Sure, and the reason he is is because he DOES check stuff like this before sending it out.
Top leaders excel because they assemble a team around them they trust. You can't do everything yourself, you need to delegate. And having people in those positions also means you shouldn't be acting alone or those people will not stick around
First of all, I would expect a top leader to be prepared for scenarios like this (including templates of customer communication).
And yeah, I would expect a CEO to have enough legal knowledge to handle such a situation (customer communication) on his own.
But I also have to mentioned that I'm not in the US. Not every country has the litigation system of the US where you can basically destroy a company because you as the customer are too dumb to not spill hot coffee over yourself.
> you as the customer are too dumb to not spill hot coffee over yourself
presuming you're referring to the hot coffee lawsuit, maybe read details of the story. McDonalds wasn't at all blameless, and the plaintiff had reasonable demands
You expect the CEO of a company to have the legal depth of knowledge AND knowledge of all their customers, contracts and SLAs to be able to wing a communication and not somehow trip over all of that? They also should understand every possible legal jurisdiction that could be affected? You realise even the head of their legal department (a HIGHLY competent lawyer) likely wouldn’t say there could do that without speaking to the key people in their team?
Should the CEO also bang out some dev estimates for the roadmap because, hey, they should be competent enough to do something like that. Why not submit the accounts for the year? How hard can it be, just reading a few lines off their Sage or Quickbooks accounts?
Let me be more clear on what I mean by “wing it,” because “having templates” doesn’t really cut it. Anyone can bang out a “we have a problem” template, so why does the CEO need to attach their name to it? Once you’re at the point of needing a CEO to communicate, you have a specific problem, with its own specific impacts that a single person can not be expected to have enough depth of knowledge in their brain to actually talk about without involving their domain experts, including legal, technical, whatever the situation needs.
> can not be expected to have enough depth of knowledge in their brain to actually talk about
What is the use of a CEO if not to have enough depth of knowledge about the different aspects of running a business?
Like what? Poor little CEO that doesn't understand anything about the world and how to run a company. Seems like helplessness is expected at every stage.
> What is the use of a CEO if not to have enough depth of knowledge about the different aspects of running a business?
Bit of a difference between “having depth of knowledge in their business” and “can speak off-the-cuff with the necessary accuracy to remain in compliance with every contract and legal jurisdiction their organisation is engaged in, without consulting the numerous domain experts they employ for just this purpose,” isn’t there.
Also, such a situation that requires the CEO’s direct attention has already gone FAR beyond your standard incidents where you can throw out a pre written statement. Do you want your organisation just cuffing it from the top down? Are you Elon Musk in disguise?
Take the lead couldn't be more different than act by themselves.
Take the lead, yes they should be able to as that's the job pretty much.
Act by themselves, sure they can make decisions in small cases. But on big things you hear everybody's input, weigh it, and only if needed, cast the deciding vote.
Vercel acknowledges a security incident, which nobody is claiming doesn't exist. What they don't acknowledge are this person's vague implications about impact elsewhere.
Sure but they're not adding the battery equivalent needed for 24/7 operation. So if the demand can be when the sun shines, this will work, otherwise it won't
> I mean, who the hell wants to be 10X more productive without a commensurate 10X compensation increase? You're just giving away that value to your employer.
Those are productivity increases that got our standard of living to where it is. Fewer people doing the same amount of work has, historically speaking, freed people from their current job, allowing them to work on something else.
It's that analogy of the horse, they used to be farm animals. Now, fewer of them are 'employed' but they're much nicer jobs. I'm not sure if the same is true for us this time around though as new jobs being created have increasingly been highly skilled which means the majority can't apply.
Except that in many cases there's people living downstream doing agriculture using that water for irrigation. There's just this tiny dispute about that in the nile delta between Egypt and Ethiopia
One reason new plastic is so cheap is that we wanted the other parts of the oil to run automobiles and planes. So if we stop doing that suddenly recycling the plastic makes more sense too...
Most people don't care. PFAS is only voluntarily being phased out in food packaging, rather than being banned. People cook with teflon-coated pans for the tiny convenience over a nitrided, ceramic, or seasoned cast iron pan. Outdoors enthusiasts want PFAS rain jackets and PFAS ski waxes, rather than the alternatives.
