A friend of mine while we were in school (RPI) interned at GE and apparently they receive tons of letters each Christmas sent to Santa which have 12345 as the zip that GE staff volunteer to reply to.
On that note, what are the odds I could get the features I requested in my last email? ;)
1) A POST API that can take a template link and a blob of source and create a preview?
2) A GET request that can take a template link and a blob of source, allow someone to login/register and that doc to their account.
I'd love to get people directly onboarded from this into Overleaf. I'm busy trying to break the LinkedIn TOS to get the entire resume history for the users but I could definitely use those outlined above :D
IANALE-either but from my understanding the Pardon is so wide (only restriction being preventing from stopping an impeachment) that the President can and has Pardoned people preemptively. There are some other limits on it as well for practical uses.
Most notably, President Ford pardoned President Nixon for basically anything he might have done as opposed to specific charges.
That's baffling. It's happened before multiple times, and Obama really should know that. Anyone have a conjecture as to what's going on there? Does he in fact not know? Is he somehow confused? Is he just lying? Were the previous examples secretly invalid? Is there a meaningful distinction between this case and those?
Preemptive of any investigation/indictment/etc. Not, as I understand it, in advance of the illegal action itself. (Not a distinction relevant here, of course, just clarifying)
I had the same thought of it just shifted who you had to negotiate and convince group to the entire office instead of eliminating that aspect.
Especially considering Buffer was mentioned and their formula was average for the role adjusted for cost of living, time with company, experience and equity level in a very straight forward way.
I think you can still get around that with some effort.
In 2010, I purchased a dumb phone/sim card for use on a prepaid plan. At the time it was the only way to get onto a super cheap prepaid plan since they wouldn't sell you a sim/the plan directly. I then put the sim into my own purchased smart phones(multiple nexus devices and a one plus one). For convenience reasons, I refill my account online with a cc but I technically could simply buy the t-mobile refill cards for cash then activate the time on them.
As far as I know, there's nothing stopping me from doing this fresh again with a new prepaid phone and then never associating my real identity in any way.
They don't even need to; your telco can know your home address based on a week's worth of location data, and could likely determine more about you based on where you go to work, shop, etc. Humans are creatures of habit, so it's relatively easy to draw inferences from simple patterns (i.e. if you spend 6-8 hours in the same location every night, that's probably where you live.) All it takes is one time checking your e-mail from an IP address to forever link that IP address to you. Know enough IP addresses someone has connected from and you can come up with a pretty good picture of their friend circle, their movements, how old they probably are, etc.
I work in the telecom industry, and this behavior exists because it's not explicitly illegal. This type of data mining is just scratching the surface of their capability -- turns out that a combination of about 30 seconds worth of data scraped off http traffic (not https, though even https can tell you something) and a location are enough to identify most individuals and link them to a profile in a DMP -- which can tell you all sorts of information like which products you've purchased recently (both online and in brick and mortar stores with a credit card), any relevant demographic information, and even what kind of porn you like.
The real restraint on this has been in the use of this information. Marketers have been remarkably conservative in using this information; likely for fear of scaring off customers with "creepy" data. But rest assured they know more about you than you do yourself.
Thanks; that is valuable information. So my whole plan (in the top-level post at the root of this discussion) is hopeless, at least in terms of having anonymous, untracked phone usage?
> your telco can know your home address based on a week's worth of location data
How accurate is that location data, do you know? Within 10 yards? 100 yards?
Similar here. I too have used my CC for refills and may have given my name for caller ID purposes, but I don't think it was mandatory nor do they have my SSN or other hard details on my identity.
AFAIK you shouldn't have to get a throwaway phone either. "SIM Card Kit" or "Bring your own phone/device" may be keywords to research -- you should be able to get a SIM that you can put in any GSM phone, and it will come with instructions about a website to visit, or phone number to call, to activate it. If they insist on names etc and it's prepaid, you could give a fake name since it will have no bearing on your ability to use it, although I'd be worried that it might be illegal for some stupid reason.
From my limited understanding, the difference is the government having a reasonable level of certainty that the device in question contains the evidence they're looking for.
The analogy I would use is a locked closet full of file boxes. If the government is certain that the files relating to a specific crime are in the closet, then you can be compelled to assist them in opening your closet or face an obstruction of justice charge. However if the police suspect you of a crime and suspect that you're the type of person who would keep the evidence in your locked closet that is not enough compel you to open the closet so the police can check up on their hunch.
In this case, I read it as the men are suspected of insider trading and the government believes that they would have used their cell phones to communicate about the deal and the phones contain evidence of such. There is no actual evidence that the phones were used and so they're not obstructing the police in obtaining evidence the police know is there, but rather preventing the police from poking around to see if the evidence exists at all.
