If only 1 out of 10 startups “succeed” where success is defined by “the investors got their money back”. What are he chances for you as an employee getting any meaningful returns? The investors are well diversified, you aren’t as an employee.
Besides that, it takes the average startup 7-10 years to exit. As opposed to a public company where you can diversify your risk every three to six months depending on your vesting schedule.
> some female prisoners in Washington state wanted to know how many male prisoners had been transferred to women's prisons
This is such an incredibly bad-faith and transphobic representation of the case that I can only conclude you are intentionally trolling. Even if you believe that trans women should not be housed in prisons with cis women, it is beyond bad faith choose the words you chose to use.
I'm not following you at all. From the text of the request, the petitioners want to know: "Number of inmates that have been transferred from a men’s facility to a women’s facility since January 01, 2021" This is almost identical to what I wrote.
I would appreciate it if you would explain to me and others what part of my argument you disagree with rather than simply saying "incredibly bad-faith" "transphobic" "you are trolling" "beyond bad faith" without any explanation of what you think I did wrong or would prefer I do differently.
For what it's worth, I think you are acting in bad faith by calling me names and speculating unkindly about my motives without actually explaining what assertion or argument you object to and why. What you're doing is just bullying.
It's wrong to say "male." You're supposed to come up with some euphemism, like "bedicked." Literally nothing to do with the content of the argument; you're supposed to concede the ground before you step onto it.
While I really prefer the term “bedicked,” what is the term for people with penises regardless of gender? Is there a term that won’t result in someone being called a transphobe?
I’ve heard the term “sex assigned at birth” but that’s not accurate in this situation because I’m interested in people with penises and if someone was born male and had their penis removed surgically I wouldn’t want them included in my population of interest.
> what is the term for people with penises regardless of gender? Is there a term that won’t result in someone being called a transphobe?
No, there is no universally accepted term that won't get you called a transphobe by anyone (correct me if I'm wrong). If terms of the discussion are set by the most extreme genderist views, it's becomes literally impossible to discuss things like male violence against women or sexism in the workplace, because there's no permissible language to describe the groups involved.
I just go with "male" and "female" which are objective, observable facts. If people object to these terms, they are really objecting to having a discussion at all.
> “sex assigned at birth”
Sex is not "assigned" at birth it is observed, frequently well before birth via ultrasound or some other technology. Midwives and doctors don't go round flipping coins that say "boy" on one side and "girl" on the other, this whole concept of "assigned" sex is silly.
While that’s true, it’s such a rare occasion that it wouldn’t really factor into any general terminology. In that there’s not much benefit in altering any words to take into account the 1:100,000 situations where that’s true.
I think it would be like avoiding saying “people have two legs” because some people are born without legs or with only one leg. Yes, it occurs, but not so much as to matter in regards to population generalizations.
> In that there’s not much benefit in altering any words to take into account the 1:100,000 situations where that’s true.
Please explain where you got that number. You are off by three orders of magnitude. About 1:100 of births have ambiguity of gender at birth.
> I think it would be like avoiding saying “people have two legs” because some people are born without legs or with only one leg. Yes, it occurs, but not so much as to matter in regards to population generalizations.
Please explain why you feel that the description "assigned gender at birth" is not apt to describe people who have unambiguous genitals. Yes I understand that the description "observed gender at birth" is a subset of the description "assigned gender at birth", I understand the difference between these expressions. But it seems to me like one expression nicely covers the other expression, e.g. you can say for any birth where gender was "observed" at birth that it was also "assigned" at birth. It seems to me like you are the one stretching language to weird places to achieve political goals.
That doesn't mean it's impossible to observe the sex in most of these cases though, it just takes more than a quick visual check to determine.
The really tricky cases are where the individual has reproductive organs of mixed types, particularly where it involves some sort of genetic mosaicism or chimerism. These ones are where we could reasonably say that sex is only assigned and not observed, but it's very rare. Rarest of all is where someone could be plausibly regarded as both female and male.
