Basically every element of the design, including a number of items that definitely predated Apple's use. I'm not in IP, but the cases involving the initial grant of those design patents are only starting to really be resolved- and I believe that in the interval Apple's had control of them.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Mar 1, 2016

# ¿ Mar 1, 2016 04:34

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Republicans posted:

Speaking of, I wonder how Soylent is doing as a company. I looked them up recently and apparently they've improved their product significantly (no more chalky texture or separate bottle of oils it mix in) so I went ahead and ordered some because I always thought the concept was neat.

Too bad they chose such a stupid name.

Please, don't give those psychos money. There are many better alternatives produced by people who don't make the darkest corners of reddit seem sane. They're also trying to skirt several FDA regulatory classifications that would subject them to greater scrutiny, while copying the design of products that are more fully FDA compliant.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 09:39 on Mar 17, 2016

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 09:35

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

To be clear, the problem of Soylent is about 40% the crazy guy who initially came up with it and 60% the soulless VC firm that now operates and markets it.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2016 23:02

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Subjunctive posted:

Huh. FDA does criminal when they get upset enough. I bet there's an all-Theranos-all-the-time thread I should soak up.

This is genuinely very difficult to get the FDA to do- they don't have the funds to pursue this kind of case often. That said, a big factor is probably the amount of media coverage Theranos got. Usually you'd have to intentionally kill multiple people with your product to get to criminal with FDA.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2016 05:19

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Arsenic Lupin posted:

What are the odds the SEC takes an interest if it looks as if the CEO should have known that the thing didn't work when she was selling it to investors?

I don't know, SEC's not my area. I just have some KOOL FDA FAKTS swirling around in my head.

...Maybe? Standards of evidence are very hard to meet for things that get executives indicted. "should have known", for executives, is hard to get to at the best of times.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Mar 19, 2016

# ¿ Mar 19, 2016 06:36

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

The fall of unicorns: investment opportunities in Silicon Death Valley.

# ¿ Mar 22, 2016 00:56

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

My favorite part is

"Though I still use Luxe frequently, it now often feels like just another luxury for people who have more money than time."

# ¿ Mar 23, 2016 19:04

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Anyone have a clear idea of the status of Box? I want to get my stuff out before it collapses.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 22:25

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

menino posted:

Always growth, never maturity. Bring it into the ecosystem. Spinning, ever spinning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rup3EdA0kw

# ¿ Mar 26, 2016 05:28

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Arsenic Lupin posted:

My son tells me that a very popular method of laundering now is to buy Steam games at full price, then sell the codes at bargain prices. Bad money becomes good.

They've tried to crack down on the practice quite a bit, but yeah, if you buy a steam code off the internet outside of Steam itself, you're probably supporting organized crime. Even the big secondary sellers have sometimes been caught getting codes from unverified sources.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2016 19:36

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

I have a lot of trouble understanding that this is where your money is going, then still paying it anyways. Like, I get the idea of comfort in abstraction, but come on, your copy of Hunie Pop or whatever is literally funding ISIS.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2016 00:57

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Marenghi posted:

Is it? I thought they'd be caught fairly quick and the keys revoked.

They get cycled through multiple users who are trying to profit from arbitrage in game prices, and across reseller organizations like G2A. Companies can mostly only stop individual batches of codes when they know that all of them were purchased fraudulently.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

Somebody walk me through this.

Criminy McCriminal has an unusual amount of money for their job, and is investigated by the IRS. IRS asks "where did this money come from?" Criminy responds: "Uh.. I dunno." Then gets into further trouble.

Alternately, Criminy buys a Steam code, then sells it for cash. Still has more money than accounted for, so IRS comes a-knocking. "Where did this money come from?" Criminy responds: "I got it by selling a steam code!" IRS asks: "where did you get that steam code?" Criminy responds: "Uh.. I dunno." Then gets into further trouble.

Other than making the chat with the IRS longer, how is this helpful?

The criminals are rarely in the US and their concern is cycling the account with which the money is associated. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has a "donation" in an account from one of his foreign backers. He knows that the US and other international law enforcement agencies can check activity and flow of money on accounts coming from the backer country. Alternately, Roman Seleznev has just finished purchasing account information for 50 credit cards. Both need to empty those accounts without directly transferring funds to their own main accounts.

Both will use the money to purchase program keys and sell them to someone at a loss(the payment for this sale goes to a different account), who in turn sells them to G2A, which sells them to some final user further down the line. Everyone profits off of this except the original criminal, but their money is now clean-they may have purchased and sold codes multiple times to be extra sure.

The same process is used with fake or stolen keys by criminals as a simple profit generator as well. The mix of functional and nonworking codes keep the system going.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Mar 27, 2016

# ¿ Mar 27, 2016 01:29

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Randler posted:

Financing a few criminal organizations more or less by buying Steam codes on the grey market doesn't really register as an ethical issue at this point.

More. Exclusively more.

# ¿ Mar 27, 2016 01:53

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Marenghi posted:

I find it odd steam is such an easy source for cashing out stolen cc''s. Just for the fact I assumed most keys sold online were purchased legally from eastern Europe where games are cheaper, much like Aussie's buy games in western Europe because they cost so much at home.

And also because steam seem so stringent on flagging suspicious purchases. Before I had a card I would borrow friends ones to make purchase and they always had to confirm the purchase due to getting flagged. And when I first got a card I was flagged, and since I been flagged during sales. More than any other store I use online steam seem to always get my purchase flagged as suspicious.

They've been adding on those purchase confirmations, and delays on gifts, and a variety of other checks, over time as the problem has become worse and worse.

Absurd Alhazred posted:

It's clear that organized crime will invest in my latest startup idea: �LaCartL, an app that automatically launders a stolen credit card with a touch of a finger.

Scramblr, a new app for randomly distributing equal amounts of funds among the accounts of all users. (some prcoessing delays may occur)

# ¿ Mar 27, 2016 05:03

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

The caveat I'd provide for the description blowfish gives is that it's really field dependent in some respects. This is because federal grant agencies and nonprofits both have centralized decisionmaking power to such a degree that individual differences in the associated grant officer change the approach to grant funding pretty dramatically. Problems with the quality of funded science (independent of grant-chasing) is also field (and grant officer) dependent in a pretty big way.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2016 18:17

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

To be fair to US grant funding agencies, the current policy problems they have are the result of 25 or so years of direct pressure from congress for all sorts of means and impact testing. Agencies are getting their research funding budgets cut, and their main defense to this has been to get researchers to demonstrate the (crazy, predetermined, rhetorically laden, economics-driven) impact of their research.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2016 19:26

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Emacs Headroom posted:

This is just going from what program officers for the NIH are saying. A score of 98 and a score of 95 don't have any meaningful distinction, it's which reviewers got your grant or how tired they were when they saw it.

You could argue that with a lot more effort we could get some more consistency from those scores, and sure, maybe, but I'm pretty bear-ish on our ability to really predict how beneficial or fruitful research is actually going to be for those grants in the 90+ score range.

Grant review is a horrible and arbitrary process- for most agencies it's not even blinded. A variety of political issues, again primarily stemming from congressional oversight, have rendered agencies afraid to change/improve things. There's a whole line of research I can do on the subject...after I get tenure. :sigh:

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Apr 3, 2016

# ¿ Apr 3, 2016 05:02

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# ¿ May 2, 2024 01:30

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

A little googling suggests that the title"Software Engineer" is not as regulated as the other categories- there's evidence of a couple states where it's protected, but generally not.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2016 02:47

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