Show HN: A fast, hopefully accurate, fuzzy matching library written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sahilm/fuzzy <comment><USER2> Made a PR to switch to runes for iteration. Runes are canonical in Go for unicode codepoints and also have no memory allocation, so they're wicked fast! More importantly they make the code compatible with unicode names.

You can also save on a ton of allocation if you reuse unleaked position slices on each match. It may also be nice to have a maxMatches argument that lets users set a limit, which would save on unnecessary allocation.

<comment><AUTHOR> /xpost from the PR :)

Wow! mind = blown. Please let me digest this code. I will merge later today. I'm probably going to come back and ask a few questions. I wouldn't want to pass up the opportunity to learn from you.

Thank you very much!

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the cool project!

On a side note, working on this made me realize that case-insensitive comparison in Go is pretty inefficient, made a CL to improve it: [https://go- review.googlesource.com/c/go/+/110018](https://go- review.googlesource.com/c/go/+/110018)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you want to make it really fast you could steal some ideas from: [https://wincent.com/blog/optimization](https://wincent.com/blog/optimization) (tales of many years of optimizing a fuzzy search implementation).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for writing command-T :)

Let me pull up some embarrassing numbers of fuzzy matching on all of Chromium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you tried out one of the standard 'distance' metrics like Hamming distance or Levenstein distance? This would at least give you an objective measure of success. Whether that's something that actually _works_ for what you're trying to achieve is of course an open question, but both Hamming distance matching and Levenstein distance matching (the latter is harder but probably better for your purposes) are very well understood.

<comment> purple-again I made a similar tool and believe that if the author is interested in this route he may prefer the Jaro-Winkler algorithm as it is more highly tailored to names.

Likely he rolled his own solution for the same reason that I did, he is targeting a specific type of names (file names for him) which comes with its own subset of rules that can be incorporated for better matching.

</comment></comment><comment> _-david-_ How does this compare with fzf ([https://github.com/junegunn/fzf](https://github.com/junegunn/fzf))?

<comment><AUTHOR> fzf is a tool with a much larger feature set. fuzzy is just a humble library that you can add to your code.

<comment><USER5> The logical follow-up question would be; how does it compare to fzy? :) [https://github.com/jhawthorn/fzy](https://github.com/jhawthorn/fzy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I approve of any and all fuzzy matchers. The world would be a better place if every search field was a fuzzy search field. Thanks for the shout out!

</comment><comment><USER7> I did a similar library for Python (~3yrs ago).

blog: [http://blog.amjith.com/fuzzyfinder-in-10-lines-of- python](http://blog.amjith.com/fuzzyfinder-in-10-lines-of-python)

library: [https://github.com/amjith/fuzzyfinder](https://github.com/amjith/fuzzyfinder)

I haven't done any benchmarking to check the performance. Feedback welcome.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice! How do you rank the file names when returning the search results? It'd be cool if you could rank them by factoring in git commit frequency for files, because more frequently modified files are more likely being searched for. Cool project!

</comment><comment><USER9> Now if only this could be baked into VSCode for workspace-global symbol search. I would then finally ditch WebStorm.

</comment><comment><USER10> Hopefully accurate? It's not _supposed_ to be accurate! It's fuzzy search!

<comment><USER11> That's the joke. Glad you explained it.

<comment><USER10> I'm glad I could be of service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> cool stuff!!

</comment><comment><USER13> Why do projects written in Go always advertise they are written in Go?

<comment><USER14> In this case this is a library and the information that it is written in Go is indeed useful: you can easily use it from Go code, not so much from other langauges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Hopefully_ accurate?

You should probably write some tests to ascertain that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've found it hard to write tests (though there are a few here - [https://github.com/sahilm/fuzzy/blob/master/fuzzy_test.go](https://github.com/sahilm/fuzzy/blob/master/fuzzy_test.go) ). Match quality is often subjective. Tweaking one parameter messes with others.

This library came out of a project I started. The project never saw the light of day. If I do see real world use, it'll be easier to find bugs and fix them :)

<comment><USER16> No tests makes it impossible to add it to real world projects IMO

<comment><AUTHOR> There are tests.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Most Popular Programming Languages of 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codeeval.com/codeevalblog/2015

<comment><USER2> TIOBE index disagrees with this one. I'm not saying only one of them is correct, but it shows the measuring methodology is more or less, flawed.

I was surprised that Ruby is above C, TIOBE seems much more accurate to me.</comment>


Fly with implanted webserver - <AUTHOR> http://www.conceptlab.com/fly/

<comment><USER2> Well someone better install Wordpress on the implant, so it can blog about the experience!

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminiscent of the famous artwork Dead Fly Impaled on Spike (with LED).</comment>


Would You Like Some Wood Pulp In Your Shredded Cheese? - <AUTHOR> http://www.foodrenegade.com/would-like-some-wood-pulp-your-shredded-cheese/ <comment><USER2> "Here's my question. Who cares if it's safe? It's disturbingly unnatural to have wood pulp in your cheese or cotton in your salad dressing."

Regardless if the article is informative, alarming, or anything else, it's pretty silly to cite how "natural" something is as a reason to not consume it. What makes adding wood pulp to food less natural than consuming dairy in the first place? It's completely arbitrary. If you had to follow the letter of the "natural" argument, you'd be living in a hut in the African wilderness. You wouldn't be using a computer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sensationalist title here. It's not wood pulp. It's cellulose derived from wood pulp.

(I do hate the texture it gives shredded cheese though.)</comment>


Thoughts on my portfolio please! - <AUTHOR> http://www.terj.in <comment><AUTHOR> New release Friday!

Send through your feedback on my portfolio please!

Writing about work you've done is hard - but it's a good thing to practice and forces introspection, something that I've learnt is super valuable and key to moving forward.

There's a lot more to come (like adding TLS to the webserver), but please enjoy this for now. Hopefully it will be of use to you as it was to me writing, coding and designing the case studies again.

I'm currently looking for work within Australia or abroad. Very open to relocation. If you like what you see, please do not hesitate to get in touch.</comment>


Adobe official confirms Flash for the iPhone, says Apple will decide when - <AUTHOR> http://www.iphoneatlas.com/2008/09/30/adobe-official-confirms-flash-for-the-iphone-says-apple-will-decide-when/ <comment><USER2> There is no news here. All it says is that they've ported it to the iPhone hardware (not just the simulator, as they announced in June). And Apple has promised them nothing.

This prompted me to write an email to Steve Jobs (email@example.com apparently actually reads all his email) as a nearly 20-year Mac (and now iPhone) ISV, begging him to stand firm and refuse to allow any kind of Flash technology on the phone.

Flash flies in the face of all open Internet standards, and is a huge resource hog. Flash is Adobe's ploy to build an alternative OS that makes Windows and Mac OS irrelevant. Why should Apple give Adobe any ground on which to stand?

Also see <http://counternotions.com/2008/06/17/flash-iphone/> .

<comment><USER3> Obviously, Flash on iPhone is in Adobe's interests, and against Apple's interests.

But in terms of consumer interests, is it such a bad thing? There are three posts in favor of Flash on the iPhone here and as of this posting, they have all been downmodded to -1. Assuming they are legit opinions, I don't understand the Flash hate.

In the face of standards, fine. But knowing that the consumer doesn't care about standards, the ability for a Flash application to appear consistent across platforms, which is plain drudgery in HTML now (and given IE6's prevalence, will last for a good while, like it or not), I can see downsides, but it doesn't look overwhelmingly bad.

Or, would you explain the principle argument against it, aside of the standards bit?

<comment><USER4> > Or, would you explain the principle argument against it, aside of the > standards bit?

Flash is a proprietary runtime. That means Adobe has to support whatever platform you're running at the moment.

Flash support for linux has only recently become somewhat decent. And that's IA32 - if you're running a 64-bit OS on your 64-bit processor, you have to use the IA32 compatibility libraries to run flash. If, for whatever reason, you decide to go with NetBSD/SPARC64 - you don't have flash.

You do, of course, have all the open web technologies because you simply recompile them for your platform.

Flash is proprietary and tying yourself to that runtime will restrict not only your choices, but also the direction the web takes.

The exact same holds true for Silverlight.

I left out standards and their long-term development, because you specifically requested it, but that's also a major factor.

<comment><USER5> What is the alternative? AFAICT, Flash has no real competition.

<comment><USER2> With modern browsers supporting decent (now getting very fast) JS, HTML5, CSS3/4, Canvas and SVG, you can write pretty much anything.

The appearance of Objective-J and Cappucino opens up new possibilities, too. (Wouldn't have thought it efficient enough, but the 280 folks have proven that wrong. And that's with current-generation JS implementations; more modern JS VM's are getting 10X and more over current.)

<comment><USER6> _With modern browsers supporting decent (now getting very fast) JS, HTML5, CSS3/4, Canvas and SVG, you can write pretty much anything._

How would you implement justin.tv, using these technologies?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> All you really need is an RTMP client for Safari so that it can play flash video and all the complaints would be moot.

Hm...that's a pretty good idea, actually. I wonder how hard it would be.

</comment><comment><USER8> i'm curious as to how they would implement this, especially considering it isn't like you can just write a plug-in for mobile safari.

any one got any ideas?

