exactlysolved's comments

> For the moment at least, Clubhouse is chock full of cool and influential people.

There's a fundamental tension here. Cool and influential people want to hang out with other cool and influential people. Non-cool and non-influential people also want to hang out with cool and influential people. When you use your exclusivity to build popularity there's only one way it can play out. You can do it as slowly as possible or all in one big bang but it will happen.

There is not a big difference between those two statements. In fact they are identical in meaning.

> When it reach the cap, all your service stop working? This is incredibly user hostile.

So set your cap to a very high number, much higher than any amount you expect to be billed. Surely for everyone there is some number at which they would rather their services go down, than have to pay it?

I think error budgets are an excellent idea for this type of tension.

Release crap that breaks too often? OK, you have taken too much of another team's resources, and will have to release less and/or check your work much more carefully.

Release something that might look low quality to an outsider, but that actually works perfectly well? Fine - no negative consequences if nothing bad happens.

Not something I have direct experience of, but don't most engineers, designers working on hardware projects spend a similar amount of time working at a computer with a screen, keyboard and mouse as software people do? I assume that the vast majority of them are not in a fab/laboratory/solder station on a weekly basis.

The original story has been told for around 50 years with the widely noted implication "this was dickish behavior - they didn't have any particular preference for non-brown M&Ms but just wanted to mess with the people waiting on them". Even the 'debunkings' invariably recognize this interpretation of the original story.

Obviously part of the reason this story gets told a lot is because a lot of people, many of them management consultants who charge by the day for nuggets of catchy wisdom like this one, love the idea that organizations have a homogenous culture and the same ones that skimp on the buffet preparation also skimp on the rigging safety. Actually, this is complete fantasy. It's perfectly believable to think that the same boss makes sure the artists have everything in their dressing room they want, no matter how demanding, but thinks that they won't check the bigger, critical but more expensive stuff.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Not no evidence except the word of the person denying a story which paints them in a bad light.

If true, it is very surprising. Surely in most venues the people responsible for back stage hospitality are not the same people responsible for lighting, electrics, sound installation and stage safety? Isn't it quite likely that one of those teams would have met the requirements perfectly, and the other would have cut corners? How about the situation where extremely professional and scrupulous venues do all the important things right but resent having to sort M&Ms for overpaid stars? Wouldn't it have made more sense for Van Halen to have their own electrical inspectors who would check safety and reliability of the installation? How do other touring rock groups make sure everything is set up correctly? How did Van Halen come up with this particular canary test among all others?

Is it really that conspiratorial that an extremely famous 20 year old acted like a dick, and that at age thirty he made up a story to cover up his youthful dickishness?

Because the hit writers who are working for $100 a piece, are expecting that if their song gets picked up, they will share in its success through their publishing royalties.

This seems like a reductive view which is based on ignorance of how songwriting royalties work.

Songwriting credit is copyright in the music and lyrics of the song. Artist credit is copyright in a specific recording of a song.

So if you write a song which is a great song, and Arianna Grande records a lackluster version which nobody likes that much, but then several other artists pick up on the fact that it's a great song and record their own highly successful versions, then the songwriter would do very well from this, but Arianna Grande wouldn't share in the later success of the cover versions.

If Arianna gets a 30% writers credit just for putting her own 'vibe' on the original recording, then she participates in the upside of the cover versions, even though they might have been successful despite her rather than because of her.

Is this really the true story?

I see that claim a lot and it's obviously a nice story. But isn't it quite likely that they were just acting like obnoxious rock stars, and they made up the story later when they didn't like being legendary for being assholes anymore? Or are we just taking their word for it?

Sorry, but this is wrong. First of all the rates for publishing royalties are standardized and typically wouldn't be renegotiated on a song-by-song or project-by-project basis. So it is very similar to '10% of sales goes to the song writer'.

Equally important is the fact that a share of publishing means a share of all sorts of royalties which aren't negotiated case by case. For example for playing the song on the radio, in restaurants, on TV shows, etc. But even more insidiously, it applies to cover versions. So if Elvis Presley gets a 50% songwriting credit, he will then take 50% of the portion due to the songwriter on any version recorded or played live by anyone (who hasn't added the 'Presley magic'), at any time in the future.