Live data from Hacker News

Yubico is merging with ACQ Bure and intends to go public

yubico.com

101–110 of 222 posts

Re: Yubico is merging with ACQ Bure and intends to go public

#101
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you (or do you) invest in that company over a different one whose share prices appreciate by a greater amount? Would you accept less compensation if your employer cannot keep up with competitors?

I comment on the decisions of the company management/ownership, not on the investment criteria of users of the stock market. Yubico is free to do what they want with their business model. As an existing Yubico customer, I will be taking my business somewhere else, if they deviate from my priorities. They had a nice thing going on, and I am suggesting they consider their next steps. I know I will now keep them under i…

> I comment on the decisions of the company management/ownership, not on the investment criteria of users of the stock market.

The purpose of my questioning is to shine light on the fact that these two things are related, which answers your original question of

> Why this need to always make more and more money?

I am sure Yubico’s owners and employees also want to maximize their compensation, but the fact that there are many investors in the public market pretty much only looking at ROI is what enables the business model of milking users.

Re: Yubico is merging with ACQ Bure and intends to go public

#102

I have an irrational concern about using security products from a company post-merger or acquisition. It has never ended well for me as an anecdotal user. Going public is taking that worry even further. Make keys, sell keys. The end. What's there to raise funding for? Build yet another password vault?

[deleted]

Re: Yubico is merging with ACQ Bure and intends to go public

#103
The problem with going public is that performance is now measured quarterly. This incentivizes mortgaging the long-term health of the company for short-term gains. Brand loyalty and trust become assets that can be profitably liquidated by diluting the quality of products and services.

By the time customers catch on and the company falters, the investors/owners that profited financially, and managers that profited on their resumes, from the short-term gains may have moved on. The party that's really hurt is the customer base.

I've seen this play out again and again.

Re: Yubico is merging with ACQ Bure and intends to go public

#105
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strange argument. A profitable company that isn't growing (selling more stuff, hiring more people, etc) can have a stable (low) P/E and still pay a nice dividend.

The point is that when you go to invest your money for your retirement, you are going to pick whichever business’s shares give you the highest ROI. You, as a shareholder, are not optimizing for > keep your customers happy, get your money, enjoy your life... So why would you expect businesses to behave in a way other than maximizing ROI?

An excellent teardown of modern capitalism.

Re: Yubico is merging with ACQ Bure and intends to go public

#106
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strange argument. A profitable company that isn't growing (selling more stuff, hiring more people, etc) can have a stable (low) P/E and still pay a nice dividend.

The point is that when you go to invest your money for your retirement, you are going to pick whichever business’s shares give you the highest ROI. You, as a shareholder, are not optimizing for > keep your customers happy, get your money, enjoy your life... So why would you expect businesses to behave in a way other than maximizing ROI?

Because maximizing ROI hurts their business long term? Only CEO's on a short stint of 2-3 years, with compensation based on stock market valuations go for maximizing ROI...

Reducing R&D investment is maximizing ROI in a way...

Re: Yubico is merging with ACQ Bure and intends to go public

#107
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of authenticator hardware is inherently hostile to DIY and open source because you cannot produce or extract a keypair to generate valid attestation statements. Unless you are part of the cartel of course. https://w3c.github.io/webauthn/#attestation-statement

WebAuthn doesn’t require the RP to enforce any particular hardware attestation, and many sites (the overwhelmingly majority?) allow anonymous attestation, self-attestation, or simply no attestation at all. Having hard-to-extract device keys isn’t “DIY hostile”; it’s critical to the attestation security model. If you want to build your own WebAuthn authenticator, then you can either form your attestation root (there’s…

The FIDO alliance offers up a JWT with attestation data: https://fidoalliance.org/metadata/

But I agree, I don't think there's any enforcement mechanism beyond whatever the RP decide.

Re: Yubico is merging with ACQ Bure and intends to go public

#108
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Index ETFs have been around for 15+ years now, and the advice is widely known that if you are an uneducated investor without inside information or some type of edge, you should stick to sub 0.15% expense ratio index funds. It is so easy nowadays that all you have to do is figure out the year you want to retire and buy that year’s target date fund and forget about it. If people want to gamble, then that is their probl…

I'm not sure what your argument is. Sophisticated investors don't invest in obvious scams. That's tautologically true. Does that mean we should just watch and do nothing while people get scammed? The thing is, nobody is born sophisticated and there are many ways to get hurt in financial markets in the absence of scams even if you're intelligent and do your homework. You mention index trackers, but they are no silver…

You can buy a 2x levered daily vix ETF. You can buy 0dte options. You can buy options on the aforementioned ETF. You can go to a casino and put all your money on the roulette wheel. What is so risky about spacs that they need special attention?

Re: Yubico is merging with ACQ Bure and intends to go public

#110

The problem with going public is that performance is now measured quarterly. This incentivizes mortgaging the long-term health of the company for short-term gains. Brand loyalty and trust become assets that can be profitably liquidated by diluting the quality of products and services. By the time customers catch on and the company falters, the investors/owners that profited financially, and managers that profited on…

> The problem with going public is that performance is now measured quarterly.

Depends on ownership. When the insiders still own 80% (or control that much through super-voting shares), the minority shareholders’ interests (often but not always short-term) may still be ignored.

Post reply on HN