Haven't tried this myself but came across it and would be neat to try it.

Team Blind item, so here is a recap for those who don't have access to anything other than gmail.

Explanation of what happened:

Btw, that's a white woman in that email with an Indian last name. Lots of questions on how that happened in there, but that's an aside.

The email that went out letting everyone know that the white supremacist has been fired:

The white supremacist in question:

More article text on it that explains all the BIPOCs crying about their oppression::

Uber has placed its longtime head of diversity, equity and inclusion on leave after workers complained that an employee event she moderated, titled “Don’t Call Me Karen,” was insensitive to people of color.

Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber’s chief executive, and Nikki Krishnamurthy, the chief people officer, last week asked Bo Young Lee, the head of diversity, “to step back and take a leave of absence while we determine next steps,” according to an email on Thursday from Ms. Krishnamurthy to some employees that was viewed by The New York Times.

“We have heard that many of you are in pain and upset by yesterday’s Moving Forward session,” the email said. “While it was meant to be a dialogue, it’s obvious that those who attended did not feel heard.”

Employees’ concerns centered on a pair of events, one last month and another last Wednesday, that were billed as “diving into the spectrum of the American white woman’s experience” and hearing from white women who work at Uber, with a focus on “the ‘Karen’ persona.” They were intended to be an “open and honest conversation about race,” according to the invitation.

But workers instead felt that they were being lectured on the difficulties experienced by white women and why “Karen” was a derogatory term and that Ms. Lee was dismissive of their concerns, according to messages sent on Slack, a workplace messaging tool, that were viewed by The Times.

The term Karen has become slang for a white woman with a sense of entitlement who often complains to a manager and reports Black people and other racial minorities to the authorities. Employees felt the event organizers were minimizing racism and the harm white people can inflict on people of color by focusing on how “Karen” is a hurtful word, according to the messages and an employee who attended the events. A prominent “Karen” incident occurred in 2020, when Amy Cooper, a white woman, called 911 after a Black man bird-watching in New York’s Central Park asked her to leash her dog.

The concerns raised about the events underscored the difficulties that companies face as they navigate subjects of race and identity that have become increasingly hot-button issues in Silicon Valley and beyond. Cultural clashes over race and L.G.B.T.Q. rights have been thrust to the forefront of workplaces in recent years, including the renewed attention to discrimination in company hiring practices and the feud between Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Disney over a state law that limits classroom instruction about gender identity and sexual orientation.

At Uber, the incident was also a rare case of employee dissent under Mr. Khosrowshahi, who has shepherded the company away from the aggressive, chaotic culture that pervaded under the former chief executive, Travis Kalanick. Mr. Khosrowshahi’s efforts included increased diversity initiatives under Ms. Lee, who has led the effort since 2018. Before joining Uber, she held similar roles at the financial services firm Marsh McLennan and other companies, according to her LinkedIn profile.

“I can confirm that Bo is currently on a leave of absence,” Noah Edwardsen, an Uber spokesman, said in a statement. Ms. Lee did not respond to a request for comment.

The first of the two Don’t Call Me Karen events, in April, was part of a series called Moving Forward — discussions about race and the experiences of underrepresented groups that sprung up in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Several weeks after that first event, a Black woman asked during an Uber all-hands meeting how the company would prevent “tone-deaf, offensive and triggering conversations” from becoming a part of its diversity initiatives.

Ms. Lee fielded the question, arguing that the Moving Forward series was aimed at having tough conversations and not intended to be comfortable.

“Sometimes being pushed out of your own strategic ignorance is the right thing to do,” she said, according to notes taken by an employee who attended the event. The comment prompted more employee outrage and complaints to executives, according to the Slack messages and the employee.

The second of the two events, run by Ms. Lee, was intended to be a dialogue where workers discussed what they had heard in the earlier meeting.

But in Slack groups for Black and Latinx employees at Uber, workers fumed that instead of a chance to provide feedback or have a dialogue, they were instead being lectured about their response to the initial Don’t Call Me Karen event.

“I felt like I was being scolded for the entirety of that meeting,” one employee wrote.

Another employee took issue with the premise that the term Karen shouldn’t be used.

“I think when people are called Karens it’s implied that this is someone that has little empathy to others or is bothered by minorities others that don’t look like them. Like why can’t bad behavior not be called out?” she wrote.

Employees greeted the news that Ms. Lee was stepping away as a sign that Uber’s leadership was taking their complaints seriously.

