Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 367 posts

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#331

Post by runT1ME »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #64

I did a little work as a developer for Verizon's ecosystem back in 2007. Let me just say, from what I could see, they were a huge, bureaucratic company without a single redeeming cultural trait. The managers seemed like a bunch of frat boys who had been raised up into positions of authority through some inscrutable lottery, and none of them seemed to possess an iota of analytical capability or human management talent…

I work at Verizon Labs and don't see any of what you mentioned here. Verizon as it stands today though, is an amalgamation of many different companies and cultures. I do believe your experiences could absolutely be true in some of the business units.

Verizon Labs is however, Verizon's play for Silicon Valley talent and they seem very aware that you need a certain kind of culture, perks, amount of autonomy etc. to compete in that market. I'm quite enjoying my time here.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#332

Post by jjnoakes »

speeder wrote: post #328
jjnoakes wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You literally can't afford food and you are on hacker news? You can afford a computer, your own web site, ... I mean I suppose if you value technology above eating then I suppose technically you can't afford food after you spend your money elsewhere, but the full picture doesn't seem quite as bad as you originally painted it.

I used to type that post a 2013 MacMini, sort of smuggled in the country, that belongs to my startup (not me personally). The startup ran out of money, and I took the MacMini with me, so I could continue working. The MacMini is also currently using a damaged HDD, that S.M.A.R.T. keeps telling me should be replaced and is already critical, because I can't afford actually replacing the HDD. I was kicked out of the apar…

Sorry, I don't buy any of this.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#333

Post by speeder »

jjnoakes wrote: post #332
speeder wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to type that post a 2013 MacMini, sort of smuggled in the country, that belongs to my startup (not me personally). The startup ran out of money, and I took the MacMini with me, so I could continue working. The MacMini is also currently using a damaged HDD, that S.M.A.R.T. keeps telling me should be replaced and is already critical, because I can't afford actually replacing the HDD. I was kicked out of the apar…

Sorry, I don't buy any of this.

The startup that own the MacMini: http://www.kidoteca.com

Screenshot of my desktop, with MacMini about screen, and smartctl -a /dev/disk0/

http://imgur.com/a/61brQ

You want my bank account screenshot too? I can tell you how much it has (positive 37.71 BRL, overdraft is disabled)

I honestly doesn't understand why people think I am coming up with lies, I didn't asked for anything, I just shared an anecdote, I am not begging, not trying to guilt-trip people, I was only sharing personal information, the fact that I made a mistake when I decided to follow my passion (programming), when people advised me to instead take a safer profession (construction worker for example) instead.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#334

Post by dredmorbius »

anexprogrammer wrote: post #269
dredmorbius wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market considers only extraction costs, not the natural capital's costs of replacement, ultimately measured in either time or energy, or a combined function of the two. It's as if you came into a windfall account, and could make withdrawals over time, but only counted cab fare to the bank as cost, not depletion of the principle amount. I'm researching on why that was the case, though a developing understanding of…

It's a tendency of capitalism to ignore externalities such as highlighted whenever possible. If we're to have a long term future we need the system to include such costs rather better. > At the time, estimates of the age of the Earth itself ranged from a few tens of thousands of years to perhaps a few tens of millions. So one million years was a substantial fraction of all eternity. James Hutton had been investigatin…

Yes, this is the history of estimates of Earth's age I was referring to.

Hutton, Huxley, and Lyell famously argued for longer periods, but didn't have a solid basis for their argument other tthan general geological principles. Holmes applied radiologicaal methds and got to the right ballpark, 1-3 billion years. By the mid-1950s, currently accepted estimates of 4.5 billion years were given, with high accuracy, based on meteoric samples as well as very old Earth rock from Western Australia. Note too that plate tectonics, also crucial for understanding fossil fuel formation, weren't accepted until that time.

Age estimates were further validated through Lunar and Martian (meteors found on Earth) rock samples.

My point is that early theory, law, and practices of petroleum and other fossil fuel extraction were made with a significantly incorrect understanding of the actual facts of their origin. I'm rather in the middle of trying to figure out how inaccurate those beliefs were, but the time period was distinctly off.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#335

Post by manigandham »

droopybuns wrote: post #316
manigandham wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> User count should not ever be exponential of customer counts. This is what you wrote. Why make this proclamation? Why should free users be limited regardless of whether they derive value from the service and are ok with being "the product"? The ethics of a company and the value they provide to a user are all subjective and thus you cannot state that the company is unethical or the users are being exploited as a rul…

>>The ethics of a company and the value they provide to a user are all subjective and thus you cannot state that the company is unethical or the users are being exploited as a rule. This seems to me to be the crux of our disagreement. You believe ethics are so subjective that ethical stances should not be expressed. I reject that whole heartedly. Businesses with user counts that dwarf customer counts generally are ex…

> ethical stances should not be expressed

Who is stopping you from saying anything? You expressed it and I said I'm glad you did. Again, please stop being so defensive for no reason, it's not conducive to any discussion.