<comment><USER9> That is why they need Apple's blessing. They can still get the player itself working as a standalone app so when Apple says it's okay, they can integrate it with Mobile Safari and roll it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ok, <http://mediawombat.com> (Flash Search Engine) is officially developing an iPhone Flash Search app now.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is great ... since one of my main businesses is providing Flash-based sites, this is welcome news (if it performs well).

</comment><comment><USER12> This is good news from Adobe.</comment>


ACM weighs in on SEC proposed Python requirement - <AUTHOR> http://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-08-10/s70810-89.pdf

<comment><USER2> Link to the proposed SEC rule:

<http://www.sec.gov/rules/proposed.shtml>

Look for 33-9117.pdf

Interesting questions based on my reading from the pdf (see excerpt below, italics by me): If it's not currently practical to evaluate an investment before making an investment decision, why would you make the decision to invest? <cough,cough, index fund, cough>

Next, who wants to do a constraint-programming back-end web app that takes a prospectus and generates this functional code? How much would institutions pay us for this?

From the pdf:

"The ABS issuer or the underwriter generally will have a computer model of the waterfall. However, the issuer or underwriter currently has no obligation to share the computer model with actual or potential ABS investors. Because prospective investors in ABS typically do not have access to the ABS issuer's computer models, under current conditions, an investor must create its own computer program. It does this by taking the priority of payment rules stated in the trust agreement, pooling and servicing agreement, indenture, or other operative document for the ABS and described in the prospectus, converting the English language statement of those provisions into one or more algorithms, and then expressing the algorithms as computer code in a programming language. _As a practical matter, it is often not possible to complete these steps before making an investment decision._ This is particularly onerous for smaller institutional investors, for whom it may not be feasible to acquire the financial and technological expertise necessary to develop a computer program of the waterfall. Thus, investment decisions with respect to ABS may be made without the benefit of the investor performing its own quantitative valuation analysis. This may encourage undue reliance on the determinations of credit rating agencies. Further, there is the possibility that some investors will program the waterfall erroneously, leading to inaccurate ABS valuations."

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand why the ACM is so perturbed by Python. Why did the SEC choose Python to begin with? I'm sure that they weren't concerned with the few milliseconds you might lose on Monte Carlo simulations vs a compiled language implementation. While all valid points in one way or another, their criticisms of Python appear to lack context. Did the SEC choose Python for its speed and security?

<comment><USER4> The SEC probably chose Python because it has a reputation of being easy to read and write.

For me the deal killer about Python in particular is that it uses native arithmetic, which means that going from machine to machine, and operating system to operating system any program that uses floating point will have unspecified behavior.

I've worked in finance and dealt with programs that use floating point. I've encountered the fact that behavior changes on different machines. Now a 1 or 2 penny difference on a several million bond flow may seem unimportant, but it is unfortunately very important because the first thing anyone in finance does to verify that two numbers match is look at the first digits, the length of the number, and the pennies. If those agree, you move on.

So those insignificant penny differences are unfortunately the first thing that gets noticed. Been there, done that, not fun.

<comment><USER5> Floating point cannot represent money.

<comment><AUTHOR> What would you use to represent money?

<comment><USER6> whole numbers, ie cents

100 cents instead of 1.00 dollars

<comment><AUTHOR> So basically integers. Floating point can represent integers, and floating point add, subtract, and multiply on integers is exact, so why not use floating point to represent cents?

On a 32-bit machine, using native integers limits you to $40 million dollars or less ($20 million or less if you have to use signed integers). Double precision floating point gives you something like 52-bit integers.

When dividing, you would have to explicitly use floor, round, or ceil to make the result be an integer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For more background see: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1272541>

SEC is proposing that prospectuses (prospecti?) for asset backed securities include a simulator written in Python. The investor can use this simulator to test out the behavior of their investment under various conditions.

Fascinating idea, I wonder, though, what is going to happen when the simulator and the prospectus disagree. I would assume the text of the prospectus would override the source code. It is going to be quite a challenging task trying to align legalese and Python, or any other programming language for that matter.

<comment><USER4> Unless the simulator carries more legal force than the prospectus, the entire exercise seems to be useless.

<comment><USER8> Presumably if the simulator and the prospectus differ in a material manner, the bond packager/issuer would be subject to some legal liability.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that the prospectus is a legal document. When you run legal documents through the legal process, you often get indeterminate answers. How much liability should the bond packager/issuer have if their simulation accurately reflects their understanding of the agreement, but a court decides that their understanding was incorrect?

<comment><USER8> I think that amount would vary based on whatever the standards are for due diligence and the indeterminate nature of the legal answers.

However, as I understand the proposal, most such legal problems would be irrelevant as far as the python program is concerned. The python program would only answer questions like "what happens if party XXX becomes insolvent" or "what if 84% of mortgages are repaid, 10% are prepaid and 6% are in default". Most legal disputes would center on issues like "were material factors relating to mortgage repayment rates properly disclosed" or "are former home borrowers currently squatting 'in default' or merely 'delinquent' if the mortgage servicer has failed to evict them". The answer to questions like these is simply the _input_ to the python program.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely, the Python program cannot replace the prospectus for the reasons you describe.

However current practice is that the prospectus also describes, in legalese, the rules by which you determine what happens if party XXX becomes insolvent, or what happens if 84% of mortgages are repaid, 10% are prepaid and 6% are in default. And then there are multiple scenarios supplied to clarify people's understanding of how those rules work.

There is a cottage industry that basically consists of taking these prospectuses and creating computer versions of them. This is called reversing a deal. I've seen these models take anywhere from a day to a week for simple models, and for complicated ones outside specialists may need to be used. These models are considered valuable property, and so a given deal may wind up being reversed by multiple people. These created models often do not agree with each other or the servicer.

If the prospectus continues to contain the authoritative explanation, then this activity is still a necessary sanity check. If the script is definitive, then this error-prone step can be greatly streamlined and automated. Getting rid of this expensive activity strikes me as a very good thing.

Disclaimer, I used to work for a company whose main job was reversing deals, and then keeping models up to date as the cash flows came in. I did not work on that side of the business, but I've seen how important it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> um.

Users (non institutional investors?) will download a program with the asset backed security information in a separate XML file, use that file to perform their own analysis of the possible performance and cash flow (called the waterfall in the proposal) to make an individual determination of the actual value of an ABS pile of investments.

You've got to be kidding me, right? _This_ is how we are to increase transparency in pooled ABS investments?

Forget the fact that the ACM is weighing in on the appropriateness of Python as the program's implementation language here - say there is a bug in the implementation of the program that allows you to model this waterflow cash flow. Who can I sue, if as an individual investor, I relied on this implementation (along with my subtle tweaking of simulation variables) to make an investment decision?

Forgive my naivete, maybe I've made a bad assumption about what the program is supposed to actually reflect. Does it represent a firm contract or rule set about how cash flow in the ABS pool will work given certain inputs?

<comment><USER9> I think if there is a bug, it's your job as an investor to find it and report it (if it's unintentional of course). The program is provided to you in source form to allow you to verify and modify it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Someone at SIGPLAN must really like F#.

<comment><USER11> Well, it is a group for languages enthusiasts, a demographic which seems to like functional programming more than others do.</comment></comment>


Amiga Samplers: Budget dance music in 1990 [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9MXYZh1jcs <comment><USER2> I laughed out loud at this moment, which came a few seconds after starting the sample:

"Aaaand we're out of memory."

Explains why samples tended to be really short .. and also why some artists (or their labels) did make the investment in studio time & the professionals who knew how to take this tech to the next level.

I worked in a 24-track studio in London in the early 90s where dance music was recorded, mixed, and remixed by The KLF and Nomad, among others, as well as soundtracks by Hans Zimmer, who owned the studio. There was a small army of people who not only knew the studio hardware (the board, Moog, compressors, gates, etc.) but also Cubase, sequencers, and other software, which was quite expensive but utterly necessary to crank out the hits played on the radio and the remixes that were preferred in the clubs.

<comment><USER3> Am curious how you would compare the production quality back in the day. To producers today who seem to eschew the massive studio. Doing everything in Logic. With perhaps a single MIDI controller. Preferring that Billie Eilish in her bedroom vibe ;)

My recollection is that even back then, the capital outlay required wasn't egregious. I recall a friend setting up a space with second-hand pro mixing board, amps, mics, etc all for around $10-15K in initial expense. And all sourced on various internet forums. Of course, today the mac book pro alone may set you back $5K+!

<comment><USER2> That's a pretty good price if that includes a 24-track board, which cost many multiples of that new back in the day.

Other big costs at the professional level included hardware gates, compressors, tape machines (2 inch analog IIRC), the software (Cubase) and the Macs with the memory and storage required to run it, and staff -- a few engineers and manager employed by the studio and the hired guns brought in for specific tasks.

I was just listening to "Justified & Ancient," one of The KLF's hits from 1991/1992\. I don't think it would have been possible to do a song like that (and the remixes) with the Amiga and other low-cost home gear of that era. It's really complex and layered, and Jimmy Cauty and the people he worked with were really pushing the capabilities of the software and studio hardware they had at their disposal. Check out these two mixes of that song:

[https://youtu.be/RPjggN-KByI](https://youtu.be/RPjggN-KByI)

[https://youtu.be/LWuPPMTiuRw](https://youtu.be/LWuPPMTiuRw)

They shifted key with some very complex backing harmonies to make the two versions. It's possible they did that in the studio with singers, but I suspect that was probably done at the console, with hardware and software handling the shift. It would save a lot of time (and money) applying tech for that use case.

