For a long time now, I've hoped to see some kind of system emerge where law was written in a publicly accessible git-like system. I know some places are trending this way, but it would be so good to see with commits with relevant information and cases attached to each "push." I wonder if this could be a better and more open way for public consensus an ultimately enforcement, but the latter is always the most difficult part. And not only due to corruption, but external and unplanned factors too. This is where branching would be cool to see, where special cases are addressed. It would be a future historian's wet dream too lol. I wonder if this system, modeled on open source collaboration, would naturally cause a more horizontal strucure with better equity.
I love this idea, but would want to self host it. There are many other canvas options out there I can use that offer it, and I can mimic the nesting via links in something like Obsidian.
My work is primarily market strategy and product ideation. I do this in obsidian. Generally have a top level canvas and linked documents.
All the usual obsidian goodies work as expected.
I do like this app though. Great tool for preparing presentations to explain things and probably also great whiteboarding tool (company uses figma for that and it is beyond annoying!).
Great tool, but nothing the cannot be done in Claude. I started using it when it first was posted here. The pricing they are offering though, is a bit absurd for retail in the current market.
'The Dutch firm Ecory was commissioned to research the impact of piracy for several months, eventually submitting a 304-page report to the EU in May 2015. The report concluded that: “In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements. That does not necessarily mean that piracy has no effect but only that the statistical analysis does not prove with sufficient reliability that there is an effect.”
The report found that illegal downloads and streams can actually boost legal sales of games, according to the report. The only negative link the report found was with major blockbuster films: “The results show a displacement rate of 40 percent which means that for every ten recent top films watched illegally, four fewer films are consumed legally.”'
Very interesting report, and am not discounting it, but another factor is that maybe the pricing affect is already baked in from years of piracy. For example, back in the early 2000's, when P2P file sharing was being used to download music, then to compete, the music industry had to resort to iTunes store, which allowed users to buy just one song for a dollar, instead of the entire album (and then later on, to music streaming services). The damage was done decades ago, and eventhough P2P file sharing isn't big today, it's effects are still with us today (no music executive is going to go back to forcing people to buy an entire album to get just one or two songs).
But, maybe this report is taking this into account too??
Unfortunately, absence of evidence ≠ evidence of absence.
I obviously don't have time to read a 300 page report—I wish I did—but the conclusion says:
> With regard to total effects of online copyright infringements on legal transactions, there are no robustly significant findings. The strongest finding applies to films/TV-series, where a displacement rate of 27 with an error margin of roughly 36 per cent (two times the standard error) only indicates that online copyright infringements are much more likely to have negative than positive effects.
The conclusion goes on to discuss each type of media. Here's the section on games:
> For games, the estimated effect of illegal online transactions on sales is positive because only free games are more likely displaced by online copyright infringements than not. The overall estimate is 24 extra legal transactions (including free games) for every 100 online copyright infringements, with an error margin of 45 per cent (two times the standard error). The positive effect of illegal downloads and streams on the sales of games may be explained by players getting hooked and then paying to play the game with extra bonuses or at extra levels.
If this is what was meant by "illegal downloads and streams can actually boost legal sales of games" (and it's possible they're talking about something else which isn't in the conclusion), I don't find that convincing. It's within the margin of error and includes free transactions.
Moreover, I firmly believe that we are never going to have good data on this! You're trying to measure two things that are virtually impossible to measure with any accuracy: (1) how much piracy is taking place, and (2) what would sales have been without the piracy.
(I've edited my comment to actually quote the paper)
Or it's evidence that the effect can't be measured, which is what I'm trying to say.
I honestly don't understand how you would even attempt to measure something like this. There's no counterfactual. How can you possibly know what sales would have been without piracy?
This study appears to be relying on survey results. That seems questionable to me, because no one wants to admit "I totally would buy more books if piracy wasn't an option, but I choose piracy because I like having money and I think authors deserve to starve." I'm exaggerating for the sake of effect, but really, how can anyone ever know what they would have purchased under different circumstances? It's human nature to self-rationalize your actions. And yet, despite this, the study still didn't find statistically significant results!