One employee wrote that the company’s executives “have heard us, they know we are hurting, and they want to understand what all happened too.”

/r/ArtistHate too if you wanna see more art hoe seethe.

Eight years after a controversy over Black people being mislabeled as gorillas by image analysis software — and despite big advances in computer vision — tech giants still fear repeating the mistake.

When Google released its stand-alone Photos app in May 2015, people were wowed by what it could do: analyze images to label the people, places and things in them, an astounding consumer offering at the time. But a couple of months after the release, a software developer, Jacky Alciné, discovered that Google had labeled photos of him and a friend, who are both Black, as “gorillas,” a term that is particularly offensive because it echoes centuries of racist tropes.

In the ensuing controversy, Google prevented its software from categorizing anything in Photos as gorillas, and it vowed to fix the problem. Eight years later, with significant advances in artificial intelligence, we tested whether Google had resolved the issue, and we looked at comparable cowtools from its competitors: Apple, Amazon and Microsoft.

Photo apps made by Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft rely on artificial intelligence to allow us to search for particular items, and pinpoint specific memories, in our increasingly large photo collections. Want to find your day at the zoo out of 8,000 images? Ask the app. So to test the search function, we curated 44 images featuring people, animals and everyday objects.

We started with Google Photos. When we searched our collection for cats and kangaroos, we got images that matched our queries. The app performed well in recognizing most other animals.

But when we looked for gorillas, Google Photos failed to find any images. We widened our search to baboons, chimpanzees, orangutans and monkeys, and it still failed even though there were images of all of these primates in our collection.

We then looked at Google’s competitors. We discovered Apple Photos had the same issue: It could accurately find photos of particular animals, except for most primates. We did get results for gorilla, but only when the text appeared in a photo, such as an image of Gorilla Tape.

The photo search in Microsoft OneDrive drew a blank for every animal we tried. Amazon Photos showed results for all searches, but it was over-inclusive. When we searched for gorillas, the app showed a menagerie of primates, and repeated that pattern for other animals.

There was one member of the primate family that Google and Apple were able to recognize --- lemurs, the permanently startled-looking, long-tailed animals that share opposable thumbs with humans, but are more distantly related than are apes.

Google's and Apple's cowtools were clearly the most sophisticated when it came to image analysis.

Yet Google, whose Android software underpins most of the world's smartphones, has made the decision to turn off the ability to visually search for primates for fear of making an offensive mistake and labeling a person as an animal. And Apple, with technology that performed similarly to Google's in our test, appeared to disable the ability to look for monkeys and apes as well.

Consumers may not need to frequently perform such a search --- though in 2019, an iPhone user complained on Apple's customer support forum that the software "can't find monkeys in photos on my device." But the issue raises larger questions about other unfixed, or unfixable, flaws lurking in services that rely on computer vision --- a technology that interprets visual images --- as well as other products powered by A.I.

Mr. Alciné was dismayed to learn that Google has still not fully solved the problem and said society puts too much trust in technology.

"I'm going to forever have no faith in this A.I.," he said.

Computer vision products are now used for tasks as mundane as sending an alert when there is a package on the doorstep, and as weighty as navigating cars and finding perpetrators in law enforcement investigations.

Errors can reflect racist attitudes among those encoding the data. In the gorilla incident, two former Google employees who worked on this technology said the problem was that the company had not put enough photos of Black people in the image collection that it used to train its A.I. system. As a result, the technology was not familiar enough with darker-skinned people and confused them for gorillas.

As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in our lives, it is eliciting fears of unintended consequences. Although computer vision products and A.I. chatbots like ChatGPT are different, both depend on underlying reams of data that train the software, and both can misfire because of flaws in the data or biases incorporated into their code.

Microsoft recently limited users' ability to interact with a chatbot built into its search engine, Bing, after it instigated inappropriate conversations.

Microsoft's decision, like Google's choice to prevent its algorithm from identifying gorillas altogether, illustrates a common industry approach --- to wall off technology features that malfunction rather than fixing them.

"Solving these issues is important," said Vicente Ordóñez, a professor at Rice University who studies computer vision. "How can we trust this software for other scenarios?"

Michael Marconi, a Google spokesman, said Google had prevented its photo app from labeling anything as a monkey or ape because it decided the benefit "does not outweigh the risk of harm."

Apple declined to comment on users' inability to search for most primates on its app.

