Completely understandable - healthy
skepticism is warranted. The report is
hosted on Selar.co, a Nigerian creator
platform similar to Gumroad.
All the core information in the post is
verifiable independently - the Alvarez &
Marsal appointment was covered by
BusinessCloud, the collapse by Sifted and
Bloomberg. Happy to answer any questions
here directly.
The reason why people form two lines to board the Marunouchi line in Ikebukuro is not because they prioritize seating, or going as soon as possible.
The true reason is that the line forks into two lines later on, with the final station being either Honancho or Ogikubo. The second line that form is just for the people whose destination would not be served by the incoming train.
So a reporter used an AI detection tool that returned positive from the user provided Uber Eats internal document and that proves it’s fake?
Is this article entirely bought and paid for by Uber?
I mean, I think it didn't even need an AI detection tool. Why would an Uber engineer who works on Eats have a badge that says Uber Eats? This would be easily corroborated by talking to any Uber engineer, like a journalist ought to do.
I think the main issue with VR is that it is fundamentally different from both gaming consoles and computers.
I bought a meta quest 3 last year specifically to play table tennis, I play it every single day until my muscles are sore. The other apps and games, impressive as they may be, are just gimmicks. You get awed for the first few hours and put the device away never to be touched again.
I would say the biggest hurdle is actually motion sickness. Every game or app that allows your avatar to move through controller usage, rather than moving around your room (such as table tennis) can not be used for longer periods of time. My wife who is prone to motion sickness can not wear the device for more than 10 minutes. Myself, who had never had motion sickness before in my life, can handle a full hour before being overwhelmed.
It definitely varies from person to person, but I would dispute the assertion that it cannot be used for longer periods of time in principle. The category of games where your avatar moves through controller usage includes most flight sims, for example, and yet some people (myself included) can play them for hours in VR. I also play Ground Branch in VR sometimes, using keyboard and mouse for navigation, and it only takes a couple minutes to settle into a comfortable state. So I think there's a subset of people for whom this is not a problem. The question is how large that subset is...
The Nintendo Wii was a new kind of gaming console, at a time when the industry was a fraction of the size it is today. Yet it got people standing up and moving while gaming. People bought them in droves to play with friends via local multiplayer. It forced Xbox and PS3 to also add motion detecting paddle accessories to their consoles.
It can be done. Facebook just isn't the company to do it.
I’m sure the industry has standards for assigning blame, but it looks to me that ATC is clearly being assholes here.
Even from this article that clearly seems to think Lufthansa is in the wrong I walked away with a feeling that ATC and small town cops are one and the same.
The current top comment on the article explains the situation, and ATC are "not being assholes here":
>NorCal had a new interpretation of ILS approaches come down several months ago that tied the controllers hands with regards to ILS approaches during visual conditions... The controllers were issued guidelines that if it’s busy and an aircraft is unable to comply with the approaches advertised on the atis or maintain visual separation that its better to hold them until there is adequate space on final as it’s more unsafe to start vectoring 30/40 different aircraft to build the required hole for the 1 aircraft who’s company has a lame rule
> The controller clears the Lufthansa jet to make a visual approach, and the Lufthansa pilot advises “due to company procedures, we are unable visual approach at nighttime”
> The controller then advises that “if that’s the case, then it will be extended delays”
The individual controller won’t know exactly how many airplanes are ahead of this one, and even if they did they can only estimate the delay. In this case the estimate they gave the plane turned out to be optimistic, because the planes ahead of them were taking longer to land than expected. Certainly saying “This conversation is over” would be rude in most circumstances, but it merely reflects the reality that a controller can only spend so much time talking to each crew. The crew already had all the information the controller could give them, and simply needed to make a decision rather than ask more questions.
I'm pretty sure they did.. the article says controller told them there would be "extended delays". Sounds like the pilot just got impatient when ATC couldn't get him on the ground after 10 minutes.
No, the pilot got inpatient when the controller told them the next info will be in 10 minutes (reasonable, shit happens) and did not contact them at that point -the pilot even had to remind the ATC they were supposed to update the flight.
