Even in software, the primary “advantage” of youth seems to be able to work much longer hours.
But from my own experience, I wonder how much of those long hours are truly productive. At least in my own case, i often observe that the quality of the work I do early morning when I’m fresh is significantly better than what I do late at night, and that the late-night job is more liable to contain subtle bugs, thus often needing to be “polished” in the morning again. Additionally what I can finish in the last 4 hours at night (after a full days work) I can easily do in about 2 hours in the morning. So while there’s an egocentric feeling of satisfaction of wrapping something up before going to bed, from a pure productivity perspective I find it better to call it quits at a decent hour and take a fresh look in the morning.
So recently, I’ve started to do things in a way that things that need to be created from scratch, or otherwise need more mental/intellectual involvement, I do them while I’m fresh, and reserve the more mundane things or interpersonal tasks (like meetings, etc.) for the later part of the day when I’m slightly tired. I wonder if any of this resonates with other peoples’ experiences.
If you're an investor the other advantage is that youth is cheap.
The VC model is to fund a lot of sometimes wacky ideas, the founders live on ramen for a year or two and work out the kinks of the business model and code a prototype. You don't need seniority for this you just need people with open minds who work long hours so enthusiastic youngsters work great. If an investment achieves product market fit you start bringing on some more senior people at that point.
Not at all. There are plenty of young chaps who only want to do stuff "by the book", and plenty of old folks who understand the value of trying something that used to be impossible but now is possible.
The main difference is endurance vs. experience, and it isn't until the 50s-60s that a lack of endurance can offset the extra experience.
That’s one of the most valid ideas I’ve heard - define private data as personal property.
When one looks deeper into laws like GDPR and this one, at the heart of it lies the fact that a company cannot do as it pleases with an individual’s data without said individuals consent. But given the nature of the legislation, it is not too hard for a company to simply bypass it in ways that adhere to the letter of the law but not the spirit.
If instead there were laws that defined private data as the personal property of the respective individual, the need for all this convoluted legislation would be rendered moot, since such a law would open the grounds for a variety of class action lawsuits against companies perceived to be egregiously abusive. The case law itself would set numerous precedents and eliminate the need for varied “interpretations” of one piece of legislation. IMO, this is what we should be pushing for, not more GDPR-clones which can be watered down by lobbyists.
I'd love to see private data as personal property, but in practice that's likely to run into a lot of contradictions.
The biggest problem is that most of the interesting private data is actually about relationships between multiple private individuals. If you're having a conversation with a friend on Whatsapp, is that conversation property of you, your friend, or do you each own your own messages? If it's a group conversation, is the whole conversation owned by all of the participants, or only parts of it? What if some people in the group chat aren't actually participating, but are just lurking? If you mention a company's product, does that mention belong to the company or the person mentioning it? What if instead of a product, you mention another person? What if you're quoting gossip they told you in person?
This is why Hacker News doesn't let you delete or edit posts after 2 hours, BTW. Once people have read them and replied and referenced them elsewhere, it's not really fair to other participants in the conversation to remove the words they were replying to.
Other social networks have run into real problems where people have edited their posts after many replies have been added to take the replies out of context and make them mean something totally the opposite of what their authors intended. If you own your own words, this is your right, but it's also a dickish and disruptive thing to do.
The same applies to many other types of personal data. A credit report is a list of transactions between you and various creditors. The credit bureau didn't just snoop on everything you do, that information was reported to them by the other party of the transaction. If they own the data about them, this is within their rights, but it certainly doesn't feel about it when it's used to deny the borrower further credit.
I think the current situation, where data is owned by the company or individual that collects it, is the most absurd alternative possible. But that's because our legal system is poorly structured to handle property rights where the "property" is owned by multiple firms, can be transferred easily (and surreptitiously) without the original owner losing rights, and may eventually come to harm one of the original owners.
