We're a startup on Brex. Not sure if we're about to get the boot.
If you're going to service startups as Brex, 80-90% are going to just cost you money and then disappear when they fail. Not sure how they're going to turn a profit this way even if a small percentage get big.
Ahh this is super cool! Looking at the Visionect product line and their website isn’t entirely clear - do you need to pay a subscription fee for the cloud service that manages the device settings? This would be a great piece of office art but will be a much harder sell if there’s a paid cloud component...
After reading a few dozen of his short, stream of consciousness paragraphs, I would have independently said "this is the kind of guy who would vote for Kanye West"
This essay is so bad it really makes me want to discount and ignore anything this person has to say about anything else.
I know that’s probably unfair and I genuinely try to treat unrelated arguments independently from the person arguing them - but it’s rare to see something this wrong while the author revels in their own ignorance.
This isn’t coming from a place of politics, though there’s no way for me to prove it to anyone - it’s just coming from the place of being a reasonably educated person.
> it’s just coming from the place of being a reasonably educated person
That appears to be a non sequitur, given the author is also, objectively, a "reasonably educated person", as well as being a talented engineer/programmer and a successful entrepreneur, indicating a somewhat broad range of capabilities.
What is it that makes it utterly impossible for an educated/intelligent person to hold the view that US/Western politics is so dysfunctional and corrupt across the board that even a crazy-seeming rank outsider like Kanye could be better than the status quo?
In his essay in particular there's a ton of stuff that's just wrong.
Nancy Pelosi is not the mayor of SF for instance (or the DA, or on the state legislature), city policy is not her job or responsibility. There's more than just that - the essay is riddled with inaccuracies and confused misunderstandings the author dismisses by just saying 'they don't pay attention to politics'.
If I wrote an essay riddled with technical errors staking a position about technology and then dismissed details as 'I don't pay attention to maths' would that be similarly accepted? It'd be dismissed as stupid. Why is it different for politics? [0]
The belief that everyone is equally bad/corrupt is wrong and it just makes you a mark. People attempt to signal intelligence or deep wisdom by pretending they're above the fray, but it's not actually smart or wise. [1]
The essay is rambly, over-confident, and in the end even mean spirited.
> What is it that makes it utterly impossible for an educated/intelligent person to hold the view that US/Western politics is so dysfunctional and corrupt across the board that even a crazy-seeming rank outsider like Kanye could be better than the status quo?
Clearly it's not impossible as evidenced by the essay, but it's still wrong.
OK, fair enough about the specific/technical errors, but on the other hand it's a mistake to dismiss someone's entire argument over specific technical details when the overall argument may still be "directionally" true/valid.
"If I wrote an essay riddled with technical errors staking a position about technology" - this is not really an apt comparison, because politics is something that everyone is meant to be qualified to comment on, by virtue of the fact that every adult is considered to be informed enough about politics to vote. So it's the directionality of the argument that matters, not every fine detail. And given that the real topic of the essay seems not to be politics but leadership, as a successful company founder the author is very qualified to comment on that, and his mistaken beliefs about political details are not central to the argument.
In the case of the particular error you point out, sure it's technically incorrect of him to refer to "the city and county of San Francisco she controls", but as a Democratic Party congressperson representing that area, she could easily influence policy to improve the running of that city/county. So he's not completely off target with that critique.
"The belief that everyone is equally bad/corrupt is wrong and it just makes you a mark"
I don't think that's what he's saying, and it's not what I said or what I believe.
As for “pretending to be wise”; he doesn’t seem to be offering a neutral position and by virtue of writing a very long, reputation-risking post on the topic, he’s not avoiding investing resources, so that post doesn’t seem to be relevant.
But this notion that is morally incumbent for everyone to endorse and vote for a major party candidate is, in my observation, usually an attempt to guilt/shame people into supporting the proponent's preferred party.
How is it not acceptable for an educated person to adopt such a view as: "this whole circus is a stupid game orchestrated by media behemoths, financial institutions, military contractors and other cronies and rent-seekers, and it serves mostly to divide and exploit ordinary individuals and families in order that a small number of elite insiders can profit, and I choose not to play a role in perpetuating it"?