Of course, nowadays it is like you said -- the bedroom/home studio model followed by Billie Eilish and her brother and practically every other up-and- coming artist.

The technology shift is very liberating, and opens up music to a much wider range of artists, but there's something lost, as well. A really powerful documentary about this trend was made by Dave Grohl some years back about Sound City in L.A. and the Neve console that powered recordings by Neil Young, RATM, Tom Petty, and more. Details: [https://www.npr.org/2013/03/08/173823162/dave-grohl-finds- mu...](https://www.npr.org/2013/03/08/173823162/dave-grohl-finds-musics-human- element-in-a-machine)

<comment><USER4> I was a studio engineer in the late 80s and I work on music now using modern tools.

It's a different vibe, that's for sure. I could go on for days about the technical differences, analog 2-inch tape versus a to d converters and so on. Analog synths, effect boxes now replaced by VST plug-ins.

But I thinkt the biggest difference is really more on the human level. It used to be an enterprise that by its very nature required multiple people to be working together. Now, music is a largely solitary endeavor. Back when, you started playing with your friends in the garage, and if you move to the next level you recorded in the studio together. Now you put together a demo on your Mac, throw it out into the world, and if it goes viral you get to do it again.

Different times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of jungle artist have recently resurfaced their amigas and make and release music completely done with Trackers.

If you are interested you should check out artists like Bizzy B ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOMER0TV8UG1nf5OyzsJewQ/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOMER0TV8UG1nf5OyzsJewQ/videos)) or Pete Cannon ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM_kHAd0Q_tWH7OEyF5hcAg/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM_kHAd0Q_tWH7OEyF5hcAg/videos))

<comment><USER5> ha i just realized one of the videos from Bizzy B features another producer (DJ D-Lux) that has dusted off his amiga after 25 years and started reusing it for that video and asking Brian how to use and do things on the tracker. Funny.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A6FCs0Q6iI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A6FCs0Q6iI)

<comment><USER6> This mix on Bizzy B's channel is a really good old schhol jungle mix, thanks for the tip!

[https://youtu.be/Jg8r3x6lbpA](https://youtu.be/Jg8r3x6lbpA)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good memories. I used to be a part of this crew - [https://netlabelarchive.org/netlabels/monotonik/](https://netlabelarchive.org/netlabels/monotonik/)

Mods were great. Zero cost beyond the computer, made with public domain tracker software, the music was freely distributed on BBS's (and the web later on). The mod file format was great - small size downloads - note information and sampler instruments were all in one package, typically a couple of hundred kb for the whole song.

You could see exactly how people had put the tunes together, access all the note information/arrangements and samples, and learn from that

<comment><USER8> B00MER from kfmf (kosmic free music foundation) here. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmic_Free_Music_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmic_Free_Music_Foundation)

Used to love monotonik releases. One thing I liked about tracker days was deconstructing songs to see how it was made. Not as easy to do these days. ReNoise is pretty much the tracker DAW these days. Now that I'm not as broke as before. More gear just less drive to use it. My younger self would of been in heaven with the gear I've got now. Gus was a game changer though back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you are interested in picking up some of this music from then and now check out the Mod Archive.

[https://modarchive.org/](https://modarchive.org/)

You will need a media player that understand mod file formats to play the majority of the music files on the site. They have recommendations per platform in their FAQ.

<comment><USER10> or [https://modlandplayer.net/](https://modlandplayer.net/) \-- player for a different archive ([http://ftp.modland.com/pub/modules/](http://ftp.modland.com/pub/modules/)).

or listen to the radio -- [https://www.scenesat.com/](https://www.scenesat.com/) or [https://scenestream.net/demovibes/](https://scenestream.net/demovibes/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, he's done a really impressive job in the tracker, making things seem considerably easier than I remember :-) I remember sending off hard-earned money to a certain Norman living in Norman, to get a paid copy of ModEdit for DOS, waiting for what seemed an eternity to receive a disk in the mail, only to discover FT][ weeks later on a local BBS, downloadable within an afternoon modem session. And featuring Nibbles, no less.

It seemed like time and tech were advancing so fast, and yet art was elusive.

Anyway I'm looking forward to working on another tracker tune soon. Thanks for the link.

<comment><USER12> If you're into tracked music, check out "Professional Tracker" by h0ffman and Daytripper[0]. To clarify, the linked recording is not from an Amiga but I have played it on my A1200 - it almost completely fills the 2 megabytes of chip-mem so a fast-mem expansion is required to play it. Impressive stuff.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9ErmKpTcFA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9ErmKpTcFA)

<comment><USER13> and here's the source file download: [https://files.scene.org/view/parties/2014/revision14/music_t...](https://files.scene.org/view/parties/2014/revision14/music_tracked/hoffman_and_daytripper_professional_tracker.zip)

"Professional Tracker

written by Hoffman & Daytripper for the Revision 2014 Tracked Music Compo. Put together in ProTracker v2.3d on Amiga.

As it was for the Revision Tracker Music Compo, it is best viewed in XMPlay on the PC with full screen pattern visualiser. Make sure you use the following settings.

No Interpolation. Mono. Mod Mode PT1." [https://soundcloud.com/h0ffman/hoffman-daytripper- profession...](https://soundcloud.com/h0ffman/hoffman-daytripper-professional- tracker)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I miss the tracker scene, somehow I migrated from trackers to buzz to fruity loops and I guess I've been on that journey ever since.

But the simplicity of being able to so swiftly move notes around in a spreadsheet-type format is something I've never really seen since (outside of trackers themselves at least, and I have used a few modern variants). It's like a piano roll on steroids.

I owe my love of creating music today to the tracker and demoscene of the early 90's, and it's great that it's still alive and well :)

<comment><USER15> The tracker scene is not dead. [http://pouet.net](http://pouet.net) [http://scene.org](http://scene.org)

<comment><USER16> You can also listen to a large archive of modules at: [http://modarchive.org](http://modarchive.org)

Truly free music.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The tracker scene did not die with the Amiga, it continued and people still use programs like MilkyTracker today.

Here is an excellent overview of MilkyTracker [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2s04YYO0Wg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2s04YYO0Wg)

<comment><USER12> The tracker scene continues on the Amiga to this day. :-) There's also a lot of wonderful music being made on and/or for Commodore 64:s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For people who really enjoy tracking, or want to check it out, but want a very modern environment. I'd encourage people to look at the Renoise tracker.

[https://www.renoise.com/](https://www.renoise.com/)

SunVox is also an excellent piece of software for those who like a more modular setup [https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/](https://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/)

</comment><comment><USER19> The only thing is you don't need a vintage amiga to enjoy trackers, I used trackers with linux audio for years, the pi4 is a much more cost effective way to enjoy trackers than trying to find and refurbish a vintage Amiga, although it has to be fun to play with one but for those without those kind of resources you can even do tracking on an android phone or raspberry pi.

</comment><comment><USER20> In this era I was a pre-teen and my brother, a few years older, did make a stab at tracking but ultimately focused on other things. I was a bit baffled by the whole thing and we never learned how to rip samples off other sources even though we definitely had the capability for line in and some sample editing tools(Just record off the radio or our CDs! It seems obvious in retrospect).

But it was very exciting to hear other people's work, regardless. Computer music - and it sounded like the stuff I heard in malls and on TV, instead of the synthy chiptune stuff!

Gradually I did start experimenting with composition on trackers and that proved to be another mountain climbed only gradually. Even when I had "the sound," it takes a lot of work to understand how to a bring a song structure beyond a four bar loop, but I would have to say that I learned a fair amount from studying tracker music too. A good success story for source availability.

</comment><comment><USER21> I remember using FT ][ under Windows 95 as my friend at school introduced me to it. Some of the more complicated songs were bigger than MP3s of the time (that confused my tiny brain) but were playable on my garbage 486 DX2, unlike MP3s (I was poor and using throw-off computers that others had thrown away).

Happy times.

<comment><USER22> Well yeah, the samples in the MOD files are uncompressed (or losslessly compressed, no idea), so if you have a lot of different samples, I can imagine you might end up with something bigger than an MP3 file. I guess none of those were modules initially composed on an Amiga though ;)

<comment><USER21> Yes, I think they were modplug era files. I didn't understand how they worked at the time so was baffled needlessly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Anyone remembers Oktalyzer? It could do 8 tracks in realtime when all other trackers were limited to 4 tracks. It produced a bit lower quality and lower volume audio due to software mixing, and its higher cpu demands made it unsuitable for games, but it was perfectly usable alone even on my A500 back then for making more complex tunes. I miss those days! Here's some info. [http://www.robotplanet.dk/amiga/oktalyzer/](http://www.robotplanet.dk/amiga/oktalyzer/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Trackers have a mini-resurgence via the modular scene with NerdSeq [1] [2]

[1] [https://xor-electronics.com/nerdseq/](https://xor- electronics.com/nerdseq/)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mShpux61dw0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mShpux61dw0)

</comment><comment><USER25> Not really "budget". I imagine that hardware was relatively expensive.