Maybe if one country ever manages to truly cut off access to piracy websites, and there's another economically and sociologically similar country where piracy remains readily available, it will be possible to get some valid data on this question. I mostly hope this doesn't ever happen, because while I'm not a fan of piracy, I am a fan of the free internet!
> The report found a lack of evidence that piracy displaces sales.
This isn't true though, as they conclude a 40% displacement in blockbuster movie sales. You would need a better analysis of their methodology to dismiss their other conclusions
As far as I can tell from the conclusion, everything was within the margin of error, so my assumption is that it's random noise. If there's a place in the paper that says otherwise, please let me know what page its on. If I'm misreading the results, please let me know that as well.
The 40% figure seems to come from section 8.2, p.152, which the authors describe as "robust".
However, having seen the report now, this section on top films seems to use a different methodology to that used for books, so it's not really comparable, and in general I wouldn't put much confidence in these results anyway.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence, and Sagan should have said that.
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence if evidence was sought and not found, and much of science is based on this. Or if evidence of presence should be expected ... consider for example the absence of evidence of an elephant in your living room.
This saying should die along with "you can't prove a negative"--Euclid proved that there is no greatest prime over 2000 years ago. What can't be proven is a universal empirical--positive or negative--such as "no raven is white" or "all ravens are black".
I learned watching my grandfather play with his buddies every week. Never bet real money on it, but I love sweeping house with friends and buying the pizza. :)
It would be nice if the employer also cared in return, however in my experience, this is exceptionally rare. I think more than a fair share of us here learned our lessons in investing ourselves rather sharply. It rarely, if ever, pays off for the worker.
As a former freelancer the standards I hold myself to are exceptionally high. Then I got employed and carried that standard with me (still do). The problem is that this means work will be pushed my way, because I am sometimes literally the only person who can do it within a day instead making it a month long project.
This led then to such an amount of work that I could mo longer hold that quality level, which made me unhappy. Of course I complained all the way, with no real change.
The only thing that worked was a strategic leaking of the fact that I was looking for positions elsewhere, suddenly a whole lot of concessions were made, and since then it has gotten better and I got much better at rejecting work.
You know what caring looks like. You experience it in your personal relationships every day. The disconnect isn't knowledge, it's incentives. The practical answer is straightforward: predictable schedules that people can plan around, living wages that are indexed to the COL, transparent paths for advancement, respect for work-life boundaries, investment in employee development beyond immediate productivity needs (i.e. good healthcare for the worker and their dependents), genuine sick leave without retaliation, respect for physical and cognitive limitations, and protection from arbitrary termination.
But you're asking the wrong question. The real question is why, despite decades of evidence showing these practices improve retention and performance, they remain exceptional rather than standard. The system isn't broken; it's working exactly as designed. It is optimized for wealth extraction, not value creation.
Public companies are legally obligated to maximize shareholder value. Every dollar spent on employee wellbeing that doesn't directly boost quarterly metrics is arguably a breach of fiduciary duty. Middle managers who genuinely care get promoted out or pushed out. The few companies that do care either have unusual ownership structures (co-ops, private ownership with values-driven founders) or are temporarily buying talent in hot markets. Once conditions change, watch how quickly that 'caring' evaporates.
So yes, we all know what caring looks like. The question is why we keep pretending the current system has any mechanism to deliver it at scale.
One of the weirdest things I am seeing is the pushback from employers on "Remote"
We have actual studies showing that remote workers are more productive, have higher morale, and save themselves and their company money (no commute, no office rent)
And yet employers are still doggedly determined that employees sit in their toxic offices being miserable.
Employers are worse off (lower productivity), employees are worse off (lower morale).
I'd bet that when employers that want to bring employees back to the office commission studies of the pros and cons of remote work, those studies unsurprisingly determine that remote work is worse in most ways. Things like productivity and morale are hard to measure accurately anyway, so it would be easy to slant them to fit what people want to hear.
There's that piece of news that comes up semi regularly that claims that some unnamed individual in some in unnamed country is holding three remote jobs down simultaneously.
