I first thought the article was a joke when I saw its length.
Their sympathy for Melvin Capital despite said “fund” seeking to make money by sinking American companies into the ground via massive “short” positions, as with GameStop, is just disgusting.
You don’t have to put others “down” to be “up”. There’s a way for us all to win. We certainly don’t need hedge funds to help us accomplish that.
EDIT:
“How they did it”:
Melvin Capital purchased substantial volume of short positions (many billions), collaborated with Wall St on how to best design the downfall of a business employing thousands during a pandemic, and even put out fake news articles & tweets to fool the Reddit mob out of fooling themselves. Did not work out in the end.
(No, I do not agree with Reddit’s current valuation. It is merely a remnant of the whole GME fiasco.)
Nope. Short sellers are the white knights of the market. They take on incredibly difficult and dangerous trades, and keep market prices honest. Without them the market would be nothing but a lair full of pump and dump longs, like a certain Reddit forum we all know.
And I haven’t seen any evidence Melvin did anything unethical either. They got too deep into their position and paid a huge price for it. It’s about time Redditers stopped taking victory laps over Melvins mangled body.
If it were as simple as that, speculation wouldn't exist, because no one would ever buy anything thinking that it's worth more than the price on the table.
He's saying he doesn't think the market price for GME will hold, a position I happen to agree with. Might be more juice left in the rollercoaster, but I'm not buying it.
>Their sympathy for Melvin Capital despite said “fund” seeking to make money by sinking American companies into the ground via massive “short” positions, as with GameStop, is just disgusting.
Can you elaborate on how this is done? Did Melvin driving the stock price down empty GameStop's coffers or something?
If you're using Ruby on Rails, perhaps consider the "Ahoy Matey" AKA "Ahoy" free and open source gem created by Instacart [1].
I've used it in my personal projects and have never had any issues. It's great to have no vendor lock-in and full ownership of user metric data. If you go this route, please be responsible with the data and follow all relevant regulations & guidelines (ex: GDPR) regarding its storage and usage.
According to their history of Terms of Service changes, it appears that they made changes to the language surrounding information collected while "private browsing" between September 1, 2015 and June 21, 2016. Just do a Cmd+F or Ctrl+F for "snap" (part of snapshot/snap shots; they do not spell it consistently).
In that case, it's been in their terms since 2016.
I do not agree with this practice nor do I condone it, but who is ultimately "in the wrong here"? Is it Google or is it the users, the latter of whom are supposed to read these Terms prior to agreeing to them?
Are "Terms" too long these days? I can't imagine most people have the time to read through all - if not any - of the Terms of Service (etc.) for all products and services they're utilizing in their life.
The idea that companies can dictate terms that can be arbitrarily changed at whim where the only consent users need to give is the continued use of their product is pretty ludicrous as far as I'm concerned. I realize people should read terms and I do tend to, but often companies will make their policy changes obscure, they intentionally downplay when the make changes to terms.
If i enter into a contract with someone, specific permission is required from both parties on any changes. I personally don't understand how these terms of services, which are effectively contracts, get out of following contract law. If I agree to a terms of service, I an agreeing to a contract set out by that business at that time. Refusing to allow service for not agreeing to later changes put out by the service provider is illegal in any other form of business contract. I can't write a contract for some consulting work, get a customer to sign it, change the terms then refuse to hand over my completed work until they agree. I'd be taken to court.
IIRC, Terms of Service usually have a clause with language that states that the provider of the service may change the terms of the contract at any time without prior notice. If the user doesn't like the new terms, they can quit using the service.
Take-it-or-leave-it changes contracts are a thing in negotiated contracts between businesses as well. But rather than taking effect immediately, they'll happen when the contract is up for renewal.
As an example, an employer of mine used to have a software product offered for on-prem self-hosted use, or as a hosted service. Then, they decided to stop offering the self-hosted option and to only offer the software as a hosted service to reduce development and support costs of having to support the myriad configurations that come of a number of customers running their own on-prem setups. Customers had the option of converting to the hosted service option, or taking their business elsewhere. And so, when their existing on-prem contracts were up for renewal, those customers made the choice to find another solution, or convert to the hosted service.
So, IMO, these ToSes are following contract law. It just sucks that the contracts are so one-sided and the consumers of services offered really don't have an easy means of negotiating the terms to something better for themselves.
>Terms of Service usually have a clause with language that states that the provider of the service may change the terms of the contract at any time without prior notice. If the user doesn't like the new terms, they can quit using the service
This is the issue I speak of. Part of contract law makes this illegal.