Venetian Snares Renoise > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGK- EzEa45U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGK-EzEa45U)

<comment><USER26> My friend's dad was into electronics. He bought one of the samplers from the local Radio Shack, opened it up, figured out how it worked, and started making his own. He sold them to us for about $40. Which was so much money as a kid (and in the 90s), but damn it was awesome.

I ended up recouping the costs of the sampler many times over though: the local radio station had a competition of "guess what this song-played- backwards is and win $100". I'd sample the song snippet as they played it, reverse it in a tracker (like in the video where he reverses the reverse cymbal) and get the song... then it was just a matter of being the correct caller - battling mostly against my other friends with our home-made samplers. I won $500 doing that!

[Edit: oh, you mean the computer hardware, not the sampler hardware! My A500 was second-hand, no memory upgrade (grr) - and if my parents got it for me then there's no way it was more than a couple of hundred bucks ;) ]

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What's the best tracker currently for Windows or Linux? Googling I found OpenMPT ([https://openmpt.org/](https://openmpt.org/)), would be curious about others.

<comment><USER28> If you fancy the retro vibe, someone has ported Fast Tracker 2 to modern OS's: [https://16-bits.org/ft2.php](https://16-bits.org/ft2.php). From what I've heard, Renoise is the most "modern" tracker. Buzz is another interesting one, not sure what the status of that is these days.

<comment><USER7> > Buzz is another interesting one, not sure what the status of that is these > days.

Buzz is great software, the modular concept was fantastic. I don't think Oskari has worked on it since 2016 - [http://jeskola.net/buzz/beta/files/changelog.txt](http://jeskola.net/buzz/beta/files/changelog.txt)

It still works though, and there is something of a community - [http://forums.jeskola.net/](http://forums.jeskola.net/)</comment></comment></comment>


23andMe Is Sharing Genetic Data with Drug Giant - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/23andme-is-sharing-genetic-data-with-drug-giant/ <comment><USER2> dupe?

previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17609906](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17609906)

</comment><comment><USER3> About time. 23 sits on a potential treasure of data from genotyping and surveys which is currently being used to tell you trivialities such as your "ancestry and neanthertal composition" (at least in europe). OTOH the data might prove to be a disappointment but at least it's worth giving a try. This is what i hoped for when i signed up, and i m surprised it took a decade+ to happen.

<comment><USER4> That's the beauty of obtaining consent. If you want to consent to it, you can consent. If you don't want to consent to it, can withhold consent.

<comment><USER5> Can you explain how one gives consent? Is it opt-in or opt-out? Is there any judgemental language to try to convince people to consent?

<comment><USER6> It is opt-in.

23andMe has done similar things before, then they contacted potential candidates and asked for opt-in specifically for that project. For example, if they'd run a prostate cancer study with some university they'd contact middle- aged men and ask whether they want to be involved in a prostate cancer study. Language would not be neutral, something like 'Do you want to help stop this cancer?'

Here are the papers 23andMe has published using their data: [https://www.23andme.com/publications/for- scientists/](https://www.23andme.com/publications/for-scientists/)

<comment><USER7> I would not mind opting in as long as the all the financial benefits don't go to the drug company and 23. The person sharing and/or the society should get a piece of the pie

<comment><USER8> I don't think it's realistic to expect a few dollars for your contribution.

I'd be happy just knowing my 23andme profile is helping develop a drug that otherwise wouldn't have existed.

<comment><USER9> I don't see how it's unrealistic. People are paid to participate in studies all of the time.

<comment><USER6> I think a large part why 23andMe is so cheap (<$100) is that the worth of your data is planned in, but I haven't seen anything confirming that.

<comment><USER9> I'm almost certain similar services exist around the same price point, which don't apply the SaaS model of privacy to user data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All info, it seems, is up for grabs. Pay a company, they might sell you later with apparently no repercussions.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, whatever, hope they cure cancer with my saliva sample. More power to em. I signed the ToS.

<comment><USER12> Not only that, but when you sign up you're asked to opt in to allowing your data to be used for research.

<comment><USER13> They've also proactively reached out every time there is a chance that you may want to re-think your opt-in due to new partnerships, policy changes, etc..

So I think they are holding up their end of the responsibility, and it's up to the user to do their part to maintain informed consent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've always wondered about this kind of companies what's really stopping them from giving access to your data to your employer, your health insurance provider or any law enforcement/state organization. Of course any of those things would be illegal, but that hasn't stopped people before. I can't think of any data about you more sensitive than this.

<comment><USER9> What's to stop a special interest group from buying the data to build a catalog of undesirables?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If insurance are to pay $ for the data, is there way to limit such usage? Any Legal way? When someone sign up for service with 23, is there any causes from 23 on what ever document one sign to limit insurance companies from accessing the data?

</comment><comment><USER16> You give them a fake name and birth date when you sign up to stay relatively anonymous.

<comment><USER17> All it takes is a couple of relatives of yours to sign up using correct information.

<comment><USER18> That guy in California who got arrested recently for all those murders from decades back was detected because a distant relative signed up to one of these services.

<comment><USER19> While he was apprehended through familial DNA, it's important to note that it was through a website that allows uploading of DNA samples, as opposed to 23andMe which requires a live saliva sample.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think this is the only thing GSK interested in investing.</comment>


Hue — a functional programming language for fun & play - <AUTHOR> http://rsms.me/2012/05/14/hue.html <comment><USER2> Hi, one thing I found confusing in your syntax was that the function definition makes it look tupled but application is in the typical style of curried functions.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      Hue is one of my latest hobby projects that didn't die after a week.

I guess that with yet another project Rasmus won't be working anytime soon on Kod[1]…

[1] <https://github.com/rsms/kod>

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice! Note about the PersistentVector implementation performance in Clojure due to some other fun optimizations - appending one million items on a 2.66ghz i7 running OpenJDK 7, ~65ms.</comment>


Ask HN: Dynamic lowering "fast" graphic settings in games : Save a panda ! - <AUTHOR> GTA V does it good : when ingame hardware is used at maximum capacities, when game menu open (pause / escape) hardware (GPU / CPU) consumption is 3-10 times lower and when game is alt-tabed, hardware consumption is near 0 (excepted data loaded in memory). When I run some other games (Monster Hunter World at least) Hardware consumption is always 100%(or 100% of what requires 30-60 fps).
I wonder if some kind of norms exists in game engines / best practice in video game world to make this feature more generic (I'd like to avoid killing extra polar bears when playing).
I think lowering consumption in games could be done automatically or with a manual option
Any sources / ideas / suggestions ? <comment><USER2> After the monster Hunter World thing with threads I've taken a look at a couple games in Process Hacker 2. There aren't many games that spawn as many threads as that game. It's nuts!</comment>


Discovering types for entity disambiguation - <AUTHOR> https://blog.openai.com/discovering-types-for-entity-disambiguation/? <comment><USER2> > Pick a list of ~100 categories to be your "type" system, and optimize over > this choice of categories so that they compactly express any entity

So it's not generic then.

<comment><USER3> Heh. 100 categories allow you to express 2^100 different things. That's ~10^30, BTW.

Even up to 4 categories means you can describe 100 million different expressions.

I think that means this number of different categories make description generic enough.

<comment><USER4> That only works if categories are mostly independent of each other. If you have 100 mutually exclusive categories (as in this paper), you only have those 100 different options.

However, for the task of disambiguating ambiguous words, you don't need that many categories. You only need to make sure that most different meanings of each word are in different categories. Given that most words have a very low number of alternate meanings, finding a good categorization to distinguish them isn't too hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is really cool, though the interactive elements seem to be broken in Firefox.

<comment><USER6> Works for me in Firefox 58 in Ubuntu. Don't know what more to say to you. Yes, very cool research.</comment></comment>


WeWork's CEO Makes Millions as Landlord to WeWork - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/weworks-ceo-makes-millions-as-landlord-to-wework-11547640000 <comment><USER2> Beyond the entire conversation about whether this is legal or illegal, and whether this is typical or atypical, there is a much more significant issue.

The entire image and "vibe" of this guy / his team is supposed to be an egalitarian re-invention of the status quo. The kibbutz story. The "community adjusted EBITDA." The rebranding to "We." But this sort of real estate self- dealing isn't a We move, it's a Me move. And thus, we find ourselves facing a bigger issue that is far more troubling if you're a shareholder or employee (and somewhat enjoyable if you're a competitor): the emperor has no clothes and the CEO is full of shit. He is self-serving and isn't optimizing for the benefit of those around him.

As others in the tech industry are only beginning to figure out, once your curated narrative dies and the reality of who you really are comes to the surface, an unstoppable cycle of "bad press" and "negative sentiment" emerges. That's a hard cycle to work out of, especially if the value of your company is predicated on your image / the image of the company. Hiring Obama's speech writer and lobbying Congress doesn't fix the underlying issue, and eventually you're living in a Reverse Metcalf's Law situation that's scaling in the wrong direction.

As WeWork is built on an image of selling "a new, better way of working" to companies of all sizes, it becomes extremely problematic if people start to associate the brand with "the rich keep getting richer, and they're screwing us over and working us to the bone along the way." An image of a "collaborative enterprise" becomes a laughable fantasy novel next to the reality of, "we are funded by third world despots and our CEO is lining his pockets with as much of our money as possible, while scheming up ways to do petty things such as avoid paying the cleaning staff any sort of decent wages or benefits."