> Once conditions change, watch how quickly that 'caring' evaporates.
I work in a tech field, but not quite the "pamper you with massages and ice cream sundaes" part of it. I am profoundly uncomfortable with the cultural deception at those types of places.
When I was producing no-budget movies (people work for you without pay!) the secret trick was to keep a mental list of why people were here. Diana the camera assistant was here because she liked to learn, John the actor was here because he liked to try some things out, Linda was here to meet people, Joe was here because he is your friend.
Now you only need to make sure the basics (food, shelter, etc) is alright and that everybody gets what they came for each day.
So to answer your question: What it looks like for an employer to care depends on the specifc employee. Some may just look for financial benefits, others (like me) may just want to be given the time and means to do their job well, yet others value free rime more than money, or a better office, more autonomy within their domain or whatnot. The wishes are many.
But you need to first get the basics right, and many fail at that.
There are employers that care - they genuinely try to keep their staff engaged, and happy. They also, when times are hard, are the ones least likely to make people redundant, they hold on as long as humanly possible.
Then there are the employers at the other end of the scale, those who couldn't care less about their staff, they think that they pay the staff and that's all that's required of them, and everything that goes wrong is the staff's fault.
So, in practice, the employers that see their staff as human beings rather than "resources" to be exploited is a bloody good start.
What risk/return are they expecting employees to accept? What risk/return are they willing to accept? Any advantage they give themselves over the employee, to me, means they don't care.
For larger companies, "You have to move to X place and work 1 day a week in-office, but also we just laid some people off and will give you no guarantee that you won't be laid off after moving" is a good example that's common right now. You know none of the leadership is getting that kind of deal, but they expect a % of their employees to deal with it.
For smaller companies, bad equity splits, or a lack of transparency around equity or company performance is probably most common. It's pretty common for startups to avoid telling the whole story to the rank and file to keep them unaware of the actual risk/reward they are taking, which then allows founders/leadership to pad the risk/reward they themselves get.
Yup. If they won't show you a cap table or if you have different shares from the founders, you value it at zero until proven otherwise (liquidity event).
I'm pretty sure that's not the case, but I've never heard of a early or even founding engineers getting preferred stock.
Which is just a roundabout way then of saying that they want to appear like they care, but they don't actually. You will become math to them at the point where they get rewarded and find out your reward is more work.
It's the case. And the kicker is that if you understood the tax games we play with startup stock, you wouldn't want preferred shares.
Why? Because common shares have their price set by a 409A valuation, which through the first few rounds of funding especially will be a small fraction of the preferred share price, set by agreement between the company and its investors. Cheap common shares make early exercise practical, so you can file an 83(b), not worry about AMT, and benefit from the QSBS tax exclusion after five years. Cheap common shares also mean you capture most of the value of preferred shares as gains, rather than having it as basis, out of the gate, since in a successful exit preferred shares are simply converted to common.
What companies that care actually do is offer early exercise, so employees who want to can take advantage of the QSBS tax exclusion, and give 10-year exercise windows with ISO->NSO conversion, so employees who decide to leave aren't forced to exercise or forfeit their options within 30-90 days. There's a lot of uninformed talk about preferred shares on HN, and you really ought to ignore it.
I’ve known one person screwed by AMT, he worked for PayPal. I’ve known a few people who got rich off of early FAANG, Microsoft. I’ve made enough off company stocks to buy a car after 30 years at this, I’ve made probably five times that much just being long on AAPL since Steve returned, and some of that was also from company 401k match, which is likely second for income from employer benefits, or maybe behind health insurance.
I’ve know hundreds of people fucked over by the empty promise of common stock options. Who got less than nothing because they got nothing and lied to about it by bosses who they would now never trust again. At least a dozen of those were early employees, and a few of them looked to make money on paper but got diluted to hell and back during a funding round, because you can do that to non preferred stock.
I would also invite you to follow up with the person who responded to me in the affirmative. This is by and large an opinion I’ve adopted from advice from other people, that fits my own experiences, not something I’ve researched as much as they. The other person may give you better counter examples.