> Businesses with user counts that dwarf customer counts generally are exploitative and bad for the consumer. They are incented to harvest information that results in privacy violations.

Not really, again you say "exploitative and bad" but this is according to you. It's up to the actual consumer to consider this for themselves, which is why there's no valid way to make a statement as how to how this generally works or that users should always be fewer than customers. You can look at open-source companies that produce software used by thousands but sponsored by a few customers as just 1 of many counter examples.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#336

Post by utopcell »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #305
utopcell wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

taught CS ? I doubt that's accurate. At most she was a TA for some course.

According to Wikipedia, it seems accurate. > During her junior year, she taught a class in symbolic systems, with Eric S. Roberts as her supervisor. The class was so well received by students that Roberts asked Mayer to teach another class over the summer.

as a Stanford alum, I can tell you that undergrads don't teach classes at Stanford. At most she was a TA or was allowed to give a lecture. Outstanding grads are sometimes given the opportunity to teach whole undergrad courses, but only during summer. More rarely, students may give lectures (uncredited) while their professor is present in the class room. I'd love to see a link to a Stanford course page if that's not the case.

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#337

Post by vram22 »

seanhunter wrote: post #75
vram22 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the heck do people use 'bn' for billion and 'mm' for million? I've seen VC @fredwilson use 'mm' many times on his blog (avc.com), and IIRC I read some reasoning for it, either there or elsewhere, which made some kind of sense (they said Roman numeral for 1000 is M, so for million we use MM, though not sure if that is quite right logic), but why then the inconsistency between 'mm' and 'bn'?

I used to work in finance, and there is a bunch of obscure terminology and conventions, adopted from different cultures (eg you can trade a "Lakh" of silver). See how the currency sign for GBP looks like a capital L? and the currency sign for shillings and pence was "s" and "d"? (now the uk use "p" for pence since decimalisation). So "Lire", "Soldi" and "Denarii" were the denominations of Italian currency in the the…

Ha, interesting. Didn't know about soldi. Coincidentally, had blogged (as an aside to my main post topic) about denarii recently. Here's what one looked like:

http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2016/07/the-many-uses-of-randomnes...

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#338

Post by zevyoura »

utopcell wrote: post #295
gerad wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, Marissa was essentially a developer. She taught CS at Stanford and majored in Symbolic Systems, which is closely related.

taught CS ? I doubt that's accurate. At most she was a TA for some course.

Here's the quote from the original source[0], it doesn't make it entirely clear but may add some context:

> Later at Stanford, Mayer found herself in a group setting that was less social, more comfortable, and more familiar for her. As an upperclassman in symbolic systems, she was tapped to teach a class.

> She took to it naturally.

> Computer science professor Eric Roberts, still Mayer’s mentor, supervised her teaching. He says she was “unusually good at it” and “extremely effective.”

> After Mayer taught a course in the spring, Roberts took a survey of her students. The results were astounding: They loved her — even if she did sometimes talk “a mile a minute.”

> Roberts asked Mayer to stick around Stanford to teach another class over the summer; she readily agreed.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20130826113249/http://www.busine...

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#339

Post by anexprogrammer »

dredmorbius wrote: post #334
anexprogrammer wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tendency of capitalism to ignore externalities such as highlighted whenever possible. If we're to have a long term future we need the system to include such costs rather better. > At the time, estimates of the age of the Earth itself ranged from a few tens of thousands of years to perhaps a few tens of millions. So one million years was a substantial fraction of all eternity. James Hutton had been investigatin…

Yes, this is the history of estimates of Earth's age I was referring to. Hutton, Huxley, and Lyell famously argued for longer periods, but didn't have a solid basis for their argument other tthan general geological principles. Holmes applied radiologicaal methds and got to the right ballpark, 1-3 billion years. By the mid-1950s, currently accepted estimates of 4.5 billion years were given, with high accuracy, based o…

A fascinating, and my favourite, period of history.

At risk of distracting you there was a good documentary series, BBC's Men of Rock a few years ago. It's all on Youtube if you want to watch. It's maybe a bit light on details at times, but the stunning views of the highlands make up for it!

Re: Yahoo sold to US telecoms giant Verizon

#340

Post by Joof »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #64

I did a little work as a developer for Verizon's ecosystem back in 2007. Let me just say, from what I could see, they were a huge, bureaucratic company without a single redeeming cultural trait. The managers seemed like a bunch of frat boys who had been raised up into positions of authority through some inscrutable lottery, and none of them seemed to possess an iota of analytical capability or human management talent…

They sounds like a bunch of yahoos.
Post reply on HN