This isn't the We Company. It's the Me Company. That's not very innovative. That doesn't foster greater productivity. And eventually, a lot of tenants aren't going to pay for it, because it seems a lot of them really think they're paying to be part of a progressive, futuristic environment. If their smartest and most progressive employees start telling them they don't want to visit the office, they're going to get rid of that office. Companies' desire to please their knowledge workers — what originally drove WeWork's success — thus ends up killing it.

<comment><USER3> > _The entire image and "vibe" of this guy / his team is supposed to be an > egalitarian re-invention of the status quo. The kibbutz story. The > "community adjusted EBITDA." The rebranding to "We."_

This is all just marketing. It's like believing all the actors in a commercial really are elated and blissful just because they chose the right brand of soda.

<comment><USER4> In this case yes.

But I think it's very important to remember that companies can have moral standards and follow them. Many companies don't sell-out in crucial ways, and throwing one's hands up and condemning them all is punishing the ones that stay true.

I think moral outrage is a very important and effective market force. It will do things our government never could, like take down facebook. I'm glad we have this tool.

<comment><USER3> > _But I think it 's very important to remember that companies can have moral > standards and follow them. Many companies don't sell-out in crucial ways, > and throwing one's hands up and condemning them all is punishing the ones > that stay true._

I agree, which is why I criticize shallow analysis of a company's motivation based on its skin-deep marketing veneer.

In this case it's not even moral standards - the implication is that WeWork's CEO is neglecting his fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value by lining his pocket instead.

That's in fact a corruption of capitalism, it's illegal, and he can be sued for that by shareholders.

> _I think moral outrage is a very important and effective market force._

I completely agree, which is why it's important to look beyond the marketing.

If a company can breach standards of morality and decency, but get away thanks to some 30 seconds commercial featuring smiling kids, then we will not be effective as a public in enforcing those very real consequences that companies should face for their actions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      As part of an investment round for WeWork in 2014, he was
      granted Class B shares that gave him 10 votes per share,
      and now he has more than 65% of the overall share vote,
      according to WeWork corporate filings.

These multi-class ownership structures need to be reformed. The SEC is already thinking about it [0].

[0]- [https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/perpetual-dual-class- stock-c...](https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/perpetual-dual-class-stock-case- against-corporate-royalty)

<comment><USER6> Why? Everybody who bought those shares knew exactly what they were buying.

<comment><USER7> Well, one could argue the more complex the ownership structure is capable of being, the more opportunity for abuse arises.

For example, by saying he has "special" shares that grant him 10x the votes of "normal" shares, he can sell way more than 50% of the company and retain 100% control.

This means shareholders are 100% along for the ride, and get no say in how he runs the business.

I could see a strong argument for the SEC coming down hard and saying "Okay, enough is enough. 1 share, 1 vote."

<comment><USER8> If a shareholder doesn't want to invest in a company with multi-class shares or defense industry ties or tobacco or whatever, they can opt out.

<comment><USER7> You can use the same reasoning to justify a large variety of predatory tactics, and scams.

"Buyer beware" doesn't absolve a practice of being, at the very least, scummy.

<comment><USER6> To be predatory it has to be deceptive or complex in a way that leads people to misunderstand. This is not the case here. It is crystal clear that a non voting share gives the buyer no control over the company, and if he buyer accepts that then he should get no such control.

<comment><USER7> What's complex is the ownership structure of any company with multiple classes of shares, especially with different voting weightings.

Simple would be "1 share = 1 vote".

\-----

What's deceptive is the conflict of interest he created for himself that makes it unclear whether or not he is actually fulfilling his fiduciary duty.

Clear and conflict-free would be renting from someone unrelated, and renting his building out to different company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There seems to be an archetype in silicon valley today of people viewing companies basically just as convenient extensions of themselves rather than distinct legal entities with separate interests.

Why would a WeWork object to paying Neumann's rent? WeWork is bascially Neumann anyway! Why would Tesla object to buying Musk's other companies? Tesla is basically Musk anyway! Why wouldn't levandowski just employ his own company to supply components he was procuring for Google? Why wouldn't Shkreli pay his hedge fund investors back with cash from one of his other companies?

It's amazing how often 'innovation' and business success turns into corrupt self-enrichment. Unfortunately justice tends to only come once someone suitably senior gets screwed. With Levandowski that was Google, with Shkreli that was the government. I suspect with WeWork the law suits will come the second the investment value drops - investors won't do a thing until they start losing money, rather than just making less money than they otherwise would have.

<comment><USER10> Not just in silicon valley by a long way.

MG Rover: [https://insolvencyandlaw.co.uk/why-didnt-insolvency- service-...](https://insolvencyandlaw.co.uk/why-didnt-insolvency-service- prosecute-mg-rovers-phoenix-four/administration/)

BHS: [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/27/philip- gree...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/27/philip-green- escapes-company-director-ban-for-bhs-1-deal) / [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/28/philip- gree...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/28/philip-green-agrees- pay-363m-bhs-pension-fund)

Maplin: [https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/02/28/40831/](https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/02/28/40831/)

(fundamentally in a capitalist society that recognises no moral restraint on money and it's not illegal ... why not? Surely you take as much money from the investors as you can and pocket exactly as much as you can get away with without being prosecuted? Anything less would be economically inefficient! /s)

<comment><USER11> It's worth noting that luminary capitalists like Adam Smith were very much concerned with privately enabled rent seekers in addition to government enabled ones.

There's nothing inherently capitalist about corruption. It's a property of power, not capitalism.

<comment><USER12> > _There 's nothing inherently capitalist about corruption. It's a property of > power, not capitalism._

That's the same argument that says "USSR/DDR/Cambodia/NK/etc was no real communism".

We might excuse a few diversions from a political/economic system, but after some point, like with anything else, capitalism is what capitalism does time and again.

<comment><USER13> Not sure this makes sense to me? There's corruption in every system, regardless of the ideology behind it. Are you saying there's no corruption in communism? Because I have news for you, if you do.

It seems like corruption is simply endemic to the human condition. It has nothing to do with capitalism/communism/etc. Whatever the system happens to be, we will find a way to corrupt it.

<comment> mAEStro-paNDa It doesn't appear to be what this person is saying. Rather, that we can't deflect from flaws in ideology having to do with the system in place, and the issues that stem from that.

Having said that, I find it to be rather unproductive and pessimistic to assert corruption is endemic to humanity and has nothing to do with ideology. Instead I would argue that the nature of the corruption has everything to do with the ideological foundations of said system.

<comment><USER13> > Instead I would argue that the nature of the corruption has everything to do > with the ideological foundations of said system.

How so? Is corruption different somehow depending on the ideological foundations of the system? Corruption is corruption. Every system has rules. When you subvert those rules for personal gain, that's corruption.

<comment><USER12> > _How so? Is corruption different somehow depending on the ideological > foundations of the system?_

Of course.

Different systems enable, empower, and encourage, different types of corruption.

(Corruption being an abstract word, in programming terms there's no corruption "class", just corruption instances. So the nature of those corruption instances depend on the classes defined in the program -e.g. capitalism.c- you're running...).

(And of course share some basic corruption types, present in all societies/systems, e.g. theft -- the POSIX of corruption).

<comment><USER13> We're now pretty deep in this thread and you still haven't given a single example?

<comment><USER12> We've started the thread with concrete examples...

Check the @pjc50, @Traster etc comments at the top.

And @humanrebar already put this in abstract form: "It's worth noting that luminary capitalists like Adam Smith were very much concerned with privately enabled rent seekers in addition to government enabled ones"

<comment><USER13> > Check the @pjc50, @Traster etc comments at the top.

Those are specific examples of corruption here in the US. Are you asserting that you wouldn't be able to find the same corruption, for example, in China?

Please provide a single example of corruption that can occur under capitalism, but wouldn't occur under another economic system. Because I'm asserting they do not exist.

> And @humanrebar already put this in abstract form: "It's worth noting that > luminary capitalists like Adam Smith were very much concerned with privately > enabled rent seekers in addition to government enabled ones"

Yes, he was perfectly right to. There are always private parties. Even under communism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of the boardgame _1830 Railways & Robber Barons_. You're an investor buying shares in railroad companies, and personally running any railroad of which you are the largest shareholder. A popular opening strategy is to first buy an expensive private company, then start a public company and have the public company buy your private company at inflated price.

It's a great way to shunt some money from the company treasury to your private wallet, which is otherwise impossible to do (except for dividend payments, but those are limited and go to all shareholders and not just to you).

It's absolutely a robber baron move.

<comment><USER15> 1830 is such an amazing game. Also, a personal shout-out for 1856, its sibling game set in Upper Canada. That game is all about making money before everything gets bought up.

<comment><USER14> There are actually dozens of games in that genre. 1835 in Germany is very constructive and buildery, and aggressive 1830-style play is not going to do you any good. 1841 in Italy is epic in its complexity; borders popup and disappear, forcing splits and mergers. Companies can buy each other and start new subsidiary companies. There are several games in England, France, Europe as a whole, India, China, Russia, the Isle of Wight, several games for individual states in the US, and most recently, Lilliput. Many of them self- published. Worth checking out if this is your thing.