Preferred stock isn't protected against dilution. That's why the big investors also negotiate pro rata rights, which allow them to buy proportionally more shares in future rounds to maintain their target ownership percentage (the key word here being "buy"; they still have to pay up for the new shares at the going rate).
Under standard deal terms (1x liquidation preference), preferred stock simply means you're first in line to get your money back if the company is liquidated for less than the price you paid. But if you haven't paid anything, if you're just sitting on options, then the preference does nothing. And those shares will cost 5x+ more than common shares, so now you probably can't afford to exercise them. That means you've limited your upside to protect yourself from a downside you can't afford to expose yourself to in the first place. It makes no sense.
Like, to boil this down: What you're asking for is the right to invest in the company at the same price and on the same terms as other investors. And if you ask for that, some companies would say yes! A gung-ho employee with that level of buy-in? Hell yes! But you probably can't afford it. Luckily common shares are a much, much better deal.
Dilution also isn't in itself a bad thing. It just means new shares are being issued. Generally your shares are going up in value at the same time, but if they aren't, if they're being devalued, it's not because of the dilution. It's because the company is failing. And in this scenario the capital raised from the dilution is actually maintaining a higher value for your shares than they'd otherwise have, because again, the company is failing. At least now it's failing with some cash in the bank.
> I’ve know hundreds of people fucked over by the empty promise of common stock options.
To be clear, I'm not saying you and your friends haven't been shafted. I'm saying the underlying mechanism of the shafting isn't what you think, and wouldn't have been fixed by having preferred stock. If the company(ies) were successful and the outcome wasn't great for the team, then the grants were too small. The fix for that is to give people more ownership. If the company(ies) failed, then believe it or not all the preferred shares did for investors was best-case get them their money back. Either way, preferred stock is a red herring.
> I would also invite you to follow up with the person who responded to me in the affirmative.
rjbwork? They're just regurgitating the common talking points. Anytime someone brings up cap tables you can safely ignore them. The cap table has sensitive information; even most investors don't get to see it.
Happy to explain any of this in more depth. I had extremely good outcomes as an employee with common stock at companies that actually cared, and now with my own company have spent tens of thousands of dollars on lawyers optimizing our stock plan to be as employee-friendly as possible.
"Preferred stock" is not really "preferred", it has a lot of limitations that common stock doesn't have. But it does have preference during liquidation and/or secondary market tender offers.
There are ways that founders or major stockholders can use to screw the minor stockholders, but preferred stock does not protect against them at all.
> Which is just a roundabout way then of saying that they want to appear like they care, but they don't actually.
If people are giving non-trivial amounts of stock in a company where they work is "just math", then I don't know what else you want.
To be fair, he says in TFA he wants to recruit like a cult. I don’t know many cult leaders who care about their followers, so at least he’s honest if not psychopathic in the way he says he’s going to abuse you before he does so.
> I don’t know many cult leaders who care about their followers
My impression is that cult leaders often do care about their followers. The problems rather start when the cult member becomes disobedient - this is when matters become very dirty.
>My impression is that cult leaders often do care about their followers.
Cult leaders care about their followers insofar as they stay submissive ass-kissing sycophants. It's not like they care about the follower's actual well-being.
It oftentimes feels like you are paid way less than you actually gave to the company – assuming you actually worked hard and cared.
In my country it's like "Well, the company broke all records of profit, we earned 500 million dollars more than last years. Here, have this box of chocolate as a gift. Keep the good work guys"
I guarantee you, if you were running the company you work at, there might be a few here and there that you truly care about, but the vast majority of your workers are workers.
That, at best, is dehumanizing the employer. There is no corporate structure that exists without humans making the decisions at some point in the chain. The decisions might be abstracted or broken into small chunks, but it's still humans at the bottom.
And humans that replace caring with money are assholes.
I also follow this philosophy. I also have an anxious brain, though. To manage the clutter, I zip up old notes & projects by date and put them in an archive folder. They're always there if I need to reference them, but I have a clean workspace too. I include file trees in those archives for easy reference. Very easy to script with a cron job.