> The biggest problem is that most of the interesting private data is actually about relationships between multiple private individuals. If you're having a conversation with a friend on Whatsapp, is that conversation property of you, your friend, or do you each own your own messages? If it's a group conversation, is the whole conversation owned by all of the participants, or only parts of it?
To me, not addressing this one of the biggest flaws of the GDPR.
As a practical example: I've talked to numerous other banks, and with regards to data portability (article 20 GDPR), there is nothing even close to a consensus as to what you are allowed to give the customer with regards to his own transactions, because there are numerous parties involved.
It gets even worse: the text of the "right of access" (article 15 GDPR), in a wide interpretation, grants access to far more information than the data subject would otherwise have access to.
If person A and person B confidentially process data of C, is it really the intention of the GDPR to grant person C access to this confidential processing?
There's two ways to look at compromised legislation:
1. It doesn't go far enough, and sells-out to the opposition.
2. It's better than nothing, and future legislation can address it.
Holding out exclusively for 1. or settling for 2. are bad strategies. There's nothing wrong with trying to get as much in a bill as possible, but the damn corporations push back on everything for the people.
Until, as Larry Lessig / Aaron Schwartz noticed, either the political OS gets changed (unlikely) or it crashes and burns.
That somehow seems like a tenuous argument, especially when talking about tech companies, when one looks at examples like Satya Nadella (MS) and Sundar Pichai (Google) who’re both Asian - and 1st generation at that. In the case of FMCG type companies, I’d actually agree with you, but in tech the evidence indicates otherwise.
Taken the lead on what? What is their plan? Here is the Sec. of Agriculture Sonny Perdue talking about soybean tariffs [1] yesterday.
Q: You said the president has a plan. Even in broad strokes, what is that plan?
A: That’s in the president’s mind and in his negotiating strategy. He is a different type of negotiator. I don’t think any foreign country has ever gone up against a president like President Trump before. That’s his style. Frankly, it’s been pretty effective so far in other areas. I think he and President Xi (Jinping) in China have a great relationship. I think it will be dealt with on a personal basis. The goal is, obviously, to get China to change its ways so we can resume trade between our countries. The president, however, does not intend to tolerate a $350 billion to $400 billion trade deficit going forward.
That's a terribly flagrant non-answer. If they could seriously form a coherent and rational explanation for what they're doing, people just might understand better. As it stands, everyone just projects their current thinking onto the circumstances to find some explanation all because they won't answer a simple question.
The reasons why are what I think you've pointed out— there really isn't much of a plan on their part. It's just reactionary and rabble-rousing (with a hefty price tag for those who get hit by the outcomes).
You’re right that everyone suffers. The question in a “war” is who can handle the most losses/suffering before routing. The evidence seems to suggest that the Chinese market is already tanking, with the US barely having taken a first few shots. I see minimal impact, if any, on US markets (there are of course localized pockets of suffering, but we’re talking about the whole picture).
So this is more about taking a long term view. When the status quo (pre-Trump-tariffs) continues, the US continues to rack up a deficit, loses a lot of manufacturing expertise, develops a significant dependency on China, while China continues to innovate and raise its standard of living. Of course the US remains engaged in more higher level work, but rampant IP theft renders a large part of it moot, when it can simply be stolen. So a few decades from now, the US is only slightly above its current position while China has advanced considerably. Even better, with China’s large population, and emphasis on STEM, they are better positioned for the next many decades, compared to the US. Now combine that with China’s (or any large power’s) willingness to throw its weight around, and within a century it is not too hard to visualize the US as a secondary power to China.
China (or anyone else for that matter) will continue to steal IP as long as they can get away with it. It’d be stupid not to. The point of this is to really force them to come to the table and come to terms that are amenable to the US. It is trivial to issue a “statement” condemning IP theft, but entirely another matter to take actual steps to prevent it. The ultimate goal of US (or any country’s) foreign policy is to maintain long term geopolitical advantage. Continuation of the status quo did not seem like the most realistic path to doing that, so they’re fighting it.