I find it odd that they aren't just able to get the data from the carriers. The only reason it'd be on the device but not the carrier/Facebook/Twitter/etc servers is if they encrypted the messages, but they would probably mention this if it were the case.
It's surprising just how specialist conventional FE college courses can get for those inspired to get into a particular field. A flatmates' sister moved to England to take a course in piano tuning and repairing at a specialised musical instrument craft school within an institution that apparently also offers regular A-levels...
To win, I have to be right on all three propositions.
1) The top 6 US companies at http://fortune.com/2015/01/22/the-age-of-unicorns/ (Uber, Palantir, Airbnb, Dropbox, Pinterest, and SpaceX) are currently worth just over $100B. I am leaving out Snapchat because I couldn’t get verification of its valuation. Proposition 1: On January 1st, 2020, these companies will be worth at least $200B in aggregate.
2) Stripe, Zenefits, Instacart, Mixpanel, Teespring, Optimizely, Coinbase, Docker, and Weebly are a selection of mid-stage YC companies currently worth less than $9B in aggregate. Proposition 2: On January 1st, 2020, they will be worth at least $27B in aggregate.
3) Proposition 3: The current YC Winter 2015 batch—currently worth something that rounds down to $0—will be worth at least $3B on Jan 1st, 2020.
Ironically a basic statistics class indicates that cherry picking companies that deliver 2x, 3x and ... whatever the fuck that third pick is ... as a guaranteed return over 5 years is indicative of the overenthusiastic hype that historically surrounds bubble valuations.
#3 is a die roll. #2 is the killer. And I might take the bet on just #1.
#3 isn't just a die roll, it's the entire basis of early stage investment. If he loses on #3, YC will either be a shadow of its former self, or Sam will have given himself enough rope to hang himself (as president of YC).
This is exactly the sort of thing that everyone making press about investment capital should be willing to do. Sam isn't making a bet about money here, he's making a bet about his reputation as a forecaster/analyst.
Exactly. I admire Sam's balls but the externalities here are immense. The greatest financial mind of our time built Berkshire Hathaway to $350B over 50 years. GE is worth $250B. Microsoft $340B.
To believe Sam's motley list of companies can either hold onto valuations approaching those "real" companies for five more years, let alone actually generate viable earnings and go public (even at goofy P/E multiples) in line with what GE, Microsoft, or Buffett's candy, ketchup and mac'n'cheese subsidiaries alone make seems ... optimistic at best.
If he loses, might I suggest the book title? "Oops! Brands Aren't Businesses!" by Samuel H. Altman.
I understand the bet. I do not think you understand what "averaging $33B" means.
For instance Rubbermaid simply owns numerous home, commercial and healthcare markets. They make everything from saws to Sharpies. They doubled their market cap in the last five years. 20,000 employees (more than anyone on that list) $6 billion in revenue (ditto) P/E ratio of 30 ... and they're worth $10B.
Rubbermaid is a razor-thin margin business, with plenty of exposure to both the pressure of retailers like Wal-Mart and the rising costs of supplies, and very little in terms of differentiation from competitors. That's why it went bankrupt and got bought by Newell.
It averaged a gross profit margin of 38% the past five years. While paying a dividend. And doubling the stock price.
Which companies in that list have profits let alone profit margins? And are half as diversified? I see the big upside. I see the big downside. But I don't see how they all grow to average 3x NWL/Rubbermaid in the absence of bubble valuations.
Also all this "2x or 3x" after the big rise talk is just dilly-shaking anyway. The numbskulls who jumped in on the last Tumblr round would've made more money flipping Microsoft stock over the same period. Talk about unnecessary risk for the sake of risk.
Or, 5 years isn't that long from now... for comparison (from CrunchBase) Dropbox was part of the Summer 2007 batch. So, in the context of this bet, they would have had to have had a valuation of 3B in 2012 (assuming the rest of the batch failed).
As of Jan 1, 2012, their most recent funding would have been a Series B round for $250M at ~ $4B. So, in this case, Sam would have won.
In my opinion, #3 is a little unfair, just because there are significantly more startups in these YC batches than in years past. I wouldn't be surprised if the entire W15 batch hit $3B in total valuation by the end of the year. There are roughly 100 in this batch, so they would only need an average of $30M in valuation for Sam to win #3.
There are a lot of potential home runs in the current batch IMO - medical startups, etc. If someone like Stripe faces too much competition (as I'm certain Instacart will), I think (2) is his best option. Most of the rest of those names don't scream megacorp to me, but then I imagine Sam is privy to the interesting future plans of all of them.
https://dailygazette.com/galleries/2014/12/09/ge-answers-san...