> Despite skepticism from Volcker and Buffet, financial innovation has been and will continue to be a massive net positive for humanity.
Juxtaposing yourself with Warren Buffet and then hand-waving away his wisdom is probably the reddest of flags when discussing finance (not that Buffet is always right). "Innovation" in payday loans is akin to inventing new ways to feed living, breathing things into a meat grinder. In this case it's the poorest among us. The author goes on to say:
> Is financing your lunch a sign of societal decay? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s definitely an evolution in Market Completion.
This is undiagnosed sociopathy.
There is a point when making a thing that you must ask "what affect will this have on the world?" or you risk destroying far more than you create. Finance types have learned absolutely nothing since Buffet laid down his "newspaper test":
"I want them to not only do what’s legal obviously, but I want them to judge every action by how it would appear on the front page of their local paper written by a smart but semi-unfriendly reporter who really understood it to be read by their family, their neighbors, their friends."
This. Also, I like the term "net positive" in articles like this. If you lose everything, but I win even more, it's technically still a "net positive". Even if only one person would be happy about it.
I'm happy someone else also had the same thoughts, and put it better than I could.
Incidentally, regarding Buffet's sensibilities, I once felt it worthwhile to write to Berkshire Hathaway's little office, about a new shady thing one of their holdings was rumored to be doing towards employees, and whether that fit BRK's standard of good management. My note almost certainly got tossed into the crazy-people round-file, but it'd be nice if Warren Buffet called up a CEO or Chair, and said, "Hi, Bob. This is Warren. What kind of shop are you running over there?"
> … it means delivering the kind of things that are legible to the decision-makers at the company: i.e. visible to your manager, plus 1-3 skip levels, depending on your title. The easiest way to do this is to deliver things that they already know about, such as projects that they’ve asked you to do, or incidents that are serious enough that they’re involved in them. It’s possible to make other work legible to them as well. If your work produces or saves money, that will make it immediately legible, for instance (or you could just be really convincing). By default, work you do isn’t legible: to the decision-makers, it’s generic technical nonsense. They don’t know whether it’s crucial high-impact work or pointless code reshuffling, and will tend to assume the latter.
This person understands the “business” side of the tech business. I couldn’t agree more. Where many struggle is that they can’t communicate legibly about the indirect benefits their work has for the business. The classic “refactoring” (which he mentions) is a great example.
Refactoring code has a context dependent benefit to a business. When you’re searching for product/market fit is has essentially no benefit, and then you’re Microsoft and the code is deep within Windows and affects the performance of every Win32 app it can have extreme benefits. In the end it’s all about how you relate your work to either making or saving the organization money, and doing so indirectly can be legible if you take the time to figure out how to best communicate it to the target audience (and how it can be conveyed to customers).
I couldn't agree more. It really is important for developers careers to learn at least a bit of business speak, and try to learn how to frame problems in ways that business people understand and care about
At the end of the day, most decisions at a business come down to a cost versus benefit, assuming that the business is behaving more or less rationally
Most business people in my experience also view the software itself as an expense, not an asset. I find that software devs do not understand that. "What do you mean the software is a cost center. This whole business sells software, how can we make money without software?"
This isn't how many business types view it. The software doesn't matter to them at all. They would love if they could just sell nothing, so their costs would be zero and their profit margin would be infinite. That is the actual dream
It's not rational but you gotta understand that sales doesn't sell on rational, they sell on vibes, good relationships, bribes, whatever they can get away with.
Trying to be rational when selling puts you on too level of a playing field with other sellers, so they pursue other angles
Subscribed. All this money I’m saving boycotting spineless American companies is coming in handy.
If LWN is worth $16 a month, and it is, then so is The Atlantic, ProPublica, etc. We collectively need to make a habit of financially supporting actual journalism and doing so loudly.
Loading up this thread I knew this kind of response would be here. Like, I was willing to bet money on it.
Examples of support people worth $200k+ are abundant, and the business case is the same every time. When you do the work to place a monetary value on customers and their retention your support personnel costs relative to that are easy to justify. When a support person is preventing churn of X number of customers worth $Y dollars a year the math becomes trivial.
The (American) tech industry is so accustomed to massive scale and lack of competition that the notion of giving a damn about customer retention has risen to the level of a cultural, not economic, problem.
Arguing that many humans are stupid or ignorant does not support the idea that an LLM is intelligent. This argument is reductive in that it ignores the many, many diverse signals influencing the part of the brain that controls speech. Comparing a statistical word predictor and the human brain isn’t useful.
I'm arguing that it's natural for intelligent beings to hallucinate/confabulate in the case where ground truth can't be established. Stupidity does not apply to e.g. Isaac Newton or Kepler who were very religious, and any ignorance wasn't due to a fault in their intelligence per se. We as humans make our best guesses for what reality is even in the cases where it can't be grounded, e.g. string theory or M-theory if you want a non-religious example.
Comparing humans to transformers is actually an instance of the phenomenon; we have an incomplete model of "intelligence" and we posit that humans have it but our model is only partially grounded. We assume humans ~100% have intelligence, are unsure of which animals might be intelligent, and are arguing about whether it's even well-typed to talk about transformer/LLM intelligence.
