Similarly, I always feel a bit bad for Jon Rubinstein when I read articles like this. Tony Fadell didn't take over the iPod division until the 3rd Generation (the one with the funny buttons lined up above the scroll wheel).
She did an interview with another accelerator three years ago, that makes her biased against YC? She's a tech journalist who's done a lot of interviews.
These "gift" investigations and the game theory behind them are somewhat troubling.
Most medium to large sized technology companies that get big enough to attract parasites will gladly cooperate with an investigating authority (such as the FBI) and turn over user activity records without much of a stink in exchange for a future favor down the road rather than hold their ground and demand warrants, subpoenas and the rest of the 9 yards.
If you promise to aid the FBI into perpetuity, they will on occasion nail some malicious user that's giving you a hard time - like that 16 year old from Des Moines who is submitting stolen credit cards (that were found on twitter via @NeedADebitCard, naturally) to pay for your merchandise and giving you a headache in chargeback fees.
It's a cool superpower but it's probably not doing much to address the root of your problems.
Worse, it quickly turns the FBI into a sort of protection racket for the Fortune 5000.
Didn't we conclude yesterday that there was a fundamental flaw in the original author's assumptions in how tips get reported and preliminary evidence suggests Taxi drivers are now making less?
Now that a major tech publication has picked up the story it may legitimately be cited as fact in a Wikipedia article.
Now that a major tech publication has picked up the story it will probably also go as an unquestioned anecdote in a thousand VC pitches.
1) Find (false) fact on Wikipedia.
2) Include fact in your important paper (journal, etc)
3) Fact is found on wikipedia to be false, and is removed
4) Fact is later found in your journal, and is then added to Wikipedia with a reference to your important findings.
5) Fact cannot be removed because it was been referenced from a journal
6) Since the fact is attributed to your journal, it is only relevant to document what your journal says. Wikipedia article gets updated to reflect the fact your journal is wrong.
There is a fascinating documentary/long-form article in VICE about another Nike missile silo in Kansas that was backed by a VC and fronted as Y2K fallout shelter/precision spring manufacturing facility for NASA but was in fact producing kilos of MDMA and analogue chemicals.[1]
One of the guys behind the operation, Leonard Pickard, was formally convicted of producing 200,000 doses of LSD in an industrial facility in Mountain View.[2]
Interestingly, the facility in Kansas was turned into an even more luxurious living abode than the hypothetical ones presented here. Think Scarface.
>>So to my mind this was relatively innocent activity and I would have never thought...
Whether or not you are genuinely naïve about the terms connotations, I suspect there is a perception that you are trolling. This is in part because the original author of the package expressed the same kind of (artificial) shock when people expressed their concern over the name and responded in a very passive aggressive manner.
No, I'm genuinely naive in that regard. I got married young and raised two special needs kids who needed all my time. So for many years, if it wasn't appropriate viewing for a small child, I was not exposed to it. And that's exactly my point: I'm fairly well read and had no idea this was something that would be interpreted this negatively. So perhaps the authors didn't either. And when you start a conversation with something that amounts to a personal attack/assumption of guilt, it is very normal to get defensive reactions which you might not have gotten had you simply inquired "Do you know how bad this sounds?" In cases on HN where someone used very offensive terms, I did exactly that -- asked what their understanding of the term was or quoted a dictionary -- and in every case they honestly had no idea and promptly changed it without any argument.
[I] had no idea this was something that would be interpreted this negatively. So perhaps the authors didn't either.
The original author, when challenged, renamed the package to 'Misaka', an Anime character portrayed as an 11-year old who is often depicted graphically from an upskirt angle (its all pretty unsavory, frankly).
Point is... original author clearly knew what he was doing with these package names.
My understanding is that the original author, feeling betrayed, has abandoned her open source project, allowing the once collaborator and suggester of the name "upskirt" to make his suggestion of the replacement name "misaka".
Point is... original author clearly knew what he was doing with these package names.
That seems very likely, but from what I have read so far, all the evidence is circumstantial and guilt is being inferred. So it is still possible it's a stupid mistake. Seriously. (Perhaps there is damning, definitive evidence out there. But what I have read so far contains no smoking gun.)
Possible, yes. But so absurdly unlikely that I find it strange to seriously suggest the package maintainer did not know what he was doing.
There has already been evidence posted here that the woman involved in the project, like me, had some idea it was kind of risque but no idea just how negatively it would be viewed. So far, no one has posted any definitive evidence to the contrary -- it is all circumstantial. And I have repeatedly seen instances of this on HN and in every case, simply politely informing them of how negative it was got them to change it. I think it is far from "absurdly unlikely" that they vastly underestimated how negatively this would be viewed.
