proofbygazing's comments

proofbygazing | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: I joined a FAANG and it is awful

Cracking up at the response to this thread. The comments here show how desperately tech workers need the validation of being in the Gifted Class and if you insinuate there's a culture of stupidity in FAANG they fall to pieces.

No comment on your predicament, best of luck and look for anybody smart and hustling around you that you can latch on to.

proofbygazing | 7 years ago | on: Brave 0.55 released

> A huge unaccounted-for externality.

Not even close to the definition of an externality. Everybody involved in the transaction is there voluntarily.

proofbygazing | 7 years ago | on: Brave 0.55 released

> Using Firefox makes you the product, because Mozilla monetizes you with selling you to Google. That is not a browser that "puts you first" or promotes the "open culture of the internet".

Why not? The idea of being targeted with more effective ads based on what I look at is microscopic when compared to the things that got me excited about the internet originally, and it doesn't even seem to contradict them.

proofbygazing | 7 years ago | on: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

Well then it seems like starting an alternative to PETA would be a better use of management's time and efforts than running a real estate REIT that just has a vegetarian-friendly per diem policy.

Of course, they won't do that, because they actually just care about making money and aren't really worried about this stuff. So I'm still puzzled.

proofbygazing | 7 years ago | on: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

You're right to consider the marginal effect that this might have on the purchasing habits of meat eaters, but you're wrong to ignore the marginal effect that the fall in prices will have on meat producers.

A fall in price will always reduce the quantity supplied, ceteris paribus.

proofbygazing | 7 years ago | on: WeWork Will No Longer Let Employees Expense Any Kind of Meat

Probably a net-negative business move.

This creates goodwill among vegetarians within the company, who will appreciate being part of this uniquely progressive organization. However, their lives will not actually change very much - they won't have to witness meat at company events, sure, but their travel lives will be the same - they will just order vegetarian, like usual.

This creates ill-will among meat eaters at the company, who will want to eat burgers and pork chops and will not be able to do so on the company expense, like every other company allows. Unlike the vegetarians, they will be reminded of this not only at company events but also every time they get food while traveling, as they have to think through what they are allowed to eat and see all the meat options, knowing that WeWork is the reason they can't have them.

The animosity outweighs the goodwill here by a large margin. Retention will suffer.

proofbygazing | 8 years ago | on: Facebook’s disingenuous explanations call for more questions and even less trust

> The only security most people need is herd security. As long as your data can blend into a mass of other people's data to the point where you're just an anonymous face in the crowd, there's no harm. Sure, if you're some important individual who can be compromised by someone motivated enough you might have something to be afraid of, but most people never rise to that level of importance.

Well, yeah, maybe, but the Kardashians certainly fall into that group, and there is a cult of narcissism that would find the idea fashionable if given direction from actually famous individuals.

That said, I think you're right that very few will ever give a shit about privacy and I'm not terribly convinced they are wrong, since very few have anything interesting or meaningfully criminal/subversive going on.

proofbygazing | 8 years ago | on: Being frugal is for the rich

It's kind of hard for me to believe that some people's analysis of their own behavior is this tragically dependent on what other people think.

proofbygazing | 8 years ago | on: Statement by FTC Regarding Reported Concerns about Facebook Privacy Practices

I think it's awkward how obvious this is, and how comfortable the media is with that being the case. From Wired's article a week ago:

> The crisis was familiar in a way: Facebook has burned its fingers on issues of data privacy frequently in its 14 year history. But this time it was different. The data leakage hadn’t helped Unilever sell mayonnaise. It appeared to have helped Donald Trump sell a political vision of division and antipathy.

So a guy you didn't like got elected and now this is a problem. The same journalists could barely keep it in their pants when Obama was squeezing every mile he could out of data in 2008 and 2012.

proofbygazing | 8 years ago | on: Utah governor signs law legalizing 'free-range parenting'

This seems like a matter of the legislature reining in law-enforcement whose interpretations have become overly broad, something legislatures (and Congress) also sometimes does to the judicial system.

I agree that it can be cast in an awkward light but it's not uncommon.

page 1