Consider this. I am in a coffee shop. Someone walks by and grabs my machine. This is a huge annoyance, need to replace and setup a new machine vs. (with my password manager getting hacked) my life is basically over because as far as anyone is concerned the thief is more me than I am. Depending on who took it, I might as well move to the forest and live in a mud hut because I am never going to be able to clean this up.
This actually happened to someone at my company. But their passwords weren't compromised. If they were, I can't even imagine, the guys who took the machine were really trying to do whatever they could to ruin him and the company.
The problem is 200 passwords being compromised, including my emails which are used to reset everything else. I can't fix it faster than the thief can wreck my digital life, and everything is digital now. I couldn't even start until I somehow convince my email provider who I am and to change the password for me.
If this ever happens, best plan would probably be to change your email password immediately, banks next, and freeze your credit as soon as possible.
Or the password recovery for lost 2fa is secret questions (this is so awful,but see it often). And chances are those secret questions/answers might also be in the vault
You guys are missing the point. It might be the all-time highest payout from Spotify. Because of Spotify, many many people will not buy the song. So what once would have been millions of dollars in revenue is much less, and the entire music industry is splitting a rapidly shrinking pie. Yea the very very top will still make enough money to live in big houses and drive big cars, but the middling people can't live off their take. So in order to make it you have to become an international sensation.
Hard to trade shelter, but I see what you mean - but I think those are too low on the pyramid to truly be commodities. I'm thinking painkillers and antibiotics.
Also, skills. If I were truly paranoid, instead of hoarding gold I'd be hoarding friendships with dentists and paramedics. An infected tooth can kill you, and make you wish it wouldn't take its sweet time doing it.
This is how I see New York City. Living there I was so used to it, then I went to San Diego for a wedding, couldn't believe my eyes when I saw people walking around outside barefoot. Because everything was clean, why not? Everyone else wore sandals, I was the only one wearing shoes.
I came back to NYC early Monday morning, rode the subway from JFK and had to walk through Times Square to get where I was going. Times Square on a Monday morning, cleaning up from the weekend, is so gross. Of course trash, also urine and vomit and food smashed into everything, broken glass, etc. Of course all that and more in the subway, and rats here and there. The wind tunnels that are the streets blowing the detritus in your eyes, basically aerosolized rat feces. Stepping over little rivers of dog, or even human, urine was routine anywhere. And this is Manhattan, one of the greatest concentrations of wealth anywhere.
New York, midtown specifically, doesn't even come close to how disgusting San Francisco is. Hell, San Francisco's mayor — London Breed, told off the last tourist who complained to her about how much litter there is in San Francisco.
> It would not be politically tenable for her to do otherwise
Sure it would. Both as a supervisor when this happened, and now that she's mayor. Telling tourists to fuck off only ends poorly for a town like SF that depends so heavily on tourist money.
Yeah I was in NYC for the first time this year and I was impressed by the filth and general dilapidation. The subways are exceptionally dirty, and the stations/trains along the A line seemed to be in advanced decay.
It’s not that they don’t pay people to clean up. I used to get on the A at the very first stop. The train would be parked until it was time to go, and there was a whole crew of cleaners. The cleaning went like this, the workers would start in each separate car, when the doors opened they’d walk in, then walk towards each other trailing their mops, sit down and start talking. That was the cleaning that the MTA was paying for.
This used to drive me nuts. Then one day a high level supervisor came on the train, and a group of the cleaners were in the car I was sitting in. He sat down with them and proceeded to explain how if they went to this certain building and filled out some paperwork they would start getting paid $40 per hour. He was going around, not inspecting work, but on behalf of their union, explaining how to work the system.
The MTA is the worst, and taught me the dangers of some unions. I never saw an MTA employee working. Once I saw 4 MTA employees standing around as two contractors changed light bulbs. NYC has a heavily utilized subway system, and it definitely isn’t free. But they can’t even pay the expenses for maintenance let alone improvements without tax payer support because of these leeches. This is why NYC and elsewhere are like this, people not doing what they are paid to do.
Because I lived in NYC and rode the subway multiple times every day all over the place and this is what I experienced. Lots of data points collected that were all consistent. Of course you don't have to believe me. I provided a couple short examples that demonstrated what I was talking about. I've seen plenty of other things but they are more difficult to explain. If you have routinely used the NYC subway and had a different experience please share, otherwise just take it as the impression from a fellow HNer.
For a very long time (‘30s-‘80s) the subway had almost no funding go to maintenance. It got to the point where parts of elevated structure were falling onto the streets and people below.
It’s gotten much better since then, but the MTA barely gets funding for current maintenance, let alone funding to clear the backlog. Most recent fare increases have been to service debt issued to clear said backlog.