> You might think "something something incentive systems". No. At my big tech job I had the pleasure of interviewing a few programmers who worked for a large healthcare company that engages in regulatory capture. Let me assure you: They. Do. Not Care.
Regarding programmers specifically I can concur, but with a caveat. Devs often care quite a lot about many things, but often one of those things is not doing the job they were hired for. The tedium of building software for businesses, even what we now call "big tech", is universally unappealing and definitely not the reason most devs started tinkering with computers. So they care very little, and it shows in the tech taking over the clerical aspects of every day life.
The realities of the news business are fine, but the realities of the adtech business are not. As a consumer I very much want profiling and targeting to die off.
Were the ads run on the web not built on a separate business that attempts to violate the reasonable sense of privacy the average person expects, and didn’t attempt to warp consumer’s expectations of privacy, I think there would be less objections.
Was any regex documentation unclear on this? Some libraries have modes that change the semantics of ^ and $ but I’ve always found their use to be rather clear. It’s the grouping and look ahead/behind modifiers that I’ve always found hard to understand (at times).
This is a feature that seems so painfully obvious in the abstract that I’d wager most have never read the documentation. I’ve been a regex user since the early 90s and I’ve never thought about this.
Also an unaffiliated, long term, and happy user of Optery.
If nothing else, I’m glad there are more offerings showing up on this space because of the competition this will hopefully generate.
Consumer Reports also has a semi-related offering called “Permission Slip” that is focused on opting out of data sharing with individual companies, e.g. Netflix, Home Depot, etc.
Many data brokers will not permit third party services to remove the data without a signed limited power of attorney. Note that the power of attorney is limited to interactions for submitting removal requests and opt outs.
Isn't it to be expected? I guess that they have to make demands on your behalf to have your data removed. I guess that's optional because they can still work without it is some cases, and ask you on a case-by-case basis for others, but that's extra work for you and for them, so they may not do it, at least not on the lower tier pricing.
Blame data brokers for making such asinine restrictions.
You can also just use the free version to collect a list of brokers your self and manually contact all of them to find out how much of a pain in the ass it is.
I cleared my name from the net using another service that charged by the month. I paid them for three months, when their work clearing my data from about 100+brokers was completed, then cancelled. 2 years later, my name and personal data still remain no longer to be found like it once was before the scrubbing.
That's great to hear, often they do show up again later, which is why it's a longer-term subscription service. OneRep is the provider for the removal functionality of Monitor, incidentally.
I can't help but be a bit miffed that despite ostensibly being a privacy service, optery is still running a bunch of third party scripts on their site, including google...
I'm curious, what's the point of paying for Optery per year? Isn't removing your data be a one time request. Except for supporting new brokers that might appear.
Your point is spot on. Data removal services have an aspect where a ton of value is obtained in the first 1 - 4 months as the majority of profiles are wiped away, and then after that you're sort of in maintenance mode where the service catches profiles as they pop back up, or when new data brokers are added to the system for coverage.
Optery generally has 2 types of customers:
- The first type are those that care a lot about their privacy and the cost of an ongoing subscription is insignificant to them, so they keep the service running on an ongoing basis for the ongoing automated scans and removals and for getting new data brokers they get coverage for immediately as they are added into the system.
- The second type of customer is more price conscious and is basically looking back and forth between their credit card statement and their Optery dashboard each month and then they either pause or cancel the subscription when they feel they're reached a good stopping point. Optery's pause subscription feature is very popular for this type of customer and you can use it to automatically re-start the service in 3, 6, 9 months, etc.
- Another thing to point out is many other services only offer Yearly subscriptions, Optery offers Yearly or Monthly. If you're price conscious, the Monthly is nice because you can turn it on and off, or pause it as you wish.
More detail on the topic of keeping Optery running on an ongoing basis is on the Optery Help Desk here:
This is a great suggestion and we would like to add this. Not because it would provide any revenue lift though, but because it is what some Optery customers have been asking for, e.g. can I have a lower cost subscription that runs every other month, or every three months, etc. Technically, you can do this today by cancelling and re-starting a Monthly subscription at your desired cadence, or pausing and re-starting your subscription periodically, but that requires manual effort. A configurable cadence is definitely on our backlog though.
Also a satisfied Optery user. Been using their service for the past year, from what I can tell, they seem to have the most robust solution in the space.
I think "partnership" seems like too strong a word for what appears to be the simple use of an affiliate program. Why would OneRep know or care about an individual affiliate and the content of their site, as long as their behavior with regards to the affiliate program is above-board?
Affiliate programs have application processes intended to filter out bad actors and mis-alignment with a brand. To use an extreme example, a web site promoting terrorism would typically be rejected. Approving data brokers as affiliate partners for a data broker removal service is viewed by many as questionable. To use an another extreme example, how would you feel about an anti-virus software company that approved as affiliate partners creators and distributors of computer virus programs.
OneRep is the service I used, briefly. I have no Affilliation with them except as past customer. They delivered as promised and the effect has been persistent 2+ years since the time I discontinued the subscription.
beyonddd should really identify themselves as the founder of a competitor. Nothing wrong with posting, but pseudo-anonymously disparaging the competition seems very inappropriate.
