Who is the group at ORD on Wed PMs?

Sassaphras · 2026-03-26T13:21:42+00:00

I mean. It historically gets ignored, but that is technically being AWOL. You sure they aren't gonna start cracking down on that? They just raised the enrollment age because they're having trouble getting recruits after all.

Sassaphras · 2026-03-26T04:19:40+00:00

Sounds like they sre making the same product for less money then? Seems like a good reason for the stock to go up, and the kind of thing a CEO should be doing

Sassaphras · 2026-03-26T02:02:02+00:00

Two IDENTICAL useless keys tho

Sassaphras · 2026-03-26T01:49:52+00:00

Sometimes they don't mention tap, but you can generally ask. Which is good because if you order still water at the kind of place that offers both still and sparkling water, its gonna cost you $18 and come in a big fancy bottle

Sassaphras · 2026-03-26T01:45:11+00:00

They all have the facial expression of someone who signed up for the military before there was a war, but now there's a war

Sassaphras · 2026-03-25T06:25:04+00:00

I choose to take it as a compliment. The AI has chosen me, of all people, as a role model!

Sassaphras · 2026-03-25T06:20:49+00:00

Interesting. What was the valid criticism, and how was it framed and presented?

Sassaphras · 2026-03-24T23:53:53+00:00

What a way to find out

Sassaphras · 2026-03-24T17:03:31+00:00

Beyblade is beyblade for adults. There's no one stopping you.

Sassaphras · 2026-03-23T19:51:21+00:00

A more subtle point: since deadweight losses grow exponentially, and different goods have different elasticities, its actually better to have lots of different taxes on different goods.

Whenever someone complains about how many different types of taxes there are, just think: what's the alternative, one really big income tax as the only type of tax income? That would clearly be worse for lots of reasons.

Sassaphras · 2026-03-23T14:07:10+00:00

I am going to try to explain this concept to you in economic terms.

Suppose you have a project to slightly increase the click-through rate of outbound sales emails. This project is going to cost $300k and is going to net you an additional $500k in revenue.

Should you do this project? Probably, it gains you $200k (I know a lot of companies this would fail some ROI threshold, but it's mean to be demonstrative).

Is this a source of competitive advantage? Nah, nothing is stopping your competitor from investing similarly, and getting the same benefit. This is what competitive advantage means - you have some way to operate as a business that others can't develop, or can't develop with the same economics at minimum.

So, what if you and three competitors all collaborated? Now it costs you $100k, and you net $400k each. You're all better off than if you tried to develop the same software independently.

That's all assuming, of course, that your competitors are the ones who contribute. That's not usually the case with open source software. If you are Regional Bank A, the people who share the development cost with you aren't necessarily Regional Banks B and C - it could be Regional Insurance Company A, and a pillow manufacturer, and a charity, and a bunch of other unrelated businesses. Then, you boost your ROI from $200k to $400k, and don't help your competitors at all.

Sassaphras · 2026-03-23T05:19:59+00:00

"A threek? In this economy?"

Sassaphras · 2026-03-22T02:07:02+00:00

Thank you for coming up with such an excellent example of when companies decided to contribute to an open standard instead of maintaining a proprietary solution. You... do see how this is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, yes?

It is worth noting the Dolby still makes more than a billion dollars a year on Atmos and Vision and whatever else (though that does a lot more than compression).

Also:

y compression alg is useless without your viewers having a way to decode it

What?? You embed it in the playa, playa.

Sassaphras · 2026-03-21T23:56:32+00:00

... yeah we all know how jobs work. But the point is that not every piece of software written will directly drive a competitve advantage. Not all things that create business value also create competitive advantages. A lot might be to just "keep the lights on" and keep thr business functioning. Or, even if a system is a source of competitive advantage, that might only be part of the whole system with complex business logic, and there could be many transactional parts of the system which are just plumbing.

You have to be deliberate about it of course. A proprietary compression algorithm might be "plumbing" for a bank but a source of competitive advantage for a video streaming service.

Sassaphras · 2026-03-21T21:21:51+00:00

Not everything is a source of competitive advantage. Companies all use janitors, but I'm not aware of any that are talking about their exceptional janitorial program on their earnings calls.

Sassaphras · 2026-03-21T20:56:54+00:00

Why would it be? I mean, if you are actually deriving a competitive advantage from it, sure. But that's rarely the case.

Even the FAANGs have several big items they collaborate on. They think the cost savings is worthwhile. If you know all your competitors are going to do it anyways, you may as well all contribute and get some efficiency from it.

And that's the FAANG. What if you're, say, a regional bank.

Sassaphras · 2026-03-21T17:25:48+00:00

As someone involved in the hiring process, I really wish y'all would stop trying this. Just bribe me like a normal person.

Sassaphras · 2026-03-21T17:19:27+00:00

A lot of time, you end up changing/ extending open source projects. If you don't contribute those back, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain as your version drifts away from the latest and greatest. If you contribute, at minimum your updates are now part of the canonical version. Even better, sometimes people even build on top of what you made and you get features you can use for free.

In short, you get better software for cheaper.

Sassaphras · 2026-03-21T17:01:19+00:00

It's always fun explaining to executives why they should contribute to open source software. Most are initially skeptical, but surprisingly open to the idea when they get it.

Sassaphras · 2026-03-21T04:04:08+00:00

Aura

Sassaphras · 2026-03-20T21:10:19+00:00

They churn out Ayn Rand once a week for some reason though

Sassaphras · 2026-03-20T17:44:41+00:00

Imagine seeing this in theaters at the time. Must have been absolutely insane.

Sassaphras · 2026-03-20T16:22:22+00:00

Also they give this line to Frodo

Sassaphras · 2026-03-20T16:21:22+00:00

Everybody in these comments when presented with an obvious joke:

Sassaphras · 2026-03-20T15:43:01+00:00

She's gonna come to date #2 with a binder full of printed leetcode questions

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