They've built one of the most successful products in the last decade. It has significantly changed jobs like software engineering in the span of 9 months.
Because, fundamentally, their biggest competitor is Google. A company with a market cap north of 4 trillion. If OpenAI does not spend hundreds of billions of dollars on datacenters, people will migrate to Google, little by little, and OpenAI will became a new Netscape story. A good product eliminated by an incumbent with infinitely deep pockets.
> If OpenAI is incapable of building anything that can't be easily copied by a third party
They can build better models, but for that they need a lot of compute and that's where the billions go. These better models can't be easily copied by a third party, because that third party needs to also throw billions at the problem, and billions don't grow in trees.
People are gonna move to google anyway, because Google can keep the gravy train running for much much longer. OpenAI's business model is totally reckless while Google is a cash rich company.
Before Stripe and Braintree, requiring a reserve was common for a lot of merchant accounts to manage risk for new companies with no history. Sometimes they'd require an up-front reserve payment or accrual reserve (like 10% until desired reserve was met). The most reasonable is a rolling reserve (like Stripe is doing) where they hold the money a bit longer in case of chargebacks or other issues.
What would be the point of offering paper bags, when they can instead sell you their high-margin reusable cloth bags (which are common in Canadian grocery stores)?
To provide a convenience to customers that didn't bring a reusable bag and don't want to spend a few bucks on a bag they'll never use again and has an environmental impact 1-2 orders of magnitude worse than a single use paper or plastic bag.
> and has an environmental impact 1-2 orders of magnitude worse than a single use paper or plastic bag
presumes this:
> a bag they'll never use again
...right?
Which seems strange to me, given that people will really only buy the bag if they are planning to use it multiple times.
Measuring it as if it were a single-use bag, would be a bit like measuring the environmental impact of solar panels + batteries, as if they never generated any power (and thus never displaced any grid consumption of "spiky load" coal plants et al) and only existed as a cost of initial chemical construction.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've done it a lot, and we're trying for different than that here. In particular, please don't post regional flamebait to HN (or any flamebait).
In this case we've banned the account because you can't have a trollish username. Those end up trolling every thread the account posts to.
In other cases it's probably because your new accounts are breaking the site guidelines. If you're sincere about wanting to use HN as intended, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look into it for you and be happy to help. But could you please not create accounts to break the site guidelines with?
I'd consider moving back there for this job, I like Edmonton, I have many friends there still, and my family is there. And I like Rust. But I don't like the current provincial gov't and I'd have a hard time convincing my wife to leave her family behind here.
Edmonton has awful winters, but it has a beautiful river valley, decent arts scene, and good local culture. Summers are nice there. I hated much about it when I lived there in my teens and early 20s but enjoy going back to visit now.
I called Comcast and had 2 options. Pay $50/month for unlimited or pay $25/mo for unlimited, but I would have to forgo using my own modem/router and use theirs. Decided to just pay the $50, but we'll see what happens. I could see them increasing the cap or forgiving overages for a few months.
You must maybe use their modem (how they can check it I don't know, maybe they don't give you the configuration parameters for the network?) but you always have the possibility to add your own router after it and basically use their modem/router as a simple modem.
It's what I did in my country before they made illegal for ISPs to force you to use their modem/router, simply used the modem/router of the provider as a modem, forwarding all the ports to my own router that I used to do actual routing, WiFi access point and all other stuff that a router does.
They waive that in a lot of cases, as they're trying to build out their network of xfinitywifi hotspots you see everywhere. I still ran my own modem, but it's a point to keep in mind.
They give you a combo router and modem by default when you run their modems (for the reason given above). The WAN port is just a downstream port for the internal router.
I don't think there's a way to disable the router itself in most cases these days, just some of the services it provides.
The modem has to be authorized via MAC address on the network. They know the MACs of the modems they own, so it's very simple to know if a modem is theirs or not.
That has nothing to do with what he said. At the very least, you can leave their modem also set as a router and just put your router behind it (double NAT). More likely, you can turn off all of the "router" functions of their modem and still put your own router behind it.
There is no way for them to differentiate whether the device behind the modem is a router or a computer.
You're absolutely right. Background checks for employment purposes are covered under FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) and a myriad of other laws at various levels. Complying with these laws is not trivial, but the onus is on the employer to handle compliance if they are using data sources like this.