Generally, I think it's best to avoid the terminology of "assigned at birth", because it comes with the implication that sex can be arbitrarily reassigned. Something like "incorrectly observed" would be better, in cases where a mistake has genuinely been made.
Exactly this. Even using the phrase 'trans woman' is a concession, implying that these men are a subcategory of women, rather than of men. And that it's possible to 'trans' into this category.
(This is why in radical feminist circles, they are typically referred to as 'trans-identifying males' instead.)
As someone who somewhat supports public land ownership (of the Georgism variety), I think you'd have to be plain nuts to use that belief to justify discouraging others to use the word 'landlord'. Especially considering I hear the word more from people who oppose land ownership than from anyone else. I'm more inclined to believe that this is about gender.
And the new concept is property owner can be of any gender so change the word that points out to one particular gender. When did change become so difficult in this society? Ha!!
I'd suggest that the set of words which are appropriate or inappropriate are strongly dependent on the writer, context and the type of writing, and attempting to impose a single specific set of words as a privileged set of appropriateness/inappropriateness is indeed simply imposing their morality on everyone else.
In many cases they are making a false assertion that a particular word is inappropriate, simply because it's inappropriate for them in their context/culture/morality while it's entirely appropriate for the writer's context/culture/morality; and those false assertions essentially attempt to change the writers' own notion of what's appropriate or not towards what Google considers appropriate - and I don't agree that Google should be allowed to apply such social influence.
They’re not enforcing shit, they’re just letting people know that the word can have a negative connotation. This could be extremely helpful for a newer English speaker, someone from another culture, or god forbid someone who just wants to use language that won’t make someone upset.
Yep, it would have helped you to capitalize "God" and not offend Christians. Or better yet, not even written the word itself. You can use "G*d" to be safe.
This is a nuanced take that I hadn't considered, fair enough. For people just trying to go along to get along in their communications and feel there are minefields everywhere, I could see this tool being a relief/helpful. I personally don't think that relief is worth the tradeoff, but I def can agree to disagree.
Would you say it isn't enforcement then, and if so how?
I certainly spell my words differently if I get a red squiggly line. Do you not?
Tech rarely "enforces" via direct controls unless a regulation is forcing it. What it does instead are nudges like this, and pretending the nudges don't have notable and similar impact is either naive or in suggested bad faith due to the company one works at.
> I certainly spell my words differently if I get a red squiggly line. Do you not?
You always have the option to just not. It's called enFORCEment, not enSUGGESTment. I presume the reason you choose to correct spelling is that you know it will be received better by your audience if the words are spelled according to convention. If you are spelling a word outside of the dictionary and you get a red line under the word, do you then change it to something you know to be not what you wanted? Of course not. If however you could only write words in the dictionary, then that would be enforcement (especially if you couldn't add words to the dictionary).
Presumably you have the same choice here. I really don't see the difference.
It's really striking to me that a number of issues today where everyone is exercising their free will are somehow twisted to be authoritarian overreach. Someone is upthread calling it authoritarian and a new heresy. I mean... come on. The histrionics are getting out of hand. Now a squiggle is "authoritarian".
The first english* dictionary which leads into the knowledge-base that generates the red squiggly line is from 1604.
The first problematic word dictionary that leads to the green (?) squiggly line in this tool came out of a nlp neural network in the past few few years, folks aren't quite sure how it works, and it has some additional best-effort labeling of phrases from the product team.
That's 400+ years of semantic/syntactic development vs. <20, likely <10 years, but let's start shifting the language all the same because we're a FAANG?
If you really don't see the difference, again it is bad faith, or naive. The conceit from teams that build and launch these tools without any consideration for the above is astounding.
> If you really don't see the difference, again it is bad faith, or naive.
Great way to engage with someone. Am I supposed to take your personal attacks against me as demonstration of your good faith attempt to participate in debate? Please refrain from this rhetoric in the future.
Anyway, I'm not sure I understand your point. What does the age of the first dictionary have to do with any of this? I can kind of see a point if I squint, but I'm a bit lost. Your position seems to be couched in the idea that this kind of thing will "shift" language but I don't understand the mechanism by which you feel this will happen. Maybe in your next reply you could expand on this idea (if I'm right about the thrust of your comment), omitting any personal attacks please.