Yes - I flagged myself as an Optery founder on my first comment, but as you mentioned the comment was subsequently flagged and hidden from view. It is also made clear here: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=beyondd
From my perspective, I'd put it in any comment mentioning Optery or criticizing competitors. People often read one comment; they don't read all your comments and your profile.
It also adds some credibility: You actually know what you're talking about in regard to this kind of service.
not affiliated with Optery but agree conflict of interest, also misleading by onerep and at best deceptive.
take that potential lack of trust together with the several reports online that onerep's us operation is a sham and they are really operating out of eastern europe and sending user data there...seems shady.
begs the question: what does a privacy-respecting org like Mozilla see in onerep and how is it better than what other companies offer?
Discover's service is limited to only a few sites (which is why it's free). And it is not transparent about progress of removals or requirements.
That might not be the most effective way to reduce spam or reduce targeted attacks, because it ignores many hard to remove exposures.
We have a similar price point at Kanary (I'm the founder) and it covers the resources we invest in the cat & mouse game required to escalate and complete removals on a wide variety of sites, not just a handful of easy ones.
Anyone have experience comparing this to Incogni? I’ve been an unaffiliated user for over a year now. While many brokers have replied, many never seem to.
Optery founder here. We did a deep dive comparison between Incogni and Optery (https://www.optery.com/incogni-review/). The biggest takeaway is Incogni, at this time, does not cover many of the most popular people search sites like Whitepages, TruePeopleSearch, Spokeo, RocketReach, ThatsThem, BeenVerified, TruthFinder, InstantCheckmate, and many others. Most Incogni reviews you'll find online are written by their affiliate partners.
beyondd, I've been reading through this thread and your comments about Optery and you got me to sign up for an account on your site vs Mozilla's service so good job. I was even going to pay for your Ultimate plan for a year. But.... you lost me when I got to the profile page. I have a handful of email addresses and a couple of phone numbers. I would want them all to be scanned for. I had previously been using experian's removal service and they allowed for 10 emails and 5 phone numbers.
Your documentation says:
"You can only select one email and one phone number for scans at this time. However, Optery's engineering team is actively working on providing more configuration options such as the ability to run scans on demand for multiple email addresses and phone numbers."
Any comments on when this will be an option? I would want automatic scans on all of my emails and phone numbers. Not very useful for me without this.
The core of Optery's search functionality is "person" centric. Meaning we start with searches by name, city, state, and age to find "you" regardless of which underlying email or phone number the data broker has on record for you. Because in many cases data brokers may have no email or phone on file for you at all (only home address), or they may have a really old phone or email you have forgotten about. When data removal service scans focus only on phone numbers and email addresses, a lot can get missed. Many people search sites are not even queryable by phone or email, and are only queryable by name, city, and state. Optery does search for phones and emails, but you are correct in that it currently limits them to just one each from the customer at this time. We plan to release the scan on demand feature you referenced in the next few months.
That said, Optery recursively searches through data exposed by data brokers to alleviate the need to input numerous old phones and emails by the customer. In PCMag.com review they said this of Optery's recursive phone number search functionality:
"It uses data found in data broker profiles to recursively expand its reach. For example, in my latest testing, I only gave it my current phone number, but it found records associated with an old number that I used for some 25 years."
Thank you for the reply! I suppose that does make sense, though it still doesn't give a warm fuzzy feel separating the functionality. While the average human might only have one email address they use, I'd venture to say people who would want a service such as this would skew more towards having many they use for privacy reasons.
I get what you're saying about how emails aren't the primary means of finding people, but it is a way, and something people often do have more then one of. I'd humbly request you reconsider and try to better incorporate support for automated scans on multiple emails/phones into the main product. For what its worth it looks like Mozilla's product supports 5 based on their docs.
That said, after submitting this comment I'm going to go ahead and sign up for the one year ultimate anyway in hopes that you will reconsider my request if I'm a paid user. :)
Thanks for the follow up! Scans for multiple phones and emails is something we're working on so stay tuned on that, and don't hesitate to contact customer support with any questions along the way!
Also, you mentioned using Experian's data removal service previously. Do you mind me asking how many exposed profiles the Optery scan located that Experian missed?
Juxtaposing yourself with Warren Buffet and then hand-waving away his wisdom is probably the reddest of flags when discussing finance (not that Buffet is always right). "Innovation" in payday loans is akin to inventing new ways to feed living, breathing things into a meat grinder. In this case it's the poorest among us. The author goes on to say:
> Is financing your lunch a sign of societal decay? Maybe, maybe not. But it’s definitely an evolution in Market Completion.
This is undiagnosed sociopathy.
There is a point when making a thing that you must ask "what affect will this have on the world?" or you risk destroying far more than you create. Finance types have learned absolutely nothing since Buffet laid down his "newspaper test":
"I want them to not only do what’s legal obviously, but I want them to judge every action by how it would appear on the front page of their local paper written by a smart but semi-unfriendly reporter who really understood it to be read by their family, their neighbors, their friends."