We're talking about two different things. You're referring to the female author of Panyshot, who was a non-native English speaker who did not know the full meaning of "pantyshot". I'm talking about the author of Upskirt who is a native English speaker and changed the name of his package to that of a young anime character famous for upskirt shots.
I think we are talking about two different things only I would frame it as "I'm talking about assumption of guilt (and how rampant and problematic that is) vs actual proof" and you seem to be talking about probability. Given how this conversation has gone so far, there is probably no point in trying to further clarify my intent or meaning on that point.
I meant we were talking about two different people - I was not talking about the non-native English speaker who clearly did not know the full meaning of the word.
I submit that evidence (I hesitate to use the word "proof" since it can have implications of certainty) is all about probability. You have to weigh the probabilities, always. With the native English speaker, I find that his words on the matter make it overwhelmingly likely that he knew exactly what he was doing. I'm not assuming guilt, I'm concluding guilt.
1) Because a government can implement a genocide, a region with no government won't be subject to genocide. (See historical territorial annexations.)
2) Because the Wiemar Republic's constitution was based on the U.S. constitution and fell victim to fascism, all nation's whose constitutions were based on the U.S. constitution may fall victim to fascism.
3) Winston Churchill's defines democracy [as]..eight times better than any other.
4) Because "democracy" is eight times better than any other government, and democracy is vulnerable to morph into fascism, any form of government may morph into fascism.
5) Similarly, because Nazi Germany was fascist and committed genocide, all fascist governments will commit genocide.
There may be arguments for anarchism, but this one isn't very solid.
The problem doesn't end there. Once these drugs' exclusive rights expire and "generic brand" prescriptions are allowed to compete, most insured patients will still prefer the "name brand" as they are only charged co-pay. Some insurance providers may place restrictions on which drugs are eligible for treatment but this is not the case with traditional U.S. sponsored Medicare/Medicaid (patients are free to choose between "name brand" and "generic brand"). Medicare/Medicaid patients may also be eligible for limited co-pay exemption. ("Why wouldn't I take the 'name brand'? I'm not paying for it./I'm paying the same price anyways.") This further drives up the price of "name brand" medication, simply because the "name brand" can get away with it. "Name brand" suppliers will also cut discounted deals with various insurance companies...no such luck for the uninsured though.
One particularly frustrating example I heard from my sister was about a mother on Medicaid who refused to switch her 19-month old infant from formula to solid food (infants usually make the transition around 7 months), complaining that the child had digestion problems when she tried. (Digestion problems are normal and temporary during the transition.) Formula is more calorie rich than seal milk and nearly as expensive as printer ink, however the patient had to pay for food but didn't have to pay for formula. As a result the infant became obese and developed diabetes - the treatment for which, is also covered by Medicaid.
Meanwhile uninsured/ineligible patients are forced to go for the "generic brand" pills due to a huge price disparity. This wouldn't be so bad as generic brands are generally just as effective, except that suppliers of generic brands can sometimes change who they source their pills from, subtly changing the dosages with them so users must constantly stay on alert to see if their pill changes color or shape as this could be an indication of a shift in supplier and depending on how sensitive the drug is, have mild to severe repercussions.
The Obama health-care reform was seeking to fix this issue by providing a third party government insurance plan which would promote a more transparent market in this arena amongst other things...
In Australia, most people have to pay for drugs. There are subsidies available. If a drug company wants the subsidy, it has to offer a fair price. If they don't offer a fair price, then they don't get subsidized, and nobody buys it.
So, patients pay (a bit), so they avoid unnecessary treatment. But they don't have to pay to much. And if the drug companies try to play funny-buggers, they get shut out.
Also, the subsidy process is completely hands-off (it's run by an untouchable board of experts), so while it's a little inefficient (untouchable experts are always inefficient) it's incorruptible.
> Also, the subsidy process is completely hands-off (it's run by an untouchable board of experts), so while it's a little inefficient (untouchable experts are always inefficient) it's incorruptible.
If they're actually incorruptible, that process can not be used in the US.
Disagree? Then produce a couple of incorruptible groups of experts with comparable powers in related areas.
Hope is not a plan.
As far as the US is concerned, it doesn't matter what works elsewhere, what matters is what will work here.
You'll probably be waiting longer than that. One of the reasons China opted for the hand drawn approach is it lets them control what is and (more importantly) isn't shown.
I enjoy a good sinophobic innuendo as much as the next guy, but how is it any easier to omit something from a hand-drawn map than to blur it out in a satellite photo?
I have no opinion on what is true in this context, but completely in the abstract: when drawing things it's possible to put in fake data (residential area or forest where a military facility or nuclear reactor is located) without it being possible to be detected. The blurring at least shows that something is there.
