It sounds like they did good-faith estimate that there were 5000 stores out there and really believed they had 20% of the market? I wouldn't call that a lie as such.
They made up a number, and then quoted that number to other people (presumably with the intent to benefit themselves) without disclosing that they'd made up the number in the first place. That seems to jump right past 'lie' into 'fraud' or worse.
I have this growing belief that what's wrong with America is that we've tossed a great deal of virtue (both personal and public) into the woodchipper, using a lot of euphemisms like "marketing" or "puffery". And the rot is not in any way confined to marketing - it's just that marketing is a very obvious example of it. The rot has made its way into education, relationships, entertainment, governance, infrastructure, what used to be called 'news', and on and on.
We collectively gaslight ourselves to avoid dealing with the reality that we're constantly defecating in our own minds, contaminating ourselves with patterns of thought and action that are antithetical to our own continued well-being as individuals and collectives. To borrow a word from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, we are poisoning the noosphere.
You don't have a growing belief, you have an accurate observation.
This comes up often when bad actors promote the meme "everything is securities fraud". In reality, all cases that they're talking about are instances of _blatant lying_, but they attempt to normalize this even further than it already has been. Effectively saying "it's impossible to run a company and not lie at every possible opportunity!".
The "poisoning the noosphere" is a very good description.
There is someone called Peter Ralston; on YouTube there's a few videos of him and in one bit from an interview he starts on honesty. "Honesty", he says, "is a skill most people don't appreciate". I was really impressed by that "is a skill" qualification. Never thought about it this way. But yes, it is a skill. First you learn it and then it changes you.
To add to what the other poster said, it's a logical leap to go from 5000 stores to 20% share based on having 1000 users. What does the number of stores have to do with the number of users?
It doesn't make any sense and that's because it's a lie.
Yeah but the "good faith" math had a big margin of error, and if I estimate 5k-20k shops and pick the lower number that just happens to make my company look great, that kind of changes things.
That's a contingent fact about the place and era you live in. Medieval peasants - the majority of people who have ever lived - were not dumbasses, not all of them - but there simply wasn't a way for even the smartest to accumulate long-term wealth. At best you could maybe get your neighbours to owe you a few more favours, and maybe once in a generation if you played every card right there might be a chance for a patriarch to acquire one more piece of land, but that's it, that's your lot. (Sure you can work your ass off and produce a bit of extra grain in a given year, but then what? It's going to rot, and selling it for money is surprisingly useless to you)
Money was useful - not as much as today, sure. But traders and tradespeople existed in the middle ages, so you could buy some goods and services. Metal tools and farming implements, harnesses for horses or oxen, pots, clothes / fabrics, maybe woodwork for a house...
Some of these things you could make yourself or were commonly self-made instead of buying, but that, too, requires planning and discipline.
I'm a bit shocked that some people think of medieval life as something like Elbonia in Dilbert comics. Heck, I even find the middle ages a pretty boring time in human history, but I know enough to understand that it wasn't as simple as "everyone lived in the mud and ate mud".
> you could buy some goods and services. Metal tools and farming implements, harnesses for horses or oxen, pots, clothes / fabrics, maybe woodwork for a house
You could buy some temporary luxuries to enjoy, or save yourself a bit of labour on something you'd normally do yourself. But you couldn't really invest in your future the way we would today - everything you depended on had to be something you could make yourself, buying an implement you couldn't maintain would be setting yourself up for trouble. Increasing your productivity with tools wasn't a huge help because you always had enough labor available to hit severely diminishing returns on the land you owned. And any object of value is always at risk of being seized by the local lord or a passing army or what have you.
The difference between a file system and a container format is mostly a matter of perspective - indeed OSX literally uses "disk images" as their container format. Is .zip a filesystem? You probably wouldn't want to use it natively on a disk, but for a lot of purposes it's the same kind of thing.
I recently released a /24 that I registered in 1992 and I hadn’t realized it was still mine.
ARIN was gonna charge me $100 to authenticate and recover the account, but once I asserted and notarized my letter of relinquishment, the process went real quick!
I know, I'm just agreeing there's a ton of IP waste in the US. Early adopters were perhaps unjustly rewarded. InterNIC (before ARIN) would just about hand out IPs to anyone who could send an email.
During the dot-com crash I had to put a /16, some /17's and a /19 on one vlan and connected a 1U Linux box running Labrea Tarpit just so those ranges would respond to ping because InterNIC used to harass us for not utilizing all the space. They threatened a few times to take them back. AFAIK nobody nags like that any more. They probably should.
In parts of the world with fewer IP addresses they already are. My ISP _only_ offers MAP-E access to the IPv4 internet for anyone not grandfathered into an older plan.