18EU is probably my favourite. Feels epic, but plays remarkably quickly.

<comment><USER15> I am familiar with the series, the problem with checking out new ones is that these games require a SERIOUS investment of time and energy.

They aren't your run-of-the-mill Euro game you pull out after Thanksgiving Dinner and teach to the family over coffee.

<comment><USER14> True. I keep trying to plan a game with my dad and my brother, but somehow we never get around to it. I can't bring my kids, because that's not going to work. Though pretty soon my oldest son may be old enough to join.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For the people in this thread wondering whether this is ok: double dipping is never ok.

Once you get to a level where you have financial decision making power, don't pick a provider (even a great one, even at a competitive price) if you have a meaningful financial interest in them. The incentives are all wrong and it leads to badly run companies. In this particular case, it's so far over the line, it's pretty bad.

The board might not be able or want to force him out right now, but long term the tone has been set.

<comment><USER17> > _double dipping is never ok..._

...for companies that are structured as public companies.

If your companies are all private, with no investors, go ahead and do whatever you like. It's all just your money, (or your family's money), anyway.

But to do that with money from public investors is, and this is only my opinion, but I think it's extremely unethical. Obviously the issue is that there is nothing explicitly illegal about what people like the WeWork CEO are doing. I'm not sure why?

<comment><USER18> I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect this may cause you to lose the liability protection of the corporation. From [1]:

"The veil of liability protection provided by an entity may be pierced based on the following theories:

Alter Ego Theory. If you run your company as little more than your "alter ego," as a mere extension of yourself (this will generally be the case where there is a lack of separateness between you individually and the company itself, due to commingling of funds, lack of proper governance, and other factors)."

1 [https://businessattorneyinaustin.com/llc-corporation- liabili...](https://businessattorneyinaustin.com/llc-corporation-liability- protection/)

<comment><USER17> Re-read what the WeWork CEO did. It was not commingling of funds, it was what would loosely be termed as double dipping. One of his corporations, doing business with another. ie - each of his corporations making independent decisions, via the mechanisms not wholly dependent on himself, about what to do with money in their own accounts. Not money in his accounts. It happens a lot nowadays precisely because it is legal. Usually in parts of the business that deal with real estate, like we see here, or another one is benefits. For instance, you get a basket of funds to choose from for your 401k, but some of them are funds run by "Bigshot Investor X", who also happens to be an investor in the company at which you're working. If you tried to go after corporations or individuals for these kinds of things on the basis of alter ego you would be laughed out of court.

That's why this stuff is legal, because it by definition, is _NOT_ an alter ego situation. My point is that while it is not _illegal_ , it is definitely _unethical_ , and probably _should_ be illegal. Not because of the doctrine of Alter Ego, which is obviously not violated in these sorts of instances. But rather because all of these corporations, while acting independently, are clearly acting in concert to benefit a third party that is _NOT_ the general shareholder class. There is no explicit, sort of generic, law against that right now.

As I said, if your companies are private, do whatever you like in this regard. All of your companies can, and probably should, concert to benefit you and your family. I'm just saying for companies with public investors, that's just not cool.

<comment><USER18> I see that does make sense. Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The ex-CEO at my wife's previous company did this. Signed a multi-year lease for the company on a building she owned a few months before leaving the company.

A real dick move for sure. They were growing at the time and being constrained to such a tiny space for so long was quite rough for them.

<comment><USER20> My wife's church sold a multi-million dollar parcel to the museum across the street because one of the church members is a real estate agent and made a commission.

This not only denied the church any revenue from making the parking lot a parking garage as the museum did but prevented them from doing anything else with the land in case of expansion or simply a future sale if they move. Talk about stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.

<comment><USER21> There's been a couple of studies that confirm people will sell out their employers for as little as an extra $500.

<comment><USER22> I suspect most employers will sell out their employees for about the same amount or a bit less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is basically the textbook definition of conflict of interests.

Given that WeWork is also a very unprofitable business it raises serious fiduciary duty questions regarding his role at WeWork (it would be a big issue even if they were profitable but seems crazy bad when they are not).

</comment><comment><USER24> "The building's value, meanwhile, has gone up, and the owners have been able to borrow more money by refinancing the property's debt. Late last year, Messrs. Neumann and Tahari took out a $77.5 million loan, according to loan adviser Meridian Capital Group, $7.5 million more than the prior loan to buy the building."

I'm amazed. When does this information about self-leasing show up in due diligence by investors? The prospect of return to the investors must overshadow such data? Is the real-estate market just so inflated at the moment that if you can play it why not do so?

The self-leasing strategy + WeWork makes the property value higher (presumably because the rent-ability of the property is proven when a WeWork tenant moves in). Then the property owners can leverage the property. Others have raised the point of conflict of interest and fiduciary responsibility and the not-so- sound financials of the business (e.g. Softbank backs down from $16B to $2B in new investment (still a big number)). I'm curious what is going on here or is it obvious?

<comment><USER9> Somewhere between "Hey guys I just bought a Wave-pool company because I've gotten really into surfing recently" and "We're going to re-invent EBITDA"

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This needs to called what it is, corruption. "Self-dealing is the conduct of a trustee, attorney, corporate officer, or other fiduciary that consists of taking advantage of his position in a transaction and acting in his own interests rather than in the interests of the beneficiaries of the trust, corporate shareholders, or his clients." This is supposedly why boards exist in the first place.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- dealing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-dealing)

</comment><comment><USER26> This type of self dealing rarely ends well for the company in question. How can the CEO be trusted to do right by the company?

</comment><comment><USER27> That is quite common in retail. Usually the family owns all the stores and just rent them to the retailer. (At least in Brazil)

Although it sounds bad, not sure how it is perceived in real estate

<comment><USER28> Apparently this is McDonald's modus operandi as well. They're basically a real estate company who happens to specialize in fast food resturants.

<comment><USER29> Are you sure? Surely the company itself owns the properties, which is very very different from a controlling family owning the properties.

<comment><USER30> 80% of McDonalds are franchise, so it's often a similar situation. 2/3rds of locations are owned by McDonald's and leased by the franchisee, who also pays royalties and purchases from corporate affiliated suppliers.

Ripe for abuse if McDonald's were too short term focused.

Source: [https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/03/what- perce...](https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2016/04/03/what-percentage- of-mcdonalds-restaurants-are-owned.aspx)

<comment><USER31> That's a way for McDonalds to make more money for McDonalds shareholders (at the expense of a private franchisee who's well aware who he's leasing from and probably feels more secure leasing the location from someone that isn't going to turf him out for a higher rent offer from KFC). From a MCD investor point of view, them owning the real estate and earning money on that too is a good thing. It's a bit different from a hypothetical scenario in which McDonalds picks locations personally owned by McDonalds' CEO Steve Easterbrook, in a manner which probably tends to benefit him personally far more than McDonalds' shareholders.

<comment><USER32> I would suggest that MCD corp regularly turfs out established O/O's, just for the opportunity to re-sign lease agreements for better rent %s. ie renegotiating from 90's rates around 5% to 2010's rates at 10% of gross.

IMO, MCD has been administratively leveraging there negotiation position with regards to rental %s as the near sole driver of profit increases for about 18-22 years. They are very very near max sustainable extraction, which is evident by their huge offloads of corporate owned stores in the last 3 years.

Addition: They could also be positioning for a REIT transition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is like paying for your startup with a credit card and being called out on it by reporters when the bill gets paid by the company rather than the individual, but on a much larger scale. There are perfectly valid, ethical reasons why you're using alternative sources of credit to fund a startup!

Here's why this article is an opinion piece searching for scandal that fails to reveal one:

Consider the legal definition of "self-dealing": "One important duty of a fiduciary is to act in the best interests of the benefited party. When a fiduciary engages in self-dealing, she breaches this duty by acting in her own interests instead of the interests of the represented party. For example, self-dealing occurs when a trustee uses money from the trust account to make a loan to a business in which he has a substantial personal interest. _A fiduciary may make such a transaction with the prior permission of the trust beneficiary, but if the trustee does not obtain permission, the beneficiary can void the transaction and sue the fiduciary for any monetary losses that result_."[1]

Every decision WeWork made to lease new commercial space was made with board support. The CEO and family members conducted deals with WeWork that he or family personally benefited by, but it was done in a transparent manner and with board support.

WeWork is navigating uncharted territory. This makes those working in finance apprehensive. Underwriters have certain requirements that a borrower must meet before a loan is approved. A rapidly expanding, growth-oriented business like WeWork may not qualify to lease new space as quickly as it requires. However, perhaps individuals who pledge their own collateral might. Commercial space was leased by individuals (or other entities) and then re-leased to WeWork.

I could be wrong about this case, but if I am then this will likely grow into a scandal and self-dealing will be revealed.

[1] [https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Self- Dealing](https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Self-Dealing)

<comment><USER34> > This is like paying for your startup with a credit card and being called out > on it by reporters when the bill gets paid by the company rather than the > individual, but on a much larger scale.

I've seen this happen in multiple cases, and I find it highly unethical. At the very least it means the CEO is raking in thousands of dollars a month in credit card points for purchases across the entire company.