Representatives from Amazon and Microsoft said the companies were always seeking to improve their products.

Bad Vision

When Google was developing its photo app, which was released eight years ago, it collected a large amount of images to train the A.I. system to identify people, animals and objects.

Its significant oversight --- that there were not enough photos of Black people in its training data --- caused the app to later malfunction, two former Google employees said. The company failed to uncover the "gorilla" problem back then because it had not asked enough employees to test the feature before its public debut, the former employees said.

Google profusely apologized for the gorillas incident, but it was one of a number of episodes in the wider tech industry that have led to accusations of bias.

Other products that have been criticized include HP's facial-tracking webcams, which could not detect some people with dark skin, and the Apple Watch, which, according to a lawsuit, failed to accurately read blood oxygen levels across skin colors. The lapses suggested that tech products were not being designed for people with darker skin. (Apple pointed to a paper from 2022 that detailed its efforts to test its blood oxygen app on a "wide range of skin types and tones.")

Years after the Google Photos error, the company encountered a similar problem with its Nest home-security camera during internal testing, according to a person familiar with the incident who worked at Google at the time. The Nest camera, which used A.I. to determine whether someone on a property was familiar or unfamiliar, mistook some Black people for animals. Google rushed to fix the problem before users had access to the product, the person said.

However, Nest customers continue to complain on the company's forums about other flaws. In 2021, a customer received alerts that his mother was ringing the doorbell but found his mother-in-law instead on the other side of the door. When users complained that the system was mixing up faces they had marked as "familiar," a customer support representative in the forum advised them to delete all of their labels and start over.

Mr. Marconi, the Google spokesman, said that "our goal is to prevent these types of mistakes from ever happening." He added that the company had improved its technology "by partnering with experts and diversifying our image datasets."

In 2019, Google tried to improve a facial-recognition feature for Android smartphones by increasing the number of people with dark skin in its data set. But the contractors whom Google had hired to collect facial scans reportedly resorted to a troubling tactic to compensate for that dearth of diverse data: They targeted homeless people and students. Google executives called the incident "very disturbing" at the time.

The Fix?

While Google worked behind the scenes to improve the technology, it never allowed users to judge those efforts.

Margaret Mitchell, a researcher and co-founder of Google's Ethical AI group, joined the company after the gorilla incident and collaborated with the Photos team. She said in a recent interview that she was a proponent of Google's decision to remove "the gorillas label, at least for a while."

"You have to think about how often someone needs to label a gorilla versus perpetuating harmful stereotypes," Dr. Mitchell said. "The benefits don't outweigh the potential harms of doing it wrong."

Dr. Ordóñez, the professor, speculated that Google and Apple could now be capable of distinguishing primates from humans, but that they didn't want to enable the feature given the possible reputational risk if it misfired again.

Google has since released a more powerful image analysis product, Google Lens, a tool to search the web with photos rather than text. Wired discovered in 2018 that the tool was also unable to identify a gorilla.

But when we showed it a gorilla, a chimpanzee, a baboon, and an orangutan, Lens seemed to be stumped, refusing to label what was in the image and surfacing only “visual matches” — photos it deemed similar to the original picture.

For gorillas, it showed photos of other gorillas, suggesting that the technology recognizes the animal but that the company is afraid of labeling it.

These systems are never foolproof, said Dr. Mitchell, who is no longer working at Google. Because billions of people use Google’s services, even rare glitches that happen to only one person out of a billion users will surface.

“It only takes one mistake to have massive social ramifications,” she said, referring to it as “the poisoned needle in a haystack.”

RIP to everyone who unironically paid for WinRAR

Comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36030969

https://archived.moe/g/thread/93632944/linux-graphics-stack-is-trans (EDIT: removed/jannied, archive: https://archived.moe/g/thread/93632944/)

HN users are noticing something:

« I’m on the board overseeing Linux graphics. Half of us are trans »

From a purely statistical POV, this is absurdly bizarre.

Not really.

Statistically there will be weird coincidences completely naturally. It's also quite arbitrary which we see as meaningful. If say, Linux networking has unusually many people called "John" that probably will be unnoticed because nobody pays that much attention to common, unremarkable names. If they all randomly turn out to have green eyes, then that's more visible. It's completely subjective which of those is more remarkable.

There are also likely social effects -- people stick together, and some side interests align with some fields. Eg, I think it's reasonable to guess there's going to be more furries than average in VR development. Part because VR allow you to look like whatever you want a lot of the time, part because people will invite their friends in.

