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Why YC went to DC

ycombinator.com

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Re: Why YC went to DC

#121

Post by bumby »

ethbr1 wrote: post #110
bumby wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you believe the military is immune to "bureaucracy-at-scale" problems? From my vantage point, it may have both large bureaucratic issues and massive churn. (And it's not immediately clear to me that the former isn't partially a result of the latter.)

The mandatory rotating post system is an effective redress to the "in this job until I die" problem and the ills it creates. That's not to say there aren't other ills, but that's a pretty major one of large bureaucracies and causes serious effectiveness issues downstream.

I don't disagree that it solves the "in this job until I die". But as you allude to, it creates its own issues and it's not clear to me if, on balance, its better. Churn can also create an ineffective (or superficially effective) organization because the hardest problems can't really be solved in a short tenure. (If it could the Executive Branch would be considered highly effective because it has churn every 4-8 years).

Re: Why YC went to DC

#122

Post by zer00eyz »

maxsilver wrote: post #111
zer00eyz wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isnt about workers. Let's say tomorrow that you find a better way to do search. It's going to crush google, and MS. You hire a team, smart people the VC's throw money at you. Everyone is happy. Your growing and the next darling of tech. Google comes in and offers to buy you out. You decline cause you know that they are blockbuster and your Netflix. In retaliation google hires all your staff, and sends them to th…

>. Google comes in and offers to buy you out. You decline cause you know that they are blockbuster and your Netflix. In retaliation google hires all your staff, and sends them to the roof to rest and vest. If you know for certain that "they are BlockBuster, you are Netflix", then why are you not cutting them a deal to make it worth them staying? This is absolutely about workers -- specifically, companies not wanting…

From a benefit perspective:

When apple uses its dominant position to tax everyone 30 percent apple benefits, and the market does not.

When apple uses its dominant position to pay your team 30 percent more and stifle the free market by driving competitors out of business. you benefit, Apple benefits more and the market does not.

Is apple being a giant market dominating force a good thing or a bad thing? Your getting the high salary does not reflect your value, or the market value of your skill. It reflects apples desire to put your former employer out of business.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#123

Post by Matticus_Rex »

probably_wrong wrote: post #42

Apologies for the negative tone: > First, let’s prioritize open source models and more tailored AI applications to shape the competitive landscape and create real opportunities for startups. How does YC square this statement with the fact that their ex-president closed their models with the explicit intention of slowing down competitors [1]? Or is the argument "we want politicians to discourage people like us from do…

"How does YC square this statement about the organization's current stances with the fact that someone who doesn't work there anymore but who had previously communicated similar stances has now apparently changed his mind?"

Why would they need to square anything there? There's nothing contradictory about a former exec not matching the current values of a company.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#124

Post by sillysaurusx »

wongarsu wrote: post #103
sillysaurusx wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. How’d you dig this one up?

[1] is the first result if I google "the pile torrent". It doesn't link to the torrent because of a DMCA notice, so I just used the wayback machine to retrieve a version from before the date of that notice. Don't tell the publisher. 1: https://academictorrents.com/details/0d366035664fdf51cfbe9f7...

Frustratingly, they scan my comments, so hopefully they won’t bother filing a DMCA for that.

(Seeing "sillysaurusx" appear in print on official court documents was pretty amusing out of context, though.)

Re: Why YC went to DC

#125

Post by stackskipton »

jacobr1 wrote: post #83
neilv wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To the extent they integrate with your cloud providers and security tools, What happens when Vanta/Drata are compromised? A mass-exploit of their customers?

They are goldmine of enumerated attack surface. But it would likely require some kind of secondary exploit of the identified vulns. The API connections are generally scoped to read-only access of security settings. Though it wouldn't surprise me if there was some way to get lateral movement from the access these tools have to monitor an environment.

At $LastCompany, someone gave them Contributor (Create/Read/Update/Delete) access to Azure because it was easier than scoping to 5 roles they required. I wouldn't be shocked if we were not only ones.