<comment><USER35> I'm on the fence about it. It seems unethical initially but the CEO is taking a personal financial risk using their own funds. I would say it's definitely a gray area but wouldn't call it flat out unethical. As with most things, it is very dependent on the situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I remember in my first job our CEO was quite proud that he bought the whole office building himself and then rented out to his company. He said whole mortgage will be repaid in 8 years... :) I guess the only difference was that it is a small company and not a 'unicorn'.

</comment><comment><USER37> Although it doesn't sound right, on the other hand why would Neumann rent his commercial real estate assets to WeWork competitors?

Maybe the question should be, why the hell Neumann bought properties directly instead of using the WeWork vehicle?

We all know the answer to that I think.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is just the start/continuation of the WeWork world unraveling. I am familiar with the internals and there is a lot more being hidden that has yet to come out.

When the 2010's documentary gets made and they get to the section about the start-up world unraveling and being exposed, it's gonna be Theranos, Fyre and WeWork highlighted throughout. 2019 is perfect timing.

</comment><comment><USER39> This kind of conflict indeed looks sketchy, and I don't think Neumann should do it, but the risk and opportunity still run both ways.

Neumann is assuming the capital risk. Does WeWork and its investors (including Neumann!) want these assets and associated liabilities on its books? Probably not. Is Neumann making money from this transaction long term? No way to tell; he himself probably doesn't even know if these deals are profitable for him now.

What he is definitely doing is increasing his levered bet on WeWork, which could be good or bad for WeWork, and good or bad for him, depending on how everything turns out.

<comment><USER40> Neumann is the one making the deals for rentals- including the price. As the representative of the company he is incentivized to reduce the rental price as much as possible. But as the owner on the other side of the same deal, he's incentivized to increase the price as much as possible.

The problem with this is that as CEO, he's talking about someone else's money (investors) while the other side he's talking about money in his pocket.

How can there not be a conflict of interest?

<comment><USER39> I didn't deny there was a conflict. I'm just saying it's not a conflict that automatically benefits him at the expense of the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> This sort of self benefiting deals should not be acceptable in any organization from their executives, just as they are not acceptable from democratic government officials.

</comment><comment><USER42> I thought this was common? Many owners of companies also own a real estate holding company and lease a building to their main company.

<comment><USER43> There is a difference if it is the sole/main owner of the company that also owns the real estate holding company, or if it is the CEO who's doing it to funnel some cash to himself.

I think the legit thing to do would be to have three companies. SuperCo Holdings, SuperCo RealEstate and SuperCo Operations. SuperCo Holdings owns both the others 100% and investors buy the Holdings company.

<comment><USER44> You are assuming he bought the building with company resources. If he spent his own money/took on the liability personally, that is his business.

Yeah, you gotta be extra careful that it's not divergent from company interests (right place, right price). But this isn't shady unless there is some reason it harms the company.

<comment><USER45> > You are assuming he bought the building with company resources. If he spent > his own money/took on the liability personally, that is his business.

It would be his business if he rented out his property to an organization that he can't sign contracts for. But as it stands, he is transferring money from an account he only partially owns (but fully controls, with legal obligations to his co-owners which he seems to be breaking) to an account that he owns fully. It's a sneaky way to give himself a raise that is easier to get past the board. The article even cites WeWork with "approved by the board or an independent committee", which implies that not all of those arrangements happened worth explicit board approval. How he got into the possession of the means by which the transfer from controlled-but-only-partially-owned to owned was facilitated is an unrelated topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I thought it was a very common practice. I know daycare owners who complained about high lease prices for the house/building. What they usually do is take a mortgage, buy a building and don't pay the lease just the mortgage. It's cheaper this way and you end up owning the building after finishing paying the mortgage.

<comment><USER47> That's taking advantage of price differences between residential and commercial property. Many locales do not allow leasing out a house as a business location but they _do_ allow running a business out of your home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Thinking out loud here, it seems like this behaves very similarly to leverage in that it kind of magnifies his gains or losses from wework. If Wework succeeds he can squeeze the company for more rent. If Wework fails, suddenly he also has a bunch of broken leases. (Although he has a floor to his losses from the real estate since he can eventually rerent it, maybe at a lower price)

Another interesting aspect of this is that he can basically insider trade with impunity since real estate isn't a security. Who knows when/where WeWork will open an office next? Well, he does, and can buy a place cheaply (I don't imagine WeWork presence affects the real estate price much, but in principle it could).

<comment><USER49> He wins either way. He sold some of his WeWork stock, bought buildings with the proceeds, and then had WeWork sign leases with them. If WeWork folds, he still owns the buildings and can sign new tenants. Before it does, the faster it expands, the more often he can do this, and the more money he can make.

That's the conflict of interest. WeWork shareholders want WeWork to build a great business and eventually IPO, but it maybe better for him personally if WeWork simply grows as fast as possible at any cost by doing things like signing expensive leases it can't make the unit economics work for.

<comment><USER50> Very elegantly worded, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm not a subscriber of WSJ, so I can only read the first paragraph. Based on the headline and the first paragraph, I don't see the problem. Wouldn't WeWork have to lease the space from someone? Why is it a problem if that someone is the CEO of WeWork? If WeWork is paying above market rent, then sure, that is corrupt.

A lot of people hop on the band-wagon of bashing "rent-seeking", mostly misusing the term in the process, confusing rent-seeking with leasing/renting land or capital. WeWork's whole business is built on renting as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER52> Others have mentioned this but to reiterate: imagine a WeWork location should move to a larger space, but the CEO doesn't own a sufficiently large space.

At this point the CEO has a conflict of interest: on the one hand, he should move the location, because that's best for WeWork; on the other hand, he should keep it where it is because that's best for his real-estate company.

There are many potential conflicts but that's probably the easiest to use as an illustration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This unfortunately is not uncommon outside of silicon valley either. The recent Sears debacle was helped along quite a bit by a CEO that was self- dealing to his own personal financial interests. And in a case very similar to the CEO of WeWork I recall the CEO of a restaurant holding corporation personally purchased the land where he knew he'd direct his company to build restaurants and lease it back to the company at exorbitant rents. (Though he was also jailed for criminal conduct as well, basically soliciting outright bribes from vendors.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Just something to remember the next time a startup CEO tells you that "we" have to "work hard and give up some of our compensation" to "make a positive change in the world".

</comment><comment><USER54> If I were an investor in WeWork, I would be concerned about this as well. Except that I'm not an investor, and I'm assuming 99% of angry commenters aren't either.

Devil's advocate: Conflicts of interest are absolutely everywhere and can never be avoided completely. For example, here's a conflict of interest in my own job: I want my employer to pay me as much money as possible, and my employer wants to pay me as little as possible.

And if I were a manager/director/executive, I would want to hire as many people as possible to boost my stature. And the company would want to hire as few people as possible to keep their expenses low.

The fact that a conflict of interest exists, isn't in itself a irreconcilable problem. It only becomes one if one party tries to hide it from the other, and deceives them to get what they want. Presumably that isn't happening at WeWork.

If you're an investor in WeWork, I can understand your concern, and your wanting your board representatives to take a close look at these agreements. From what I hear though, the investors and board of directors are all perfectly happy with the arrangements that have been made. Perhaps a little less soapboxing from the peanut gallery is in order.

</comment><comment><USER55> Wasn't there also an article recently about WeWork losing funding because it's basically a real estate company with a tech facade?

</comment><comment><USER56> We should add two mandatory clauses to cooperate law: 1\. Major shareholders must disclose any business relationships between the company and shareholders' other business interests. 2\. Shareholders can demand a vote on whether an above-mentioned business relationship causes a conflict of interest. If so, the relationship must be terminated.

</comment><comment><USER57> I am more surprised that Neumann allows his name to be known in these investment groups

Just form the Wyoming Series LLC or BVI segregated portfolio company, no beneficial owner information will be in public records, but even the state and registered agent can be kept in the dark if you want.

I expect value has been extracted this way for centuries.

Oops!

</comment><comment><USER58> Reminder: the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund is the majorly of money in SoftBank's Vision Fund. And SoftBank is by far the largest investor in WeWork.

I have to admire Neumann's balls in trying to play Mohammed bin Salman for a chump. But I don't think this will end well for him.

</comment><comment><USER59> WeWork is another Theranos waiting to happen.

\- Unicorn status. Check.

\- Douchey founder(s). Check.

\- Shady dealings and corruption. Check.

</comment><comment><USER60> The article states:

>"Mr. Neumann owes his personal wealth largely to sales of WeWork stock. It is unclear how much WeWork stock he has sold, but he has told some friends it is in the hundreds of millions of dollars."

Honest question - are investors OK with this? Isn't he essentially enriching himself with VC money that has yet to see a return realized?

Couldn't this be seen as a hedge that even if investor loose their shirts he himself has managed to enrich himself with a real-estate portfolio?

</comment><comment><USER61> It was amusing to me that this sorry of thing is seen as potentially quite a big issue in tech yet is totally common in the real estate industry. I was made aware of this by today's Matt Levine piece [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-16/even-c...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-16/even- cheaters-don-t-always-win)

</comment><comment><USER62> "Adam Neumann, WeWork's chief executive, who leased the property to WeWork after buying it.." Is this even legal? I smell conflict of interest.

</comment><comment><USER63> Oh hey, look, another person living rich on schemes to simply move money around instead of doing something societally productive. Neat.

</comment><comment><USER64> My wife's family did this also. They owned the buildings and leased them back to the company.