>The parties must usually mutually agree to alter or modify the contract. In some circumstances the underlying contract might give one party a unilateral right to make certain limited changes, but agreement is normally necessary.
>The parties must intend the alteration/modification permanently to affect their rights. If there is no such intention, then the change is likely to amount only to a temporary forbearance or concession, rather than a permanent variation of the contract.
>The parties must comply with any requirements as to the form of the variation. These could be specified by legislation, or set out in the original contract which is being varied.
>The agreement to vary a contract will need to be supported by consideration - something of value must be given in exchange for the alteration. If there is no such consideration, then the variation will need to be effected by deed.
I beleive this thread would be even more popular with the last line in the article as its title on HN: "Why don't we want people to be good at things?"
This is what we need to be asking ourselves in our current society, especially given the often very real torturous cycle regarding success and others which the author outlined in their post.
While I understand it is a business like many others, it'd be genuinely nice if GrubHub would stop airing their "restaurants are our family"/"support local restaurants" advertisements.
If we really want to support local restaurants (and give them better chances of post-COVID survival), we should do exactly as stated above: call in to order directly.
Do not give GrubHub, Uber Eats, and similar services a large portion of your order total just for being an easy-to-use middleman. The vast majority of restaurants around today are capable of processing payments and handling pickup/delivery themselves.
While these restaurants fight to stay alive in unprecedented times, the least we can do is put in a bit more effort for an order of food we would have placed and paid for anyway.
"Do not give GrubHub, Uber Eats, and similar services a large portion of your order total just for being an easy-to-use middleman"
Thank for the advice, but I highly value an easy-to-use middleman. How many orders would these restaurants miss out on if they didn't offer the easier option? And it's not just the ease of use (viewing the menu, adding comments, seeing real-time delivery status) but it's that fact that these services offer a centralized way to find restaurants to order from in the first place. I'm not saying I love the current balance of power, but much like with old-style taxi services, the new way is an undeniably better experience for the end user. People will never abandon the easier way, and much like with more traditional boycotts, relying on consumer action is a losing strategy for enacting change.
Those services will be there no matter what, true. And yes you can use it to discover new restaurant. But YOU, as an individual, can decide to not use them. Another thing I suggest is for you to ask the manager / owner of the small restaurant you frequently order from. Just ask point blank, would you rather me ordering it through the app or ordering through the phone. Based on their answer, you might actually change your mind.
At the end of the day, would I rather give 30% away to Uber, or would I rather pay directly the restaurant. I prefer encouraging small business, especially RIGHT NOW!
It depends what delivery service the restaurant contracts. It can be in-house, a 3rd party like Relay, or a delivery app like Doordash. But even if Doordash delivers, the restaurant still keeps more commission from the order itself if you order directly.
I didn’t know the restaurant could dispatch doordash on their own! That’s interesting.
Personally I use postmates, and with all the fees they stick on it, I’ve assumed it didn’t cost the restaurant anything. Does anyone know if this is true?
I agree somewhat. There definitely is a time where cutting profits to achieve more volume results in more revenue and profit. Not sure if it exactly is happening here but you do have a good point
Restaurants are pricing in the 30% cut, I know of no restaurants offering anywhere near a 30% price reduction for pickup - so why would I go for the more complex option? I'd love to call-in an order for a 20% reduction in price, or use a competing service for a 10% reduction.
It's entirely plausible that for many restaurants running an online ordering system/delivery network costs them 20-30% of the order price regardless.
I know that DoorDash specifically also raises the price of individual menu items by a $1 or $2 sometimes compared to paying the restaurant's menu price directly.
I've noticed higher costs too, but wondered if it had to do with having to order items separately instead of as a meal. For example, ordering a sandwich, fries, and drink, instead of a combo with the same thing.
When I found it, it was for a place called Ike's in the Bay Area. All of the individual sandwich prices were $1-$2 more than if you ordered directly from the Ike's app. It wasn't because of a combo price reduction or anything. (And funnily enough, Ike's uses DoorDash's white label delivery service to actually deliver the food.)
I stopped using Grubhub for pickup because the restaurants would consistently raise their prices on the app to make up for Grubhub's prohibitively expensive fee.
So THATS why the prices are more expensive! I don’t use Uber eats or grub hub because of this lack of transparency. I figured the app was increasing food prices and then charging me for delivery and a tip
Perspectives like this and others are one of the many reasons I greatly enjoy HN. I didn’t even consider the situation in this way, yet is makes much more sense than what I constructed in my head. Thank you for that.
