The judge "held that Nye’s reading of the contract was “unreasonable” because it would mean that Disney would not be able to collect any distribution fee at all".
In other words, if the artist is not being screwed over, then the judge knows the contract is being misinterpreted, ipso facto and quid pro quo.
Good faith question: Is there any reason to use RHEL on the server for a small startup team? The ecosystem around Debian and its derivatives seems much more user-friendly and robust.
What are the upsides of CentOS?
Serious, not intended to flame bait question: Why is race/gender featured so prominently in this technical post?
Would it be appropriate to open a post with “black men in tech had a twitter meltdown”?
I was wondering that as well. However I am not sure I would call it a technical post. To me it reads more like the rant of a person who hates react because it was written by facebook.
Another issue is that there is a much more serious and extensive history of value judgements about "black" people, rather than about "white" people.
At least in the US there never was widespread slavery of white people because they are white, or widespread ideas of white skin color being associated with lesser intelligence, culture or whatever.
It is, however, very important not to get hung up in racist terminology. For example it only serves the racists' cause to argue who is actually black or who is actually white, or how much of each.
It's not like the average heckler on the street asks somebody where he is from, his religion, what he is doing for a living or what his ancestral gene mixture is!
Please don't explain what you mean by "their own racism". I don't accept reverse racism BS...
And yes, ignoring nasty history is dog-whistling. You can say certain things, which are clearly perceived as racist by racists and the offended, and then avoid responsibility by claiming "it's only because the history".
Example: It's not antisemitic to blame George Soros (a jew) for political influence through his money, except that there is a broad and infamous history of such conspiracy theories. Same for "dual loyalty".
It's not racist or insensitive to use black-face as a disguise, except for the long history of mistrel-acts of making fun of Afro-American (slaves) for being lazy, uncultured and stupid.
It's not necessarily racist to suspect a Muslim of being a terrorist. Hey, there may actually be valid and objective reasons for such a suspicion. But especially because of the context and the history of Muslims being accosted as such and being targeted all the time, such claims better have substantial proof.
There is, however, a phenomenon called "reverse racism" where privileged members of a majority try to complain about things like affirmative action or diversity outreach.
The idea that there is a discrimination against white people in "traditionally white" countries is absolutely ridiculous. Ethnically motivated violence, for example in the US, is also quite one-sided.
The nature of progress is movement relative to the position currently being held. I bet you're right that a lot of people are just thoughtlessly bandwagoning, but I bet the blanket dismissal of progressive attitudes also misses a lot of people who are thoughtfully deciding where to go from here.
My point though was not about the progressive attitudes, as much as about the ridiculous excess ("guys" being offensive, etc). In a decade or so these would be viewed the same way most people viewed hippies after the 70s...
One difference is that "black men in tech" are a minority with a lot of discriminatory experiences. Criticizing a minority you don't belong to for complaining too much is something different than criticizing the majority you do belong to for the same thing.
I don't know about "react-gate" yet, but I'm sure to find out in a few minutes.
Because for some, race/gender is a primary factor in how they experience being a developer. I believe that is the fundamental point the article is making -- that the reasons why React is what it is today are not necessarily objective and totally sound but rather significantly influenced by what ideas and interests were already in the population at the cost of other ideas that may require more of a leap from the mainstream to fully understand but may also be better overall.
It would not be appropriate to post with the title “black men in tech had a twitter meltdown” but it is at least this okay with white dudes for the same reason why it's fine to make fun of The Mountain if he can't hit a squat in the gym but it's not fine to make fun of your buddy who's trying to make a change in his life. Of course how much better The Mountain is than your buddy at lifting heavy stuff is probably a larger discrepancy than the gap between white men and and minority women's abilities to affect the course of the developer landscape but that's the mechanism.
Just like this whole drama, this attitude (I don’t like my gender and race being the focus of things, therefore I’m going to do it to you) seems counter-productive to the cause of inclusion and diversity.
Check out Home Assistant, it’s exactly what you’re looking for.
Open source, easily extensible, plugins for every iot device out there.
Get a Raspberry Pi, install Hassbian and components for your IOT devices. It can run entirely on your home network without connecting to the internet and be easily extended via Python.
If you’re comfortable with Arduino, get some $5 Sonoff switches and flash them with custom firmware.
Also consider OpenHAB as it is less configurery and gives you a basic front end and backend ui out of the box. It has a drag and drop ui builder for fancier dashboards, and supports a full backend scripting system. It’s based on java and integrates with tons of automated products. It has a cloud connect function for your own server or their own cloud service. The mobile apps work (but missing functions I would like, such as translating hardware volume controls to automation actions), provide security cam integration, and support internal and external URL’s based on your WiFi.
I found openHAB much easier to setup with my zwave devices, DCS security integration, stereo controls, and custom actions based on external data (I have security cameras running through OpenCv that fire alerts)
Also openhab supports MQTT so you could even integrate home assistant and openhab together!
Instead of trying to fight your analytical tech brain, reframe the sales process as a technical optimization problem.
That comes down to looking for bugs that “crash” the sales process(objections) and optimizing performance of the sales cycle by decreasing the time it takes to close.
After every sales call, log objections as well as ideas the prospect seemed to respond to positively in a spreadsheet or CRM. Over time, patterns will emerge and you will naturally optimize for being better at sales.