It saved their butts when a partner they took on tried to take over their very valuable company.

I don't see the problem unless there's obvious overpricing, corruption, or failures to disclose. At some point it makes better sense to put property under a holding company or similar.

</comment><comment><USER65> See... this is apparently quite legal but insider trading gets you prison. This is arguably more of a conflict of interest/questionable act than insider trading.

I imagine the company could also find cheaper places/better terms for leasing than the CEO owned properties which, to me, is mismanagement if not low-level fraud.

<comment><USER44> Why do you assume that? He may be willing to bet on WeWork's viability in ways that other landlords won't.

Landlords may have been asking him to personally guarantee leases.

<comment><USER65> >He may be willing to bet on WeWork's viability in ways that other landlords won't.

Perhaps, but as someone else in this thread said

>The self-leasing strategy + WeWork makes the property value higher (presumably because the rent-ability of the property is proven when a WeWork tenant moves in). Then the property owners can leverage the property.

And never mind the fact that he's basically guaranteeing he has a tenant for each building, that will also likely making physical improvements to lure in customers (which will mostly carry over for a future tenant) and effectively building free equity in the property so even if WeWork suddenly folds he can sell the properties at competitive prices and still walk away with a profit.

>Landlords may have been asking him to personally guarantee leases.

Perhaps with the first location or two but a quick google search shows they've raised billions in funding which would be more than adequate (unless they are growing too fast, which appears to be the case, see below).

Now as far as guaranteeing rent here's something interesting

>In March 2018, SEC filings indicated that WeWork had raised over $400 million alongside private equity fund The Rhone Group to start a fund to purchase properties directly.[33] In April, documents filed by the company in association with a plan to raise $500 million through the issue of high-yield bonds showed that the company's revenues rose in 2017, but costs rose faster, and the company owed $18 billion rent

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeWork#History_and_funding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeWork#History_and_funding)

I don't know how many of the sites he owns but even if it is only 10% there is 1.8 billion 'free' money servicing loans on commercial properties he owns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I don't see a problem with this if it's properly disclosed to investors, workers, and users of the service. If you don't like it, literally nobody is making you give your wealth to him, and there are plenty of alternatives that would benefit the local economy wherever you are.

</comment><comment><USER67> Who said it - "No conflict, no interest"?

Edit: Fred Wilson attributes it to John Doerr - [https://avc.com/2010/04/no- conflict-no-interest/](https://avc.com/2010/04/no-conflict-no-interest/)

</comment><comment><USER68> Ah yeah, the old McDonalds farming-scheme. Buy some land, raise some cattle under your flag and milk them till they are dry. They have all the work and risk and you get all the fat money. At least a good farmer knows how to maintain them well for longterm-milking.

</comment><comment><USER69> Often the operating business is floated and the vendors keep the buildings, this is nothing new and much more endemic than appears.

You're only just seeing an article on this behavior because a high profile tech company is doing it rather than a factory or a shop.

</comment><comment><USER70> Why does it matter? If the board of directors are aware and approved it there is no issue here.

</comment><comment><USER71> I can understand (but definitely wouldn't approve) if this happened early in the company's life but given when it happened and what the company has been valued at in the past few years, I really do not understand what this guy is doing.

<comment><USER72> He owns a building that is suitable for what WeWord does. What if he has a plane and his company needs a plane. Why is it bad to use it?

Companies always try to hire people from our network first - relatives, friends and friends of friends. Suddently it is bad.

<comment><USER73> As long as WeWork isn't paying more than market rates on its rent, then it's fine. But if they're paying more, then the CEO is corrupt -- he's using his control of his company to enrich himself personally rather than steering the company towards success.

<comment><USER31> It's not just about rent being in line with market norms. In order for it not to be personal enrichment at WeWork's expense, it's also got to be assumed that these particular leases on this particular properties were sincerely believed to be the _best_ possible use of the $110m of WeWork shareholders' funds committed to properties its execs had an ownership interest in: i.e. that there were no competing locations (or capital investments) that might have been expected to yield higher customer revenues and nothing comparable on offer at below market rates. Additionally, we've got to assume WeWork execs were not in competition with WeWork to acquire actual [part]-ownership of the buildings (the article provides an example of Neumann trying to personally buy a stake in a building knowing that WeWork wanted to occupy it but WeWork blocking it because they were happy to stump up for title deeds as well as the lease. It certainly doesn't rule out the possibility he used his knowledge of WeWork's requirements to acquire other freehold titles which WeWork might have preferred to buy rather than just lease though).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Oh, self dealing. Shocking. For what happens when this gets rampant enough, please see DOMO. Wouldn't be surprised if Neumann owned a coffeeshop or fast casual restaurant ala Cubby's and mandated that said eatery cater all locations.

</comment><comment><USER75> Classic Ponzi Scheme. People have been wondering how WeEork has't gone bankrupt yet. Well you don't go bankrupt if you can keep raising/lending more to pay up your losses. Until the day you can't anymore.

</comment><comment><USER76> How is this wrong? Is WeWork publicly funded? Either way, is he withholding his status as landlord from investors? How is this even a conflict of interest? This sounds like a normal real estate deal: sale-leaseback to a management company.

<comment><USER77> Conflict of interest: The CEO, who is supposed to have the companies best interest in mind, would benefit if the company made bad financial decisions like renting too much property from him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Bloomberg is saying that this was disclosed in last year's bond prospectus. To me that's the minimum required but it's probably just better to avoid the appearance of any sort of conflict of interest.

</comment><comment><USER78> Just look at WeWork's WEWORK COMP. 18/25 REGS bond. Total junk. Can't wait for an economic slowdown in 2019/20, and see WeWork default on its debt holders.

</comment><comment><USER79> Why is WeWork any different from a company like Regis, or any number of managed offices in the 80s, which have been doing the same thing for years?

</comment><comment><USER80> Article requires subscription to WSJ to read... this really shouldn't be bumped to the top and show up in my notifications.

<comment><USER81> [https://outline.com/WMUaqc](https://outline.com/WMUaqc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> That's not uncommon. It's how Roy Kroc got rich with McDonalds. His real business was leasing land to franchisees.

</comment><comment><USER83> But WeWork owes billions of rents...

</comment><comment><USER84> This is just like McDonald's, the real money is made owning the land they sit on.

</comment><comment><USER85> Uh oh. WSJ's picked a new target, it's going to be Theranos all over again.

<comment><USER86> Not sure what you're getting at here, Theranos was "targeted" because they were completely fraudulent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> From Dan Abramov Twitter timeline: "-watches Mad Men:

woah, they were so backwards in 60s

-looks at the tech industry:

oh no"

</comment><comment><USER88> This is how an oligarchy works

</comment><comment><USER89> This sounds awfully similar to what the current CEO of Sears is trying to do.

</comment><comment><USER90> Matt Levine today: [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-16/wework...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-16/wework- ceo-adam-neumann-is-also-a-landlord)

"Yes it really does seem like a conflict of interest! "A WeWork spokesman said all related-party deals are reviewed and approved by the board or an independent committee and disclosed to investors," so that is good, but on the other hand, "Mr. Neumann, the 39-year-old executive who founded WeWork in 2010, is WeWork's largest individual shareholder and has voting control over the company," so it is not clear that the board can say no. (He got that control in 2014 with some super-voting stock; before that, he once tried to do a related-party deal and got turned down by the board.)

"One thing I will say, though, is that if you told me that a privately owned real estate company was engaging in transactions with its controlling shareholder and CEO that raised possible conflicts of interest, I would be like "ha, yeah, that's the real estate industry for you." Conflicts of interest are more common there, as everyone knows these days after years of stories about Donald Trump's business dealings, and it is not surprising for a founder/controller/CEO to be involved in a deal with his company on multiple sides and in multiple ways. Private tech startups, on the other hand, tend to be a bit more pristine. They are not complex moneymaking structures for their founders but mission-driven enterprises where everyone's incentives are ostentatiously and lavishly aligned: If the company gets big, the founder becomes a zillionaire; if not, he walks away with only his modest salary and a track record for failing ambitiously. WeWork is a weird company because it is a real estate company that thinks it's a tech startup; it seems to have the culture and New-Age-y patter and grandiose ambition and valuation of a tech company. But what if, deep down in its heart, it really is a real estate company?"

</comment><comment><USER91> Reminds me a little of the McDonalds movie!

</comment><comment><USER92> CEOs are just hustlers in fancier clothes

</comment><comment><USER93> Sounds like Ray Kroc's model.

</comment><comment><USER94> Regus have been doing this ages.

</comment><comment><USER95> WeWork is a giant ponzi scheme on the brink of financial collapse. 2008 is happening all over again.

</comment><comment><USER96> how can I read the article?

</comment><comment><USER97> As landlord, isn't he taking on the risk of WeWork defaulting on rent? Shouldn't he be compensated for that risk?

<comment><USER98> > WeWork's CEO Makes Millions as Landlord to WeWork

What risk? He's already pocketed the profits. If WeWork defaults, his property management company takes the loss, possibly sells the property, and perhaps files for bankruptcy. It doesn't affect his personal finances.

"Risk" has become cognitive poison. There can be, and often is, a huge divide between _financial risk_ and _risk of grave personal consequences_.</comment></comment>