From a trade perspective, a rising deficit means the US pays for Chinese goods, while barely getting paid for its products. The US would really like to sell more than it buys. This cannot happen when the Chinese have tariffs on just about everything, in addition to making it nigh impossible for foreign firms to operate on their soil. This state of affairs works strongly to their advantage, so they have no reason to do it differently. The US hopes that these (and future) tariffs will convince the Chinese to be more open to US products and companies in mainland China.
> From a trade perspective, a rising deficit means the US pays for Chinese goods, while barely getting paid for its products.
From what I understood this is not accurate. An iPhone built from China is recorded for the full value when shipped to US/Europe/etc. This makes it appear that there's a trade deficit while it's actually the opposite (controlled by Apple).
Europe works in a similar way when I looked at it (ages ago). There's various data collected (Eurostat). But for trade it's on value and it's not always clear who controls it, nor where it is headed.
Thanks for raising that point. I skipped a lot of detail and nuance since I really didn’t want to write an essay.
It is true that trade deficits are calculated on full value, not the “value-added”. Even with this distinction the argument still holds. E.g. in 2014, the "value added" trade deficit was USD 200 Billion while the official “full” value was USD 315 Billion. So it’s not like a tiny fraction, but rather a significant portion. This is one of the reasons people still use the old system - it is inaccurate but not at all grossly misleading (and inveting a new “global” system is really painful). This difference of USD 200 Billion is still too large for the US to willingly accept.
There ought to be some sort of regulation preventing this sort of thing - like the Glass-Steagall Act in banking that mandated separation of investment banking and commercial banking operations.
GS was created so an implosion on the banking side didn’t kill our savings accounts.
In general antitrust is more about preventing Coke from buying Pepsi than Coke buying It’s bottlers or Kroger. The idea was vertical integration isn’t as harmful on consumer prices as horizontal.
I think in this case it’s more about something like GDPR.
My analogy was based on means, not ends. GS split investment banking ops from consumer banking. Similarly something could separate the consumer data business from the telco/infrastructure business.
But sure, GDPR works just as well; even better perhaps. Although GOOD LUCK getting something like that to pass through US legislature. Especially when the legislative has already allowed ISPs to freely trade in consumer traffic (meta)data. You can find a preliminary coverage here https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/house-vote-sj-34-isp-regul...
But indeed, I do agree that a GDPR-clone is overdue in the US. While I hope it comes to fruition, I also hope it isn’t hopelessly bastardized and rendered toothless by the lobbyist lot.
You’re starting to touch the issue, but IMO, not quite. Allow me to present a somewhat controversial approach.
Considering the US only: at the risk of extreme and borderline stereotypical generalizations - if one looks at the history of immigration into the country - the Asian immigrants have largely consisted of Chinese laborers around the gold rush, Indian truck drivers and motel/cornershop owners in the early - mid 1900’s. They came to make a living in somewhat decent conditions. Both lines of work require you to be reasonably honest, keep your head down and do the job. It can be presumed these were the values these Asian parents inculcated into their children - who saw the pathway to their version of the American dream as a relatively low risk SME. The Asian immigrants since the 1960s have been largely STEM people - academic high performers, given the nature of university admissions and the visa process. STEM high performers - as individuals, and presumably as parents too, tend to be intelligent but sensible (risk-rational), belive in very hard work, tend not to oversocialize, to not brag a whole lot, and tend to prioritize knowledge/lifestyle over blind ambition and obscene wealth. None of those traits are directly conducive to being a top exec, but rather to a job like VP - engg.
An excellent case in point - as another commenter also mentioned, if you go to Asian cities, you’ll find exactly the sort of “persona” you’d find in a typical Western exec, often exaggerated to an even higher level. But that persona hasn’t made it to US shores, instead choosing to make it big in their own place.