What a persona this paints of the seller.
Would like to add that I also share your wonder. To me, this needs to evolve to anecessity for them (ICANN, in terms of ability) rather than just an “if”.
Please forgive me my lack of context surrounding this, but would love to learn more about why Corp.com is being sent various data (some sensitive, as mentioned in the article) from various parties in the first place. Did it use to serve a purpose for MS or other?
If your livelihood is based on squatting domains you bought in 1992, you won't find me crying tears of sorrow for your loss when you only make a couple million dollars instead of whatever number you think you're owed for adding zero productive value to the world.
Scratch that; domain "investing" actually removes productive value from the world. Someone else might own that domain and actually do something incredible with it. Microsoft clearly could have; they use it all over their documentation (and they're idiots for doing so, but what's done is done).
> domain "investing" actually removes productive value from the world
Does it? These domains are available for those who want them at fair prices. Why is the current situation any worse than one in which these domains would be snapped up for low effort personal sites?
> Someone else might own that domain and actually do something incredible with it.
Why? What would be an example of "something incredible" that'd require a very specific domain name like this?
It's hard for me to have sympathy for him "protecting his livelihood" when we are talking about a lucky gamble that appreciated by 140000x, he's already successfully sold several of them, and almost the entire value is driven by scamming opportunities
Pretty much any four-letter .com domain (even gibberish) would sell for upwards of a million dollars these days, too. $1.7 million for a recognizable four-letter domain is if anything substantially lowballing it.
The whole affair seems bordering on blackmail: “pay me, MS, or your customers will get hacked”.
If you were truly concerned about security, you’d have just transferred the domain over. If you want to make a good profit off of that, though, please—don’t make a theater.
If you are both genuinely concerned about security but also desperately need money, what you would effectively end up doing is a reverse auction—start high and go lower until the one buyer you want agrees.
Giving security flaws the publicity they deserve: I’m most unreservedly in favor.
Using publicity to hold someone hostage in order to extract money while hiding behind security concern claims: not a good image.
If I were in a situation where I have nothing to eat and urgently need to liquidate such a domain, I would raise awareness publicly but negotiate in private. If I were relatively well-off, I would arrange a pro-bono handover, publicly or privately, and of course try to raise awareness anyway.
To make matters worse, the sale appears to be handled via an auction. The wide publicity given to the event via Brian Krebs’s website must have attracted attention of a wide range of players, motives unknown. For a reputable corporation to find itself bidding against a theoretical Bitcoin millionaire blackhat is far from desirable on a couple levels (I doubt auction’s KYC can really prevent that, but if it is strict enough then I take back this particular concern).
Thus, the situation as it is just seems to smell to me, though I’m not entirely ruling out good faith with unfortunate execution.
I have this same impression, but I also use Mint to organize my finances.
I'm a big fan of how I can categorize expenditures and export them as CSV's or charts, which I can then send to my accountant for an easy tax season.
Without this (so far) free tool - as I have not paid for anything Intuit related minus likely my personal data - my annual U.S. taxes would be a massive pain in the rear end, being that I'm self-employed.
I use Wave, free accounting tool that has ledger and account-driven structure (i.e., you set, say a "Software" account, perhaps with a sub account of "subscription" etc.) I was able to use it to setup the exact structure I needed to categorize expenses/revenue to correspond to my Schedule C every year. Connects to credit cards and bank accounts to capture all of those transactions too. It's been extremely useful for me, though I'm not sure how long that will continue: They were purchased by H&R Block this past year.
Yup. As an avid Mint user, nothing as happened to Mint as far as I care. The people working on Mint competitors are probably going to get a rude awakening. Sharing one's bank and brokerage passwords is not done lightly, after all.
Their sympathy for Melvin Capital despite said “fund” seeking to make money by sinking American companies into the ground via massive “short” positions, as with GameStop, is just disgusting.
You don’t have to put others “down” to be “up”. There’s a way for us all to win. We certainly don’t need hedge funds to help us accomplish that.
EDIT:
“How they did it”:
Melvin Capital purchased substantial volume of short positions (many billions), collaborated with Wall St on how to best design the downfall of a business employing thousands during a pandemic, and even put out fake news articles & tweets to fool the Reddit mob out of fooling themselves. Did not work out in the end.
(No, I do not agree with Reddit’s current valuation. It is merely a remnant of the whole GME fiasco.)