I think we'll hit a tipping point soon, just like with Python3 - for years and years it seemed almost stalled, then it became easier to start with python3 than python2 and suddenly everyone migrated.
The tone is all over the place here, this feels like it's an attack post disguised as not. If you're really grateful to this person, complaining they haven't done more to more fully handover seems pretty entitled. If you actually think they've been a bad leader and could have done better then say so. And, like, are you volunteering to actually step up and put the work in? Because "open up to community contributions" is not a magic wand and can easily end up costing more work than it saves; particularly if that community is unable or unwilling to provide $3000/month of funds, what makes you think that they'd suddenly step up if you asked for non-financial contributions instead?
And they are free to make the tickets non-transferrable. The Cure did that. Last Phish MSG run the tickets were non-transferrable and I had to use CashorTrade to trade my tickets.
Was it a right he had in the first place? Many countries make it illegal for foreigners to undertake political activities as a condition of their visa, for good reason.
the problem is, technically yes, they have a right, but their visa can be arbitrarily cancelled for very unspecified reasons, like the government not liking what you are doing and calling a potential security risk. This targeting of people, because they can, amazes me that Americans are so accepting of it. To me this says they'd do this to their citizens if they could. You already have the attack on birth right citizenship to try and take away protections so they can target more people. This targeting on political grounds is nuts. It's so anti American but somehow so many are convinced that it's not a bad thing.
IDK, I think "foreigners shouldn't be coming over here as guests and then trying to influence our politics" is a reasonable stance, and doesn't say anything about targeting citizens.
If that were a uniform stance, maybe, but when it's used for partisan reasons by the party in power it's a different story. That's also not the law, the law is that anyone in the country has the right to free speech. If rights only apply to citizens it is a mockery of the freedoms this country is built on.
you expect them to recall some analogous example of politic deportations years ago?
and anyway, almost certainly the answer is yes; it is not hard to believe that a person's stance is that systematically deporting people for disagreeing with the government is wrong. "Trump bad" is very often on the basis of principles which trump is violating, not just because it's Trump. Surely you realize that people are mad at him a lot because of the thing he does?
Do you recall an instance where Obama attempted to revoke someone's visa for protesting? I don't believe that happened a single time.
I am generally against deportations for people who haven't committed any violent crime. I don't usually waste my time talking about it when law enforcement is enforcing the laws as written though. From what I saw, Obama was enforcing the law as written. I was often opposed to what he was doing, but I don't find much point in trying to get the president to do illegal things, even if I would prefer the law be different. In fact, if you look at Obama's actions there were quite a few times Obama chose not to deport people for reasons I generally supported, but the courts said it was illegal. So again, even as I might've disagreed, focusing on Obama would be missing the point that the law needs to change, which is something that needs to happen in Congress.
I find the current situation particularly egregious because immigration agents have not only deported legal residents who have committed no crimes nor have they violated any terms of their visas, but also executed American citizens who have committed no crime.
When did Obama create a masked gestapo that kills innocent civilians? Oh right. Never. Both siding with trump makes you look like a bot troll or worse.
I'd say the difference with the deportations under Obama (aside from deporting more people while spending less money doing it) is that he followed the law when doing so
As a person who spent a couple of hours watching our local ICE facility today, I'd say the differences are purely aesthetic.
I've gotten to where I don't really care -what- the law is and believe that from an ethical standpoint if a person can have a house and a job and not cause trouble I don't care if they are from Honduras or Houston- any position other than that is just racism with extra steps.
And I am aware that probably sounds crazy to most folks here but at this point I don't care. The folks I organize with have been working since before Trump and will likely be working still when the Democrats put whatever stuff suit their leadership selects.
I would have a hard time arguing that after seeing Alex Pretti's public execution. I also think we can at least partially agree on who should be targeted (emphasis my own):
> Carefully calibrated revisions to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration enforcement priorities and practices [...] *[made] noncitizens with criminal records the top enforcement target* [0]
I consider there to be a gulf of difference between the murder of American citizens in-between detaining anyone caught speaking the wrong language, and Obama's DHS and immigration policy.
> any position other than that is just racism with extra steps
Here I'll politely disagree to agree; in the same way Uber and Lyft flooded the driver market and collapsed the price of a medallion, so to does open borders flood the market with workers, collapsing the worth of my labour.
You haven't been paying attention. And that's ok. Obama was destroying families, and killing peoples, he just did it out of sight with a charming smile.
You think people deported by him didn't die as a result? You think his massive expansion of drone violence didn't kill people living lives as rich and complex as Pretti's? You don't remember Obama deciding not to prosecute people for Abu Ghraib?
weird, don't you think that stance is just fear of free speech? I see it as completely unreasonable. America (of the past now?) has a history of inviting all kinds of people to discuss politics, philosophy, religion from all over the world.... but now you are scared of what people have to say? Also if you don't recognize that it is political targeting (not of citizens, but anyone by any means the government has its disposal), then that's a real problem. We can see the targeting of legitimate visitors, attacks on birth right citizenship, attempts to reconstruct electoral borders. Mass firing from the government institutions of people with differing opinions. Like I said, it's weird americans are so accepting.... "seems reasonable".