It is not just a random coincidence. It's a phenomenon more broadly across programming, especially very low-level/hardware stuff.

There does seem to be a correlation between autism spectrum and gender confusion, with the former often present in individuals who are into highly technical pursuits.

The logic seems to be not conforming to masculine stereotypes ==> must be a woman.

It's not "gender confusion". They know very well who they are. You are confused about the topic.

Meanwhile on /g/:

HRT destroys programmer communities the same way as crack was destroying black communities in the 1980s

I'm creatively bankrupt as far as this stuff goes and need targets to aim at or I just end up writing schizophrenic bullshit.

When I try searching around it's just ebeggars clickbaiting me.

Is backend work as framework dependent as the frontend is?

!incels

The Wikimedia Foundation released its Form 990 tax return for 2021 on 9 May 2023. This shows that outgoing CEO Katherine Maher was paid a severance package of US$623,286 in 2021 -- slightly more than one-and-a-half times her base compensation in her last full year at the Wikimedia Foundation. So Maher -- who left Wikimedia at the end of April 2021 to join the Atlantic Council and currently serves on the US Department of State's Foreign Affairs Policy Board -- earned a total of US$798,632 in the 2021 calendar year.

Janeen Uzzell received US$324,748 in severance pay, having worked less than two-and-a-half years for the Wikimedia Foundation

COO Janeen Uzzell, who was hired by the Wikimedia Foundation in late January 2019 and left at the end of June 2021 to become the CEO of the National Society of Black Engineers on 7 July 2021 (see also the profile in this issue's In the media section), received a severance package of US$324,748 in 2021. This is roughly equivalent to her last full annual salary; she earned a total of US$515,553 from the Wikimedia Foundation in 2021.

The severance payments made in 2021 set a new record for the Foundation. The highest previous severance payment was US$262,500. Paid to outgoing CEO Lila Tretikov in 2016, this was about 75% of her last full year's salary.

The Foundation noted in its post on the Wikimedia-l mailing list that it would in future use a new, standardised severance policy for staff at all levels, described in a Diff post published last month.

The new policy sets a cap on severance pay of one month's salary for each year worked at the WMF, up to a maximum of nine months (unless local law dictates otherwise). Under this scheme both Maher and Uzzell, who spent less than two-and-a-half years at the WMF, would have qualified for much smaller severance payments. But even the new scheme allows for "exceptions":

The guidelines have also provided an opportunity to better align our processes globally when staff leave the Foundation. This includes a new standardized severance policy for staff at all levels of one month of severance pay for every year of their employment, up to nine months (unless local laws require otherwise) -- any exceptions require a joint recommendation by the Head of Talent & Culture and the General Counsel, with final approval from the CEO.

So it seems by no means assured that the new policy will prevent the recurrence of such large severance payments -- which are ultimately paid from global Wikipedia donations.

Discussions during the 18 May conversation with the WMF Trustees

Former WMF Board of Trustees Chair Florence Devouard asked some further questions about the new severance policy on the mailing list, which she then also submitted as discussion topics for the Conversation with Trustees that took place on 18 May 2023 and is available on YouTube.

The discussions related to executive pay took up about 15 minutes of the 80-minute meeting, beginning here at time code 23:42 and ending at time code 38:36. First, WMF trustee Nataliia Tymkiv took the following question:

"I would like to know the trustees' characterisation of the growth of executive compensation and whether they think reducing it to historical levels is preferable to layoffs."

Nataliia said that while US compensation may seem high to someone from Europe, it was data-based rather than based on fundraising success and always reflected local salary levels, adding that going back to past compensation levels was not feasible:

"There is also no way of returning back to historical, unless we actually start hiring people who are really rich, and they can just allow to be philanthropic, and you know, not receiving salaries, but I think that's also not sustainable to just expect that rich people who don't need to care for their bread in the morning can just come and work for us."

Florence's questions

The Wikimedia Foundation's Form 990 for 2021. Information on executive compensation can be found on pp. 8--9 and 49--50

Next came some of the questions about the severance policy that Florence had submitted before the meeting:

1. Is the one month of severance pay entirely based on the last month's salary, the last year or previous years?

2. Will this policy affect severances for executives?

3. For staff that are "exceptions", are there particular staff members that are able to negotiate exceptions when they join the Foundation, do they negotiate their exception when they depart, or is it something that can be discussed during their tenure?