Norcal is an amazing bunch of people with a high stress life-and-death job. They're incredibly accommodating, but when the system is at capacity it's at capacity. SFO is a very special airport with a traffic flow much higher than its footprint would normally allow. Since there is pretty nowhere for it to expand, the only option would be to reduce the number of slot times, which for a business hub like SFO would be terrible.
Browsing their most recent 10Q[1], it looks like they took a substantial loss on their investment in EntertainmentOne[2]. Which they did with borrowed money, meaning they don't have that much equity to lose. If you look at it from a business line perspective, WotC made 2x the profits of the next biggest, on half the revenue.
My read: management bet the company on Film&TV in 2019, and lost so hard WoTC pays the price.
Because layoffs provide profitability, rough as it is.
However! What Hasbro is doing to WOTC is tremendously short term thinking. You do not prune the organizations that are providing all of your liquidity in a time of crisis for fear of pruning the wrong branch and diminishing the growth by sending a message to key people that it’s time to go, which is always possible and arguably likely when you cut.
I believe that Hasbro shareholders should insist on making WOTC’s management team responsible for the whole company, as they have time and again been the backbone of profitability, progressive projects that actually ship and make actual money and have been doing a lot of good decision making in recent years.
Yes I’m aware of the CEO’s criticisms around short term decision making, but he’s always had to answer to the parent company and they are very corporate and MBA-logic oriented.
Now on to the answer to your question, here is the math they look at:
Amazon had $2.8 million in earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization – or EBITDA) for every staff member they laid off in January.
Meta had $3.9 million in earnings for each of the 11,000 staff members they laid off in November. In response to Meta’s cost-cutting strategy, its stock price increased by 19 percent.
Tech giant Microsoft had an EBITDA of $98.8 billion in 2022. This means they earned $9.8 million for each person they laid off in January 2023.
Other companies’ layoffs weren’t as difficult to understand: WeWork ended 2022 with an EBITDA of -$824 million, and Spotify ended its fiscal year with an EBITDA of -$290 million.
Earnings per laid off employee seems like an odd metric. It makes the decision sound more "rational" the more employees are laid off (which is clearly backwards), and would give ridiculous numbers for companies with very few or zero layoffs.
I only skimmed the linked article, but they don't seem to bother justifying why this metric matters.
> have been doing a lot of good decision making in recent years.
Wait, what? Aren't these the same people who tried to rug-pull the D&D license and caused a bunch of MtG drama with new cards that almost crashed the card market? Perhaps those decrees came from Hasbro, but we outsiders can't really know that, can we?
Short term thinking also doesn't matter to investors. They can drop the stock like a hot potato any time they want. There are no incentives built in for long term holding.
Literally, and speaking generally, the stock price might go up due to short term gains? Layoffs are a form of cost-cutting and assuming it doesn’t affect the service or product, this leads to short term increased profits or offsets expected incurred losses? Not everyone playing the stock market is a value investor.
As the fine article notes:
> At time of writing, it’s unclear why Hasbro’s chosen to lay off employees at the single strongest company in its portfolio. This year, Wizards debuted a critically if not commercially successful major motion picture, earned a Game of the Year trophy at the 2023 Game Awards, and was consistently profitable, but Hasbro’s still sacking its employees. It’s the sort of math that only makes sense if you’ve got shareholders to placate.
The market is more focused on next quarter's profits than next years - if layoffs help the balance sheet next quarter, they don't care if game quality suffers and there's less profit in the years to come. Well, it's not that the market doesn't care about next year's profit, but they'll expect the company to figure it out by next year.
That was an issue I encountered when writing the logic for Shogi so that I could build my own engine.
Writing Python to express the logical dependencies was surprisingly unintuitive.
My original attempt was clunky and I rewrote the logic from scratch 2 or 3 times until I could bear look at the code and not wince.
It's a high level support role with a view to systemic reliability and enabling others. You're a roadie, and now you help others be Eric Clapton. Once you understand what ops is for, skills can be acquired.
I'm not sure how to show a transition on your CV - but emphasising the "ops" side of "devops" to claim experience will probably help.