I know blockchain gets a lot of hate on HN, but democratizing fundraising via crypto tokens and taking some power away from Silicon Valley VCs is a massive shift.
The merit of the projects themselves can be debated, but the fact that technology entrepreneurs all over the world have easier access to capital has got to be a net positive.
It's a net positive for technology entrepeneurs, certainly.
What's less obvious is whether it's a net positive for everyone, e.g. if that "access to capital" comes in the form of naive investors pouring money into projects that are likely to fail (i.e. have been arguably a poor use of capital / a net negative).
Almost all projects are likely to fail. The key tenet of venture investment is investing in 500 companies, and have 499 fail, while one would give a 1000x return.
A "retail" investor is likely not able to follow this strategy, so people who would invest in a few apparently great projects via blockchain technologies may be in for disappointment.
But I don't see why small-scale venture investment via an appropriate technology could not work. Invest $10 in 500 companies, get $10k back... eventually.
Fair point. Where I said "likely to fail" what I meant was "so likely to fail that they represent a poor use of capital" (for even a large investor and also for society as a whole).
As you've pointed out, there's a distinction between poor use of capital for the individual and a poor use of capital for society, and other groups in between.
I'm not proposing that this is the case about any particular investment it just seemed worth pointing out that such a type of investment does exist.
You mean on a VC run forum, crypto gets a lot of hate because it is an alternative? Color me shocked!
Personally, I think bootstrapping + ICO is far less trouble that even bothering with VCs, but I am sure many people with Stockholm syndrome will explain me why I'm wrong!
However, one of my primary concerns regarding any "crowd-source" or direct-to-retail investment in startups is the information assymetry. It's tough, if not impossible (and certainly not scalable) for individual investors to do something like due diligence, especially in a manner consistent from startup to startup.
This is a potentially soluble problem, with adequate regulation, and/or with third party providers (although keeping incentives aligned might be tough), but, in the meantime, I fear it could attract businesses that are much higher risk than even VC-funded startups, if not outright scams.
On the other hand, I'm not convinced VCs have quite solved the problem, either, beyond, presumably, filtering out straightforward [1] scams. They do provide some minimum of risk-spreading by not investing in a single company (but their LPs get no say in those choices anyway).
[1] i.e. embezzle the money and run, not complex fraud like Theranos, or even dot-com era spending all the money running the business, just with no credible business plan
I agree with you - it is impossible to say if it will be good or bad in the end.
However, I believe individual investors will bridge the information asymmetry, since regulation of anonymous fungible crypto is bound to fail (or to be "as successful as the war on drugs" if your excuse my french)
Since it can't be regulated, enough people will be scammed to cool down the taste for risk for the remaining ones. Whether the remaining ones is >0, IDK. Maybe yes, because out of a few billions, there will always be a few hotheads?
In any case, I see the funding of highest risk business as a positive. I want to see crazy innovation like transhumanism!
> I believe individual investors will bridge the information asymmetry, since regulation of anonymous fungible crypto is bound to fail
I'm not sure I follow. I'm willing to assume the latter as being true, but how does that failure lead to the former?
Also, are you assuming that crypto will be the only viable crowdfunding venture investment method (perhaps because of its relative immunity to regulation)?
> Since it can't be regulated, enough people will be scammed to cool down the taste for risk for the remaining ones. Whether the remaining ones is >0, IDK.
That's the thing, though, I wasn't really talking about the supply of capital (i.e. the cash side), but rather the supply of ventures (i.e. the shares/securities side). If scams are possible, would enough legit founders bother going this route? I worry some version of Gresham's Law would take hold.
> I see the funding of highest risk business as a positive.
I do think that's, generally, the "access to capital" argument I've seen elsewhere in the thread.
The counter-argument, which I don't necessarily agree with (and I surmise you firmly disagree with), is that some ventures are just so obviously unlikely to succeed that it's downright irresponsible to allocate any capital to them. (Although, to be fair, some of that criticism may be about the fundamentals of the business model, rather than the risk profile).
Such a counter-argument strikes me as inconsistent with the generally-held maxim in capitalist investing regarding capital and asset allocation, which is the joke version of the Golden Rule, "he who has the gold makes the rule".
I would be happy to support a system that allows investors the choice of putting their cash into as risky a venture as they want. What I'm leery of is a system that enables tricking investors into putting their cash into something that is riskier than they thought (or locks the cash up for longer, etc).
If no regulation can succeed, the market will turn either to a lemon market and die, or information will be provided to investors in "another way" (which we may not even guess yet)
I'm not sure which will happen. Like you, I firmly believe anyone should be free to invest as they want, as long as no one is tricked. I just do not see the tricking as a stable equilibrium.
I do not assume only crypto will be viable - just that it would be the best option.
Given Gresham's law, it would make sense for investors to only want to pay in USD (to be protected) and for entrepreneurs to only want to accept crypto (to be free / high risk /etc). But USD and investment are regulated, while entrepreneurship is free, so I would bet on crypto winning.
In the middle, I see a small opportunity for existing VC to turn into middlemen for those who have USD and are accredited investors.
It is all still very uncertain. We sure live in intersting times!
If the relationship is beyond repair:
Make it clear that either one of you leaves an active role with the company or the entire company dies.
Your cofounder may not be aware of the severity of the situation.