Because the way I see it, if you want to say something you can still say it, and if you disagree with any suggestions Docs gives you, you are free to hold firm to that disagreement and use any language you want. Your idea would only seem to apply if you think that Google has hegemonic dominance over document production... which I don't think is remotely true.
> Maybe in your next reply you could expand on this idea
From my earlier post in this same thread:
"I didn't imply GOOG was setting up gulags, but I will refer to my early comment in response - it's either naive or bad faith to say that network effects from dominant players do not lead to enforcement in everything but name, and that the scope of concerns from engineers and the products they build should stop at "well, its just a feature." Algorithmic news feeds on social media was just a feature too.
Enforcements, mandates, suggestions, impacts, governances, features - spitting hairs semantically on the overall issue that tech "features" shape areas that tech and its product owners have no business shaping/influencing/impacting/enforcing but still do anyway, let alone even understand, and the downstream ramifications are significant.
They get away with it partially via enablers like your view which minimize the dynamic to local examples that open up framing the counterpoint as something absurd - yes, Google's gulags aren't built yet.
Edit - to put at least one impact of tech like this another way, it's not Google that puts a user in a gulag. It's the coworker of the user who notices a phrase the coworker also typed, was caught by Google, and the coworker corrected - why didn't that user also change it? All these second order effects were doubtlessly considered by that Google product team, I'm sure? Putting aside my original point that Google doesn't even belong in this space by a mile."
I didn't imply GOOG was setting up gulags, but I will refer to my early comment in response - it's either naive or bad faith to say that network effects from dominant players do not lead to enforcement in everything but name, and that the scope of concerns from engineers and the products they build should stop at "well, its just a feature." Algorithmic news feeds on social media was just a feature too.
Enforcements, mandates, suggestions, impacts, governances, features - spitting hairs semantically on the overall issue that tech "features" shape areas that tech and its product owners have no business shaping/influencing/impacting/enforcing but still do anyway, let alone even understand, and the downstream ramifications are significant.
They get away with it partially via enablers like your view which minimize the dynamic to local examples that open up framing the counterpoint as something absurd - yes, Google's gulags aren't built yet.
Edit - to put at least one impact of tech like this another way, it's not Google that puts a user in a gulag. It's the coworker of the user who notices a phrase the coworker also typed, was caught by Google, and the coworker corrected - why didn't that user also change it? All these second order effects were doubtlessly considered by that Google product team, I'm sure? Putting aside my original point that Google doesn't even belong in this space by a mile.
If I were to argue that AAVE speakers should not be forced to see red squiggly lines when their spelling doesn't conform to "standard" spelling, using the same argument you make above ("A coworker might ask why they didn't correct a supposed misspelling") would you agree that a spell-checker is racist/inappropriate?
>With the current plan, the city is going to be a city with super high density combined with ultra low density and very little in-between. In other words, it will be full of wonderful enclaves for the wealthy, and sardine-can housing for everyone else.
For ease of searching, this phenomenon is often called the "missing middle" problem. And it sucks, because as the already-high-density areas get more and more dense over time, it just reinforces the fear of density that people in the low-density neighborhoods have, because it confirms their prior belief that density means 50 story condo towers, and only 50 story condo towers.
Chicago is a wonderful counterexample to this - lots of neighborhoods are a mix of SFH, SFH with ADUs, MFH with 2, 3 or 4 units, and small 4 or 5 story apartment buildings, with nary a condo tower in sight.
You can take out a loan in crypto that's fully secured against some other crypto. It's turtles all the way down, and has zero relevance to what most people think about when they talk about taking out a loan.
How does that work? If you take a loan from a "decentralised lender" you can essentially walk away with the money and never pay the loan back. So, "decentralised lending" can't work, as far as I can tell.
Nearly all defi loans are overcollateralized. I deposit $100 of eth, borrow $50 of eth, convert to usdc and send to my bank. Six months later if the price of eth has gone up i need to buy more the $50 worth to repay my debt, if the price of eth goes down i can pay back less than $50 of eth.