I'm not saying you have to believe that; clearly you don't, and nor do I, completely. But I know of people, educated, objectively intelligent people, not just fringe conspiracy-theorists, who hold this kind of position very sincerely, and whether it's completely valid or not, I don't see how it's an unquestionably wrong or immoral position to hold.
> politics is something that everyone is meant to be qualified to comment on, by virtue of the fact that every adult is considered to be informed enough about politics to vote
I don't agree with this. Just because you have the right to vote does not mean you're informed. Just like the right to free speech doesn't mean what you say is worth listening too. The freedom to comment doesn't mean the comments will be any good.
> but as a Democratic Party congressperson representing that area, she could easily influence policy to improve the running of that city/county.
This just feels like a rationalized excuse to me. He criticizes her for changes unrelated to her responsibilities or power and then it's not off target because she could have tried to fix those things anyway? She's not involved there - I doubt you can effectively engage in two complex policy/politics arenas and be effective.
She wouldn't know the specific details and wouldn't have time/access to work with people in the state government on it. To me it's like blaming a cardiologist for stomach cancer because they work in the same general medical field, it shows a complete lack of understanding of basic government.
> As for “pretending to be wise”; he doesn’t seem to be offering a neutral position
He's making a false equivalence between two major party candidates with the general message being they're equivalently bad so let's try a third crazy person instead (with some weak justifications). The 'everyone is bad' argument is the above the fray pretending to be wise bit. Then he gets the details wrong.
> But this notion that is morally incumbent for everyone to endorse and vote for a major party candidate
Not voting for a major party candidate is equivalent to not voting in its effect. It's basically a position that either major party candidate is similarly bad.
> How is it not acceptable for an educated person to adopt such a view as: "this whole circus is a stupid game orchestrated by media behemoths, financial institutions, military contractors and other cronies and rent-seekers, and it serves mostly to divide and exploit ordinary individuals and families in order that a small number of elite insiders can profit, and I choose not to play a role in perpetuating it"?
I know this position well because it was often held by people around me growing up. It's a position that sounds smart, but isn't - and feels a lot like the being above the fray pretending to be wise signaling. I've never met someone who holds it and has a good nuanced understanding of the issues - they're always just dismissing things out of hand without having tried to understand any of it. I recognize this could be read as me just putting people I disagree with in a class of 'no nuanced understanding', but look at this essay as an example. A strong position from someone who is openly admitting they have barely learned anything about what they're talking about.
I'm not arguing there aren't problems in government (perverse incentives, cronies, rent-seekers, etc.) - doing something complex at scale is hard, but it's possible to learn about policy and what people are actually doing and come to an informed decision about the details. You can read things like The World As It Is, you can read about people that work in the government (or work there yourself). You can see the real effects of policy in action and the effects of legal shifts on history.
The position you mention is intellectually weak as well as wrong, people are free to hold it - but when I read a long screed about it (this essay) filled with even dumber arguments (and conspiracies) pushing for a crazy person to hold the office I'm compelled to call it out for what it is.
[Also - as an aside I appreciate the thoughtful back and forth. The discussion is in good faith, the wording above isn't an attack of your comment - I'm happy to try and make how I think about this clearer/disagree in a pleasant way.]
> Who is this man (Biden)? I had never heard of him until very recently.
Wait, what? Just a paragraph before he is talking about having voted for Obama.
So either you voted for someone for the first and only time and didn’t bother looking into the VP on the ticket. Or it’s just a lie.
This post reeks of privilege and a tremendous lack of self-awareness. Oh, you don't care for politics because the outcome of the election won't affect your life all that much? Good for you. A large portion of the population doesn't have that luxury.
You are now my political leader. I will remain a law abiding citizen of the United States, but I will follow your leadership, and your example. I will work to execute your policies. I will follow the regulations you suggest. You may even tax me. Send me a venmo request. I will do what you ask, so long as you do not ask me to commit an act of violence, but I do not think you will. Please, Kanye, rescue us from oppression, save us from the evil octopus of the New York Times and Trump, Biden, and Nancy Pelosi, the serpentine robots that feed it. Teach us to pray again. Teach us to love again. Teach us to find the genius inside. Forgive us our debts. Help us grow more and better food and find better ways to produce and distribute energy. Work with Elon to take us to Mars.