4. How many staff are considered "exceptions" and will there be a maximum number of exceptions?

These questions were partially answered (time code 28:47) by CEO Maryana Iskander. Maryana explained at length that the new severance policy was part of an effort to harmonise the Foundation's approach as much as possible across different countries, including for executives, but allowed that there would always be exceptions for various reasons. The policy might also need adjusting in the light of experience. However, she confirmed that the policy will take the last month of paid salary as the basis for calculating the severance.

This is an important point, as there have already been cases of Wikimedia executives being awarded steep pay rises towards the end of their tenure with the Foundation (see Wikimedia Foundation salaries on Meta-Wiki). Indeed, according to the Form 990, Katherine Maher was paid US$164,567 in base compensation for four months' work in 2021. This would appear to be equivalent to an annual base compensation of US$493,701, considerably more than her US$404,053 base compensation in 2020. Questions submitted by Florence that remained unanswered in the meeting were:

1. When severance packages would be negotiated or re-negotiated

2. Whether the WMF would report the numbers or percentages of staff qualifying for an "exception"

3. Whether there were plans for a maximum severance for those in the exception segment (for example, at most x months per year of employment)

4. Whether anything is being done to better address the serious escalation of severance packages of the high-level executives

Next, Maryana answered a question on whether there was an incentive system in place to invite Foundation staff to make donations to the Foundation or other Wikimedia entities. She said there was no such system in place, but some staff did voluntarily make such monetary contributions; many of course also volunteered on the projects.

Who approved these severance packages?

The next question was about who approved the above severance packages. Nataliia explained that the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees approved them (with input from the Talent and Culture Committee), but that severance agreements and related Board votes and resolutions were confidential and not made available to the public.

The last question in this section of the meeting concerned Maryana Iskander's and Selena Deckelmann's compensation. While their salaries were not yet reflected in the 2021 Form 990 (both only joined in 2022, and the 2022 data will only need to be reported in 2024), they were proactively disclosed a few weeks ago on Meta: Iskander's base compensation is currently US$453,000 and that of Selena Deckelmann, Chief Product and Technology Officer, is US$420,000. When asked if it was planned to make this kind of proactive disclosure of current executive compensation a regular practice, Iskander gave a non-committal answer:

"It's not clear that this type of disclosure will be necessary -- now that it has been disclosed -- in future years. But the intent certainly is to continue to use the Annual Plan as a place to increase visibility, transparency and accountability of information from the Foundation, I think with the intentionality that we, I hope, demonstrated this year."

For a summary of other topics discussed at the meeting see the notes on Meta-Wiki. -- AK

Proposed amendment of arbitration policy

There is an ongoing referendum on a proposed amendment to the arbitration policy. The proposed amendment is:

The final sentence of Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy#Appeal of decisions, which reads Remedies may be appealed to, and amended by, Jimbo Wales, unless the case involves Jimbo Wales's own actions, is removed.

At the time of writing, "Yes" votes are outnumbering "No" votes 154:93.

There is a new population of the elderly in the U.S. They are 284 million strong, their numbers are growing everyday, and their age is eye-popping: 12.5 years on average. That may not be much for you and me, but this senescent set is not made up of people, but cars. Never before has the American fleet of vehicles been so old—and that spells bad news for the long dreamed-of phase-out of gas powered vehicles, and the environment as a whole.

The new news on old cars comes courtesy of a recently released study by S&P Global Mobility, an independent research and policy group, which regularly tracks the state of the U.S. auto fleet and has seen some troubling trends of late. For six years in a row, cars on American roads have been getting older, with the biggest jump coming in the last three years, thanks in large measure to the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply chain issues caused by the pandemic and the related lockdowns led to a global shortage of computer chips on which new cars are increasingly dependent, driving down automotive supply and driving up vehicle prices. The average sticker price of a new car currently tops $48,000. Interest rate increases to battle inflation have driven the average loan rate for new cars above 6%. All of this has made people who would normally be ready to trade in their old cars more likely to hold onto them longer. Retail sales for new cars fell 8% from 14.6 million vehicles in 2021 to 13.9 million in 2022; that’s the lowest total of new car sales in over a decade.

“Multiple factors have driven vehicle costs higher while the cost of eggs and groceries and gasoline and everything else has gone up too,” says Todd Campeau, associate director of aftermarket solutions with S&P Global Mobility. “So the disposable income for households is already constrained and for many people, the thought of taking on a new car loan is something they’re reluctant to do.”