In contrast, many of the earliest “white” immigrants came here first for ideological reasons, and later driven by ambitions of striking it big, and often by delusions of grandeur, and were significantly less risk-averse than either groups of Asian immigrants I mentioned earlier. Of course there were plenty of regular folks too.
So I would submit that instead of looking at just Asians/whites making it to top exec, one should look at 1) professional backgrounds of the parents of top execs, 2) fraction of those with highest academic/test scores making it to top exec. Of course, to be a successful top exec, the need for “top” academic scores is outweighed by a host of other qualifications. Asians in whom these “other” qualifications are found in ample measure often do make it big in their home countries, but might make terrible immigrants to the US.
This is the problem. You assume the situation is justified and try to find an explanation for it. Would you submit this kind of theories if the article is talking about any other groups?
You’re conflating two different things - 1) justification and 2) explanation, and with that misinterpreting the gist of my post.
Just because it has a valid explanation doesn’t mean it is just, nor that it should continue. I was trying to give one possible background for why things are they way they are - not the way they should be.
The situation is starting to change, but it simply cannot happen overnight, the best case scenario for sustainable change is a couple of generations of sustained effort from all sides. Look at how the Italian and Irish immigrants went from pariahs to normal. The Chinese have gone from manual labor to solid middle class in 2-3 generations.
And I’d be happy to submit whatever kind of explanation I think might fit the facts of any situation, regardless of group.
Nor any Asian country whose natives are perceived in the West as being meek/humble or whatever else.
It is just that most immigrants (in the last 3-4 decades) to the US happen to be a self selected group meeting certain stringent criteria of acheivement in one area, which left, in most cases, little room for a “broader” personality, i.e. high acheiving STEM grads.
The opinion of one HN’er is that it is definitively a gray area. So whether or not you’re sued for it depends on if someone resourceful has a reason to sue you (e.g. LinkedIn vs HiQ); in most other cases, I don’t think anybody really cares.
There was an earlier case (I don’t recall the details) about scraping violating copyright, which might be a valid defense - that you’re engaged in unauthorized “copying” the (protected) source code (of the webpage), albeit momentarily, into your computer’s memory while your script processes it to extract the relevant contents. So even though it might be fine to copy the image/data/whatever else, you have no right to copy source code - which is certainly protected by copyright (your browser processing the same page is something the copyright owner explicitly allows, by virtue of making it available on the web). By that same token, it can also be considered illegal to save webpages on your harddisk. But do refer to the last sentence in my earlier paragraph.
The LinkedIn vs HiQ case is currently being appealed in the (court of appeals for the) 9th Circuit. Regardless of which way it rules, the decision of the 9th circuit only applies in its the states under its jurisdiction (maybe as a precedent in others, but it won’t be binding). It can still go to Supreme Court, depending on how determined the parties are.
There was a ruling in a different (but somewhat related case) in Jan 2018 that violating the ToS is not a crime https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/ninth-circuit-doubles-... To quote: “[T]aking data using a method prohibited by the applicable terms of use”— i.e., scraping — “when the taking itself generally is permitted, does not violate” the state computer crime laws”.
But from my own experience, I wonder how much of those long hours are truly productive. At least in my own case, i often observe that the quality of the work I do early morning when I’m fresh is significantly better than what I do late at night, and that the late-night job is more liable to contain subtle bugs, thus often needing to be “polished” in the morning again. Additionally what I can finish in the last 4 hours at night (after a full days work) I can easily do in about 2 hours in the morning. So while there’s an egocentric feeling of satisfaction of wrapping something up before going to bed, from a pure productivity perspective I find it better to call it quits at a decent hour and take a fresh look in the morning.
So recently, I’ve started to do things in a way that things that need to be created from scratch, or otherwise need more mental/intellectual involvement, I do them while I’m fresh, and reserve the more mundane things or interpersonal tasks (like meetings, etc.) for the later part of the day when I’m slightly tired. I wonder if any of this resonates with other peoples’ experiences.