I definitely agree they need to look at history, consider what they're being exposed to, and understand how simple and easy some of the substitutions/mitigations could be. There's 0 reason why manufacturers are getting 5+ years to phase out a forever chemical in something like ski wax or dental floss.
Once you go stainless you don’t go back. None of the hassle of cast iron, and eggs don’t stick with just some basic skill. Very easy to clean, no need to be gentle like with cast iron ceramic or non stick pans.
I don't think it's that people don't care, I think it's that people are ignorant. I also don't think that's an accident, I think we're in the midst of a multi-decade project to create a populace that's as dumb as possible, because the more aware and educated people are, the less likely they are to allow the kinds of behaviour that are destroying the health of people, animals and the environment.
The ideal societal conditions for, say, a petrochemical company that is creating toxins that are genuinely "forever" for all intents and purposes, is a society where people are exhausted from their terrible job (or two jobs, or job + gig economy side hustle) and spend their leisure time glued to their phones, scrolling AI slop on instagram and gambling away their meagre savings on sports betting and prediction markets.
These are not people who are going to get educated about chemistry.
Scientific expertise is derided as elitism. The president lies constantly by issuing "truths" on his social media platform. Public education gets defunded and IQ scores are declining. Either this is just random societal decay, or this is serving the interests of the rich and powerful. I know where I stand on it. And yes, I'm cranky.
No it’s because lots of us grew up in the 70s with asbestos, lead, chlordane, ddt, etc… and we are still alive and thriving. We played with radioactive chemistry sets and even made our own plastic animals inside enclosed areas and loved to breath in the vapors : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thingmaker
> People cook with teflon-coated pans for the tiny convenience over a nitrided, ceramic, or seasoned cast iron pan.
...which has absolutely nothing to do with the PFOA that you might reasonably be concerned about. Teflon is chemically inert. It's literally used for human body implants. Teflon-coated pans are not your enemy. Fire-fighting foam, on the other hand -- you probably shouldn't bathe in it.
Any test that "detects" teflon in the generic category of "PFAS" is a hopelessly flawed test [1]. Unfortunately, a great many of these papers don't make the distinction, whether intentionally or due to incompetence, or simply because it's far easier to do that, and it gets better headlines.
[1] Important aside: historically, several of the major manufacturers of teflon had problems with PFOA contamination around the factories due to manufacturing processes. This is unrelated to your personal use of a Teflon pan, and also, the process has been changed. If you want to argue that the new process is also polluting, fine, make that argument -- but don't assert that the use of the final product is itself unsafe.
Overheat them, which means the stuff gets into the air. Many many pet birds have died of this only because they're more susceptible
Use the wrong material in them meaning the start to scratch the Teflon layer.
I'm not saying you cannot use them right, but too many people don't and the product isn't safe when improperly used. This is true for many products but in this case plenty of people aren't aware they're holding it wrong.
> Overheat them, which means the stuff gets into the air. Many many pet birds have died of this only because they're more susceptible
And again, this has nothing to do with PFAS or PFOA. The principle cause is a complete breakdown of teflon into fluorinated small-molecule gases, such as hydrogen fluoride and tetrafluoroethylene. You're literally burning the coating off. It has as much relationship to PFOA as wood smoke has to wood.
> ...which has absolutely nothing to do with the PFOA that you might reasonably be concerned about. Teflon is chemically inert. It's literally used for human body implants. Teflon-coated pans are not your enemy. Fire-fighting foam, on the other hand -- you probably shouldn't bathe in it.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. Yes, Teflon is inert but only when it's not exposed to high temperatures (>350F). When heated, such as in a non-stick pan, Teflon gives off fumes which contain byproducts including breakdowns back into PFAS compounds. So /YES/ the use of the final product (as cookware) /is/ unsafe. NOBODY SHOULD BE USING TEFLON NONSTICK COOKWARE.
> Teflon gives off fumes which contain byproducts including breakdowns back into PFAS compounds.