That hits the climate in a number of ways. For one thing, says Campeau, cars built 12.5 years ago are simply dirtier than cars that have benefited from improvements in fuel efficiency built into newer gas-powered vehicles. What’s more, even an old car that started out fuel-efficient will become less so as it ages.

“A car gets worse over time,” says Campeau. “It becomes less efficient. Just like humans as we get older, our bodies do not run at optimum once we get past a certain age.”

For electric vehicles, the question of age is moving in the opposite direction. There are currently just over two million EVs on the road in the U.S., representing less than 1% of the overall fleet—and they’re getting younger, not older. The average age of an EV is now 3.6 years, according to S&P, down from 3.7 in 2022. That’s because existing owners with money to spend are trading up, while less wealthy buyers are frozen out of the market as they face high interest rates coupled with the sticker shock for EVs, which currently cost close to $59,000 on average.

As to what this means for the replacement of the more than quarter-billion gas-powered vehicles on the road with clean electric ones, the outlook is not good. As owners hold onto their cars longer and the cost of electric vehicles remains high, Campeau does not see an electric switchover happening any time soon. Even if every vehicle sold going forward were electric, it would still take a decade to replace just half of the gas-powered fleet. Since every vehicle sold most assuredly won’t be electric, Campeau doesn’t see EVs outnumbering combustion vehicles for decades.

“I would put it in the 2040s,” he says. “Maybe even 2050.” American motorists may indeed be looking at a climate-friendly, all-electric future—but that future will be a long time in coming.

!schizomaxxxers !codecels @BraveShill discuss

2tb compressed

Pushshift removed the download links on website but I found a torrent with the needful data

@gaslighter !soren !reportmaxxers !schizomaxxxers !codecels discuss

Someone should invite OP here

I want to take 100% of the risk.

Yet wants VC? Huh?

If you’re taking VC to fricking de-risk you’re not going to make it

The idea is to grow FAST [-76]

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkkhra2/

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkki0sn/

Wow you are really bad at this. VCs want someone else to work with you because they can see you as the risk, not your business venture. They want a partner because they don’t trust you to be responsible with their money. After what you’ve posted here, they are so right about you.

“I want to take 100% of the risk”?! You are literally trying to get VC money, they are the ones actually taking the risk! You can’t see this fact and that’s why you can’t get funding. 🤣

Some incredible Redditor pointed out that the word I was looking for is 100% responsibility.

Btw stop being such a bootlicker it’s fricking disgusting brah [-26]

Unfortunately can't share any deets about the business.

But honestly, this is the entire reason behind this rant. I spoke to my father and he literally told me:

"Why are you being honest with these fricks? Just lie to them"

AND IT MADE ME FRICKING THINK.

Wise words from a wise man.

Man frick these VCs I might. [-16]

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkkcm75/

Lol “I’m a solo soldier look at my numbers” this guy is fricking hilarious.

What is your startup and could you at least hire someone so you can say you have a team? Maybe just try to give off the appearance of having a co-founder without actually giving any equity away?

Or you could hire someone for “consulting” + a handshake to “make them a co-founder” after you get funding. The “consulting” would be something like $2,000 and they go to the VC meeting and tell the VC they are your co-founders under such and such legal terms blah blah blah and then once you get the funding oh some parts of the agreement fell through but I am looking for a replacement. Definitely cannot live without a co-founder I promise you I will have one or two even by the time we need to raise again!

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkkbqkj/

Tai Lopez had a better business plan. Jesus Christ, your biggest problem is your shitty attitude. Go to Walmart and see if they're hiring so the world doesn't have to deal with you.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/13khe73/rtws_just_a_reminder_for_your_mindset/

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkkv4kj/

Finding competent founders is extremely important because it shows your ability to inspire someone to join your cause and work as hard as you. Frankly speaking, you need to find people as crazy as you. I didn't, one of my cofounders sucked -- but I made it work and got an exit. Now I have great cofounders. Also, your desire not to share your business is a little strange -- I would be wary of someone who sounds selfish and thinks very highly of himself; I'm not saying you shouldn't but it rubs people the wrong way. You are really funny though!

Solid point, but I have it covered. Matter of fact, I’ve gotten offers from people to join.

Not hard to inspire people when shit is working lol.

And btw, I’m not afraid of people copying my idea or anything stupid like that.

That’s not why I’m not sharing details.