> weird, don't you think that stance is just fear of free speech? I see it as completely unreasonable. America (of the past now?) has a history of inviting all kinds of people to discuss politics, philosophy, religion from all over the world.... but now you are scared of what people have to say?
I think active political campaigning is a bit different from discussing political philosophy, and it's a major mistake to treat the former as "just free speech". (I think Citizens United was a massive misjudgement that has lead directly to many of our present-day problems). I think we're all agreed that foreigners should not be standing for office or voting in elections, and foreigners other than permanent residents are already barred from making campaign contributions; to my mind this kind of protest aimed at changing government policy falls into the same category. A protest like that isn't an effort to convey some insight or argument; it's an effort to demonstrate viscerally that the citizenry have a strong view on an issue. I don't think allowing foreign participation helps with that; quite the opposite.
There have been a lot of claims in recent years - from both sides of the aisle - that enemy countries have been deliberately disrupting US politics in order to harm the country. I think it's vital that our political process not only has integrity but is seen to have integrity, and part of that is ensuring that adversaries cannot unduly influence it.
Well, fair enough, but you must acknowledge that that's the democratic consensus and the law as it stands.
> Do they live here? Work here?
The person in question is on a student visa, so (assuming they're not abusing the system) sort of but not really; they're here for a few years, and they might be doing a little part-time work to support themselves but they're meant to be here to study for a limited period rather than have already moved their life here permanently, they're supposed to intend or at least be open to the possibility of going back when their course finishes.
"Influencing our politics" is broad, but I do think foreigners should be allowed to organize strikes, or go to political rallies without risk of being deported.
I also completely fail to understand logic of this position.
Deny a visa from the very beginning and ban somebody from entering the country with no reason whatsoever? There's nothing remarkable about that, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to see here.
But if you grant the same person a visa, let them into the country, then revoke their visa and deport them (for whatever reason)? Terrible lawlessness, a violation of rights, freedom of speech, and tyranny.
What must be wrong with all these people that they see no contradiction in this position? Why are there so many of them? What do they do for a living? I mean, this is a level of social dysfunction, these aren't difficult things to understand, but it seems like they're the majority here.
Yes, the First Amendment applies to all people within the territory of the United States equally. US law does not limit the political speech of non-citizens present on visas.
Do you feel that way about the second amendment too? Just curious if we’re picking and choosing what visitors can legally do. What if SCOTUS said that people means citizens and not visitors for guns, don’t you think that would apply to visa, immigrants, or visitors as well?
I think in the second amendment "the people" are quite clearly the citizens so they can secure their own "free" state. Where the first amendment is about limiting what the government can do so they can't make laws against free speech.
it doesn't. Read the first amendment carefully. People is only used in one specific part, the bulk is about limiting what the lawmakers can do. free speech has no reference to "people"
Was it a right that should be had, should be the question. I don't think you are refuting the parent claim. Americans are rolling over and justifying terrifying out reach from not-very-organized authorities (ICE). The American set of freedom, liberties and rights are more fragile than Trump's ego.
> Was it a right that should be had, should be the question.
Fair, but everything else I said goes through the same.
> Americans are rolling over and justifying terrifying out reach
I just don't see the terror? If someone is coming over here on a student visa and then doing political activism, it seems completely reasonable for the immigration authorities to check that out.
Maybe if the US had a sane voting system, but they don't. I'm of the opinion that their flawed voting system is a huge factor in why the US government is the way it is.
Unfortunately that is how it works. A vote for the green party is simply a vote not cast for D and favors R; and a vote for a libertarian is a vote not for R, so it benefits D.
A solution is Ranked Choice Voting where you can say, "Green, and if they don't win, D (or whatever)."
Fwiw, I vote my conscience, not to win. Not the best for my political positions maybe, but I hope to send a signal to others that maybe something other than R/D is one day possible. But, yeah, RCV would help with that conundrum.
While this is true, very often that is the impact of a third party vote in a federal election. See the election of one George W. Bush and the impact of Mr. Nader.
Trump recently posted a diatribe about ranked choice voting in Alaska (calling it "disastrous, and very fraudulent").
Do you know why the modern GOP hates ranked choice voting? Because they rely upon getting clown votes wasted on the Tulsi Gabbard, Jill Stein's and Kanye West's of the world as a way to get elected. They just need to entice just enough fool-vote drawers, knowing the cult will not sway an iota.
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