Can't believe I read the entire thing. What the hell did I just read
Wow, this ignores both the "floor" below which you would not be subject to the wealth tax (in the US, most recently by Elizabeth Warren, this has been discussed as $50M+), and ALSO fails to take into account that you would be growing your principal at ~3-8% a year through investment, etc.
Sure, I guess with no floor on the tax and with your money just literally sitting in a pile, the government would eventually take a lot of it.
The problem is that as you get older you need to reduce risk in your investments in order to rely on them more. As you de-risk your rate of return goes down. The lowest risk accounts are fdic insured, and at that point you’re losing money every year. Sure if there’s a floor on it I’d support it. But with no floor I’d be watching my savings dwindle year over year.
If we accept that price inflation is driven by inflation of the money supply, and that Cantillon effects send most of this new money to the financial markets, then we may conclude that this process drives asset inflation in the financial markets in which the wealthy participate.
That is to say that inflation doesn't harm the wealthy. They benefit from it. Inflation will cause the floor to creep up to everyone else.
Hmm, it does make sense, but I think delaying carriers from starting their routes probably put backpressure on the upstream team to complete their work on time. Really hard to say if this is good or bad without more knowledge of the internal incentive structures that keep the system running smoothly.
I think that this is a really meaningful step. The ability to find community around a conspiracy theory or a wildly unacceptable belief on a mainstream site reinforces that it is valid. If high schoolers discovering QAnon for the first time have to log into a dumpy looking twitter clone, they'll know that they have turned off the highway onto a sketchy back road of the internet.
This is great! I wish it was searchable by bank though. I heard that a local bank was making some interesting choices about who they helped through the PPP program and I'd love to pull up all the results by Lender.
Wait, so you can just duplicate an app that has more privileges than your app, modify it, and run it to exploit it's access?
This is a pretty glaring security issue actually - after reading this, it seems like Apple's choice to track app permissions / security exceptions by the app's bundle ID and not its file path was a pretty big mistake.
I wonder if this is a case of iOS security engineers working on macOS, forgetting that app bundle IDs aren't enforced by a central install flow on the platform?
It does check the code signature. However, it's not a "deep check". The problem with doing a deep check, including all of the apps Resources, is that this can be very resource intensive, depending on the app. It's the reason why Xcode takes forever to "verify" on first launch. If there was a deep code signature check on every TCC check, you would see a lot of very long pauses.
You can guarantee that the system apps haven't been tampered with, at their system file paths, because of System Integrity Protection. But all bets are off if you make a copy of a system app elsewhere on the disk.
Right, I meant “deep code signature” rather than “executable code signature”, thanks for the correction. I think macOS has a thing where it only checks the former the first time you launch an app and not after that, so you can scribble all over the resources and the system won’t care. Presumably this was thought to not be a big deal, but you showed a pretty good example of how you could launch a data-only attack on the privileges associated with the program :)
But surely they can do better than this? This really is a bad flaw.
At the least, couldn't they maintain a cache of verified signatures, based on the hash of the file? Then on subsequent loads, they could just hash the file and see if the hash was cached. Not as safe as checking on each load, mind, but surely a bug improvement over checking it once and blindly assuming no changes!
I mean, if this was Windows it would be absolutely huge - they'd be ridiculed in infosec and HN circles alike, and IT teams across the globe would be nervously scrambling to get the patch applied before they got pwned.
It seems like Apple is getting off too lightly here, IMO.
Buried in here there is a nice bit about expanding access to Vote-By-Mail, so that's nice. I know the democratic party has been pushing for this to be mandatory and un-burdened by extra rules for a while:
"""
If an individual in a State is eligible to cast a vote in an election for Federal office, the State may not impose any additional conditions or requirements on the eligibility of the individual to cast the vote in such election by absentee ballot by mail
"""