I just want to have this account as a type whatever that comes to my mind account.

My business is linked to my real name. I don’t want this shit to be SEO’d and associated to me. [-4]

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkkkx5r/

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkklyha/

I’d want you to have a team and cofounder just because I don’t like the way you sound and come off. Any business tied to only you, I wouldn’t want. Good luck though my friend I wish you the best.

Hahahahahahaha he thinks he cracked the code.

This is how we all sound, we just put on a mask during the meetings.

I get you though brah I need to put together a solid team (without a cofounder) [-24]

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkkmpyg/

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkkn4lf/

They want you to have a cofounder so you won't fail. It's really that simple. Their goal is to make money, you failing too early makes them none. You need a team. You can't run a business without a team. If they fund you and it turns out you're incapable of working with people you would end up a complete dud. A dud they can avoid by requiring that you establish a team.

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkki1cb/

Hey there let me help you out. the VCs are dropping that line because they have no interest in you and want to look nice. Stop playing bill gates and pipe down. You havent made it yet.

Hahahahahahahahahahaahhahahah

https://old.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/11xo4wr/i_am_a_startup_founder_selling_a_research_backed/

You know nothing of the world I am in. Get the frick off here [-5]

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkkyoe8/

VC here. Responding in like. First of all - we are buttholes in meetings. We shouldn’t be, but we are.

You are never gonna get a proper VC investment with that attitude you stupid frick. You want us to like you, play the game. Get an attitude check and listen to people who have been building businesses longer than you’ve been alive. Never lie to a VC. You will get fricked.

If you can’t impress investors how the the heck are you going to impress customers/clients. How are you gonna impress people to work for you?

Business fail all the darn time because of founders with your attitude. Your company will have a shit culture. Find an incubator and ask for help if you can’t find a co-founder and a team. You can negotiate equity share with them and take control. That is until you get diluted out or fired. Cause you probably will be.

From reading your comments it sounds like you know nothing about being a founder and an entrepreneur. My biggest price of advice. Read a book. Basic as shit but you’ll need it - read Venture Deals.

Even Steve Jobs had co-founders.

Never lie to a VC. You will get fricked.

Darn, you really are that guy huh?

You impress customers with product. Not by personality. Maybe if you’re Elon.

99.999% of the products people use every single fricking day they wouldn’t be able to name who the “impressive” founder is.

About impressing people, I think most people agree that a nice healthy paycheck is pretty darn impressive.

And finally, about impressing VCs, haha you stupid piece of shit don’t act like you’re anything more than a glorified gambler. The majority of the founders that impress you fail and they fail pretty darn hard.

Oh also, don’t compare me to Steve Jobs please, keep that stuff for motivational videos. [-5]

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkkoybh/

https://old.reddit.com/r/EntrepreneurRideAlong/comments/13kgxl8/rant_i_dont_want_a_fricking_cofounder_am_i_fricked/jkkqw8n/

Credit to /h/miners

No, seriously. I just asked it why my Starbucks coffee was burnt and it did that non-offensive "everybody has suggestive tastes" bullshit. Sometimes Bing is better but even Bing is powered by GPT, right?

How the frick do I write edgy rants or music without the AI telling me not to, or refusing?

Interesting too see the end result of lightning striking ungrounded radials holy shit trans lives matter

i need everyone to understand: if we accept this, it'll be the only fucking thing you ever hear again. soundtracks. waiting rooms. store music. it will destroy the livelihoods of tens of thousands of musicians; not stars with radio hits, but average working composers. pic.twitter.com/GxGV2f8Qau

— stillorangecrushed (@stilloranged) May 17, 2023

people who make good music have a passion for it, i don’t see how AI would change that. maybe they’ll have rhe same reactions as the inkcels and claim it’s literally killing them or something.

as for grocery music and elevator music, they both fricking suck already and there’s no way to make it worse. how hard is it to just deal with it for half an hour at most

Confirming we have no plans to delete accounts with YT videos! 🙏 https://t.co/TdRImnz2xW

— Creator Liaison (@YouTubeLiaison) May 17, 2023

Like up to 400$. My current phone broke and fixing it is too expensive id rather get a new one. I dont care about chinese spyware so it can also be OPPO or Xiaomi or whatever. For now i was thinking about Motorola G82 or Redmi Note 10 Pro but im still not sure. Drop some decent recommendations. Just not Huawei or some chinese brand i never heard about.