In the grand scheme of things, if that's accurate they've got 20+ years to find 2 meters of elevation so they don't get drowned. This kind of breathless reaction is what makes people skeptical of the entire concept. Please explain to me how this means the end of civilization.
> This kind of breathless reaction is what makes people skeptical of the entire concept.
That's your opinion. There are people who believe we need to curb the carbon based energy consumption and try to reverse the negative impact of greenhouse gas. Others don't.
> Please explain to me how this means the end of civilization.
Try google? There are loads of resources if you do and pay attention to the topic on HN. We're just scratching the surface of unknowns in how much worse it could get on the path of an accelerated climate change. For example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/02/11/there...
Oh, I said "coastal civilization" and hoping it doesn't get to "entire civilization".
Great article. I think the narrative around health care is often around who has access to good insurance and who doesn't, and as the cost has skyrocketed we have doubled down on that debate. The real problem is that health care providers won't or even can't tell you how much something costs. This has set up this situation where, since money is not part of the decision making process, they just keep raising costs. Imagine a grocery store where prices are not labelled, and you get a complex bill a month afterwards. And every grocery store does this. What are the chances prices for groceries are going to be competitive? Zero.
If we can find a way to bring market forces to bear, it will pressure healthcare organizations to reorganize themselves to provide services in a more affordable way. And before anyone gets sanctimonious about putting money over quality care, consider the actual harmful effects of these crazy bills on people's lives. I used to do title work, and I became familiar with a pattern of people quietly paying their mortgage on their house for a couple decades, no liens, and then all of a sudden a lien from a hospital bill shows up. And then everything starts to crumble, other liens accrue, and I'm doing the title search for the foreclosure. A family just got moved from middle class to living in poverty. Our healthcare system is becoming a vehicle to impoverish people.
> If we can find a way to bring market forces to bear
I think the problem (also outlined in other comments) is that there are no market forces in the US health services market. There is no pressure to provide less expensive services, no pressure to reorganize, and no reason not to do what is being done now: build a non-transparent system where people get charged arbitrary amounts and prices are not known beforehand.
I think this was another case of the truism that HR doesn't work for you, they work for the company. The pep talk from the HR VP was probably to try to get his honest feelings so they could determine if they really needed to let him go or not. Not so that the CEO could be affected by his feedback.
I also agree, everyone wants to believe they are the type of person who is open-minded and receptive to criticism, but that doesn't mean they actually are.
I think this is an overused cliché, at least when applied to this situation, I. e. individual top-level executives.
Individuals don’t behave like machines, especially not when dealing with people they have known for a long time. That idea is readily accepted by most anybody when evaluating the CEO here, as far as I can tell, who would seem to be putting his emotions (pride) over the interests of his company. If we readily accept that he is guided by emotions, it’s inconsistent to assume someone in a similar situation (the HR head) would be completely immune from emotions and act machine-like, with Machiavellian calculus.
The only way to make this work would be to posit a difference in the ability of negative emotions to influence us, vs positive—pride vs loyalty, honesty, friendship, etc. since I’ve seen more people lose money loaned to a friend, than make money stealing from friends, or seeing the willingness of people to die rescuing others, I can’t really subscribe to such an arbitrary split.
I'm not sure I understand your point. My thesis was that both the CEO and HR VP were not being guided by emotions, but logic. They didn't feel that their colleague was on board with the CEO's plan. Before they did something that could have negative consequences like firing him, they wanted to see if he was willing to get on board, or if he just fundamentally disagreed and was going to stick to his guns. When he was asked and directly answered, it was clear that he was never going to truly be on board. So he was let go. No emotion required. Though, I do believe humans are emotional more than logical, and I wouldn't be one bit surprised if emotion was involved too.
The problem with this point of view, is it's the same people doing this over and over, just causing distress everywhere. For a couple hundred dollars of theft they cause both the loss of the item, but also all sorts of other trouble for everyone else. And the corporation's costs do eventually make it to the consumer as higher prices due to higher cost of doing business. In addition, it is a drain on all of us that we have to take steps to protect ourselves. It's worth the $150/hour to keep this kind of behavior to a minimum.
Agreed, sounds like the advice is to put your fingers in your ears, and sing as loudly as you can to drown out the doubts and questions, instead of solving them. Saying that no, the life path you are on is great, stop doubting yourself, keep doing it. If you refuse to acknowledge you've made any mistakes you don't have to deal with reality.
Some things take time and sacrifice to build. Family, friends, community. Most of us really need these things, but there is an opportunity cost to pay to get them. Sometimes we have all of it dumped in our lap and we take it for granted until it's gone. If you are willing to pay the price in time, effort, and emotion, you can rebuild it, but no guarantees.
This actually happened to someone at my company. But their passwords weren't compromised. If they were, I can't even imagine, the guys who took the machine were really trying to do whatever they could to ruin him and the company.