Completely incorrect. Overheating (aka "burning") completely destroys the molecule, and releases small molecule gases, like hydrogen fluoride. These have no relation to PFAS, they can't turn back into PFAS, and they look nothing like PFAS.
It's like saying that the smoke from burning wood is, in fact, wood.
Teflon does not burn at 350F, it melts between 620F and 662F. At 350F and above, however, it starts off-gassing carbonyl fluoride, carbonyl difluoride, hydrogen fluoride, and various fluorinated alkanes and alkenes. PFAS is a broad term for Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances which includes several of the compounds that off-gas from overheating Teflon. Off-gassing accelerates into partial decomposition as you cross 500F until it begins melting between 620F and 662F, after 662F you can begin burning Teflon.
As a general rule, if something gives off toxic fumes that kill birds, probably don't use it to cook your food, regardless of what specific compounds its emitting, "canaries in coal mines" and all that.
> At 350F and above, however, it starts off-gassing carbonyl fluoride, carbonyl difluoride, hydrogen fluoride, and various fluorinated alkanes and alkenes
Wrong units. Starts happening at around ~250 C (~480F), not 350F. Completely depolymerizes at around 500C.
> PFAS is a broad term for Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances which includes several of the compounds that off-gas from overheating Teflon.
Yes, I'm telling you that "PFAS" is a meaningless term that is so broad as to include everything from harmless chemicals (i.e. Teflon) to things that are genuinely toxic (tri-fluoro acetic acid). So using this term as "evidence" of toxicity is just circular logic.
> As a general rule, if something gives off toxic fumes that kill birds, probably don't use it to cook your food, regardless of what specific compounds its emitting, "canaries in coal mines" and all that.
a) It doesn't, unless you specifically overheat it. Don't do that.
b) if that's your standard, you'll definitely want to look at that paper I just linked, because overheating butter in a cast iron pan also kills birds.
I look forward to your campaign against butter. It's certainly more harmful to public health than Teflon!
> Wrong units. Starts happening at around ~250 C (~480F), not 350F. Completely depolymerizes at around 500C.
Many places claim 500F is the temperature limit for normal usage of Teflon in a pan, however that's based on the temperature at which it starts degrading, off-gassing begins at lower temperatures. Also, every oil except refined avocado oil will surpass its smoke point at 500F and begin degrading as well, so really you should just be careful with temperature when cooking, regardless of material, but should definitely NOT be using Teflon coated pans.
> Yes, I'm telling you that "PFAS" is a meaningless term that is so broad as to include everything from harmless chemicals (i.e. Teflon) to things that are genuinely toxic (tri-fluoro acetic acid). So using this term as "evidence" of toxicity is just circular logic.
There are no PFAS that are non-toxic. Are you a paid industry shill?
> a) It doesn't, unless you specifically overheat it. Don't do that.
Overheating Teflon pans happens under normal usage simply by exposing it to heat without having food in it, preheating pans is normal behavior when cooking, and is /required/ to reach the Leidenfrost point in other materials (e.g. stainless steel). A material that you have to baby to avoid accidentally releasing toxic fumes /should NOT/ be used for cooking.
> b) if that's your standard, you'll definitely want to look at that paper I just linked, because overheating butter in a cast iron pan also kills birds.
They heated the butter to 500F to produce toxic fumes, which makes sense as you're basically straight up burning it at that point. Butter begins smoking between 310F and 350F depending on milk-fat content, and you should not burn butter. Besides all the other reasons, it tastes and smells horrible. Intentionally burning butter and incidental toxic off-gassing from normal pan preheating are not the same thing.
This has nothing to do with PFAS. When you heat teflon to 500C+, the molecules break down into small molecule fluorinated gases. These molecules are not PFAS, in any way.
the concern is not about immediate effects of using products, but the fact that they are now everywhere in the environment, including water supplies and our own blood streams.
Future archaeologists are going to chronicle humankind's stupidity by the lead layer, the atom bomb testing fallout layer, the PFAS layer, etc. All of these were made possible by a misplaced sense of scale. Yes we can poison the whole planet. That little blue dot.
Also, in roulette there's nowhere to put your money on whether a countries leader will be dead by the end of the month
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