If it goes up by a lot then i can borrow more against my initial deposit, if it goes down by a lot and i dont close my position then the deposit is liquidated to pay off the debt and i have a smaller position.
It actually works pretty well, add on to this things like Alchemix which builds loans via yearn vaults and you can borrow money against future interest and have self-repaying loans.
If you have initial assets its an easy way to borrow against those assets. e.g. My bank wouldn't give me a loan against my eth as they don\t value the asset, instead I just open a maker vault and borrow against it in dai ($ stablecoin), and then sell that for € and deposit to my bank. problem solved.
I think the reason crypto investors are excited about this is that it allows them to maintain a position in a crypto coin while still extracting some liquidity - possibly to invest in other coins.
So, say you own 5 BTC and don't want to sell it because it's going "to the moon". You stake it as 200% collateral on a DeFi loan and get 2.5 BTC of liquidity you can use to buy some ETH.
What's interesting about this is that it allows the demand for coins (and therefore their value) to increase without introducing new (fiat) money into the system. I haven't done the research, but I'd be curious to know what portion of crypto trading is funded by these kinds of DeFi loans as opposed to "new" money.
'... it allows them to maintain a position in a crypto coin ...'
In some 'we own you and command you to pay tribute to mighty rulers from what you produce' regimes, the loan avoids a sale and the resulting tax event. In my experience, the loan can be converted to fiat money.
This process doesn't create new "money" as far as I can tell. Centralised exchanges can indeed inflate the supply of any crypto-currency by lowering the reserve ratio. But I think the way they pump the coins is mostly by issuing unbacked "stablecoins" and using those to buy crypto-currencies.
I know HN is not the place for glibness, but literally: just build more homes. Everything else is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Zoning reform is the answer.
The feds don't really get a say in home building, it's up to the provinces like Ontario who aren't really feeling the pressure to do anything, after rejecting the most impactful recommendations from a recent task force on affordability [1].
The NIMBY mayors of cities such as Mississauga pushed back [2] and the province has effectively backed down.
Problem is urban sprawl has reached its limit so more homes means more apartments. And millennials accustomed to freestanding houses in suburbs will continue to rent houses and ignore the new apartments while claiming there is still a housing crisis.
I think millennials would happily adjust to condo living if they were affordable and large enough to comfortably live in with room to spare like in a house (1400+ Square feet, 3+ bedrooms)
>In many countries, including Europe, new properties are quickly snatched by investment
Demand for housing is not infinite, and supply of capital is not infinite. Building more units will always help. The quantity of units which are bought and then kept empty long term is tiny in relative terms.
>> In many countries, including Europe, new properties are quickly snatched by investment
> Demand for housing is not infinite, and supply of capital is not infinite. Building more units will always help. The quantity of units which are bought and then kept empty long term is tiny in relative terms.
I think it's kind of pointless to argue over which one policy to pursue to fix this problem, why not try a multi-pronged approach?
1. Implement some policy to ban large investors from home-ownership (say no corporate ownership and a small cap on how many an individual/family can own). There are more reasons to do this than just supply.
2. Put an onerous tax on housing that is not occupied full-time.
3. Build more housing.
1 & 2 would help ease some (but not all) pressure that makes 3 less desirable.
> 1 and 2 will essentially prevent any sort of a rental market, and rentals clearly play a valuable role for lots of society.
Not if the rule is scoped to single-family homes and individual units in multi-owner buildings. Purpose-built rental housing (e.g. apartment buildings) would be exempted for obvious reasons. The intent is to keep large investors out of markets where owner-occupancy is typical. Even in my original comment I did make allowances for single-family home rentals, but they'd have to be from small-scale landlords.
Also suggestion 2 wouldn't prevent a rental market anywhere there's demand for housing, it would just force landlords to drop rents aggressively to get units occupied.
And obviously, as is true for any internet comment suggestion of regulatory changes, actual implementation will be more complicated than can be expressed in a pithy comment that lays out the gist.