I work at a background check startup that puts a focus on fairness and compliance.
As far as I understand — without private insurance in Canada, somebody with few resources in Canada is at risk of financial ruin from any of the health conditions you mentioned. For older Canadians, a pre-existing condition may not be covered, which means a serious condition could rack up significant medical bills.
Edit: I should have specifically said that I'm talking about expensive prescription drugs and required ancillary care that is not paid for by the province. Also, each province is different. Ex: cancertaintyforall.ca
The Canadian healthcare system doesn’t even have the concept of “pre-existing condition”. That term is deeply flawed and was constructed by the healthcare insurance system in the USA.
The term used in Canada is “medical history”.
I’m at an age where I’m watching my friends in Canada deal with family suffering from long term illnesses and ultimately, death.
They all deal with anguish, grief, heartbreak, and in some cases depression.
> The Canadian healthcare system doesn’t even have the concept of “pre-existing condition”. That term is deeply flawed and was constructed by the healthcare insurance system in the USA.
Neither does the US since the passage of ACA in 2010:
Having a heartbeat is a "pre-existing condition". It's vexing how often Americans will discuss treatments + checkups as though there's some chance that they _won't_ see their health degrade as they age.
Perhaps my error was in saying that the specific conditions that the OP listed would result in financial ruin.
My experience is anecdotal from close relatives in Alberta having severe diseases early in life. Their drugs and "required care" was expensive and not entirely covered by their private insurance. Their private insurance had caps (annual and/or lifetime), and after, their medical history made it difficult or impossible to get private insurance with adequate coverage.
The bills were significant, but maybe each province has programs to cover the difference for those that cannot afford the bills?
In general in Canada, any care you receive at a hospital or doctor's office is free to you. However, drugs you purchase at your local pharmacy are at your own expense. The provinces all have plans to cover drugs in certain situations (for children, for the elderly, for diabetics, etc.) but they do not provide complete coverage. Employers typically offer prescription drug insurance to employees.
Some people with chronic conditions that fall through the various provincial drug plans are spending fair chunks of money on prescription drugs that may be necessary for them to have a good life.
Thanks for explaining this more eloquently than I was able to. I did a poor job of highlighting that I was mostly referring to to these out-patient drugs.
For example there is a drug you can take before chemo that reduces the side effects, it costs a lot, wasn't covered by the province and isn't free with private insurance. It can make a terrible experience a little more tolerable.
Private insurance in Canada barely exists, and primarily covers prescription coverage and paramedial (acupuncture, chiropracty, TCM, etc.) Inpatient prescriptions are covered by provincial health. Doctor's visits are covered by provincial health. Dental may or may not be covered. Hospital stays, urgent care, ER visits, routine checkups, mental health are covered by provincial health. Health hotlines (call a nurse) are literally free. There's no such thing as "pre-existing". There's no such thing as medical billing.
I don't think you should downplay the scope of "not publicly insured" services in Canada, especially after the last couple decades of aggressive privatization of once-insured services.
It varies from province to province in its specifics, but the majority of working-age Canadians have private insurance through their employer. This is expected to cover everything from physiotherapy to psychotherapy to prescription medications.
People without such insurance have a limited patchwork of public programs and usually either have to pay themselves or go without.
Case in point: A friend injured his back, and while the surgery and doctor's consultations were covered, everything else including medication and physiotherapy was not. He ended up spending tens of thousands out of pocket to be able to stand again.
The private health insurance market in Canada is closer to a truly free market and isn't regulated like in the USA, and that means the insurers happily and routinely deny coverage for pre-existing or self-inflicted conditions (as the insurance contract may define them).
Another case in point: A friend of mine is HIV+, and was denied group coverage through his employer. He pays thousands of dollars out of pocket for antivirals every year.
When the public insurer doesn't cover you, it's an absolute wild west of unregulated private insurance coverage and usually boils down to pay or suffer and die.
Private insurance for prescriptions, dental, vision, etc. is offered by most big employers in Canada.
"As CBC News points out, private health insurance is “a crucial part of the system,” and Canadians spent about $43.2 billion on private coverage in 2005."
I had wondered why most recent Ruby releases were on Christmas Day and recently found out why. The Ruby creator Matz is religious (LDS), and he considers it a Christmas gift to the community. I thought that was really cool.
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