Edit: Their software should really check and refuse to work if someone does that but obviously Vanta doesn't care. They can begin scanning and billing.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#126

Post by tcgv »

dlkf wrote: post #94
zer00eyz wrote: post #82

> And finally, we need more steps like the FTC’s recent move to ban all employee noncompetes (no carve outs, no limitations, no exceptions). YOU need to be out there beating the drum for a major exception to this. With out laws to ban raiding (and we dont have those on the federal level) this is a bad policy. It means that google doesn't have to aquire-hire your team, they can just poach all of them wholesale. > Seco…

> It means that google doesn't have to aquire-hire your team, they can just poach all of them wholesale. Imagine a skilled worker taking a new job that pays better. What a nightmare scenario.

An individual's immediate remuneration is not the only variable in the discussion. There's a balance of power in play, in which smaller companies are on the weaker side when large corporations are left unchecked. Sure, in the short term, it's always better to get a higher paycheck. But we also need to see if this is sustainable in the long run. If Big Corps can easily undermine competition progress will be impaired, the market will eventually become less diverse, leading to fewer jobs and lower salary pressure.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#127

Post by jaypeg25 »

siliconc0w wrote: post #9

If you need more things to fix: * Software R&D Amortization - taxes on make-believe profits * Patent law - protect small businesses from patent trolls * Automate government-driven compliance standards - enable small businesses to sell into large companies/government entities, automatic certification when using pre-approved cloud solutions. * Healthcare insurance - employees of SMBs automatically get access to medicar…

Amortization (174) probably isn't getting fixed this year.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#128

Post by Matticus_Rex »

ethbr1 wrote: post #87
whimsicalism wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is frankly challenging to reconcile 1st amendment protections and a CU repeal. I'm not sure what the solution is, but think recent events should show that govt can abuse campaign finance law to pick winners and losers in the town square.

> It is frankly challenging to reconcile 1st amendment protections and a CU repeal. I'm not sure what the solution is, [...] Reconciliation: Companies aren't human entities. Non-human entities aren't entitled to 1st amendment protections. Campaign finance is equally simple: run your campaign on public funding. Give all candidates who meet a threshold equal amounts of money. I have yet to hear a convincing argument ab…

> Non-human entities aren't entitled to 1st amendment protections.

The vast majority of speech that needs to remain protected for speech to remain meaningfully free happens through non-human entities. Removing that protection is an absolutely insane step.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#129

Post by ethbr1 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #115
ethbr1 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why they're intrinsically linked. If you mandate that non-human entities have an 1st amendment right, you cannot have meaningful campaign finance limits. Ergo, because it's worth having campaign finance limits, in the interest of allowing the best candidate / idea to win, I think it's worth threshing through stripping 1st amendment rights from non-human entities. Regarding how one weighs what sort of speech wo…

my point is that stripping non-human entities of 1st amendment is effectively repealing the 1st amendment in the US, if it allows the government to regulate newspapers/printmakers/movies based on political content. so your point is essentially that campaign finance trumps 1A, which might be true but i am not so sure

> stripping non-human entities of 1st amendment is effectively repealing the 1st amendment in the US

Human individuals would still have a right to speak whatever they feel.

And arguably, I'd extend that onto platforms above a certain size that can verify human identity (ideally anonymized after verification).

IMHO, newspapers/printmakers/movies do need to be regulated.

They deserve rights, but those rights should look very different than individual 1st amendment right.

Which seems reasonable -- nobody would ever confuse Alphabet-the-company with me-the-individual-person in terms of capability and capital.

Re: Why YC went to DC

#130

Post by doron »

whimsicalism wrote: post #115
ethbr1 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why they're intrinsically linked. If you mandate that non-human entities have an 1st amendment right, you cannot have meaningful campaign finance limits. Ergo, because it's worth having campaign finance limits, in the interest of allowing the best candidate / idea to win, I think it's worth threshing through stripping 1st amendment rights from non-human entities. Regarding how one weighs what sort of speech wo…

my point is that stripping non-human entities of 1st amendment is effectively repealing the 1st amendment in the US, if it allows the government to regulate newspapers/printmakers/movies based on political content. so your point is essentially that campaign finance trumps 1A, which might be true but i am not so sure

It's an interesting point. Whether non-human entities are entitled to 1st amendment rights. Since they have the potential longevity that far exceeds humans, and also can't be punished in same manner for potential wrongdoing (i.e. send an entire company or lobby) to prison.
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