Hasnain says:

This taught me a lot about VC markets in general, and is some interesting insight into the current investment market.

“A lot of what Silicon Valley investors offer is just "fluff," said Polyakov. In a survey of startups Polyakov referenced, founders ranked relationship, deal terms and speed as the three most important factors for making a deal. Operational support ranked second to last.

In a sign of the disconnect between founders and funders, VCs saw speed as the least important factor in making the deal.

"The rise of Tiger Global exposes an uncomfortable truth for VCs," Eniac Ventures co-founder Hadley Harris pointed out on Twitter. "That there's a good chunk of founders who just want to be left alone."”

Hasnain says:

This was a really interesting and engaging read on the 5 day / 40 hour work week and experiments that have been done trying to bring it down to 4 days, both pre and during the pandemic.

“Some Perpetual Guardian workers took off Mondays, some Fridays, others loved a day off in the middle of the work week, but everyone took it, from the newest hires to the most senior managers. The effect was startling: at the end of a two-month trial, productivity had risen 20% — and “work-life” balance scores rose from 54% to 78%. After making the change permanent, overall revenue went up 6% — and profitability went up 12.5%.”

Hasnain says:

““If you’re producing half as much gas as normal but selling at 70 to 100 times the price, then that math is working for you,” said one executive who declined to be named. “You just had the greatest week in the history of the gas market.”

CPS Energy, the biggest utility in San Antonio, was blunt in its assessment.

“Egregious natural price gouging,” CEO Paula Gold-Williams said of Energy Transfer, the biggest winner to date. CPS claims the pipeline operator generated two years’ worth of profits in the first quarter of 2021 and is suing to reclaim some of the $1 billion it lost during the storm.”

Hasnain says:

I for one am looking forward to this series.

“The Guardian’s new series, Climate crimes, launched in collaboration with the global media consortium Covering Climate Now, will examine these attempts to hold the industry accountable and investigate the tactics used by the companies to elide their own role in global heating. It will also interrogate the central question that emerges from these lawsuits: is the climate crisis in fact a crime scene? Much of the content produced for the series will be made available for Covering Climate Now’s 400-plus partner news outlets to publish.”

Hasnain says:

I just learned about this from Twitter and had to look up a written article on it. Haiti was forced compensate French colonists for the money they “lost” - the slaves were forced to pay reparations to slave owners. Sigh…

“Although the colonists claimed that the indemnity would only cover one-twelfth the value of their lost properties, including the people they claimed as their slaves, the total amount of 90 million francs was actually five times France’s annual budget.”

…

“These discrepancies are the concrete consequence of stolen labor from generations of Africans and their descendants. And because the indemnity Haiti paid to France is the first and only time a formerly enslaved people were forced to compensate those who had once enslaved them, Haiti should be at the center of the global movement for reparations.”

Hasnain says:

“Toward the end of the conversation, Ms. Couric posed the question that few were bold enough to ask Ms. Sandberg directly: “Since you are so associated with Facebook, how worried are you about your personal legacy as a result of your association with this company?” Ms. Sandberg didn’t skip a beat as she reverted to the message she had delivered from her first days at Facebook.

“I really believe in what I said about people having voice. There are a lot of problems to fix. They are real, and I have a real responsibility to do it. I feel honored to do it,” she said, with a steady voice and calm smile. She later told aides that inside, she was burning with humiliation.”

Hasnain says:

“Mr. Morrison said the job market for aspiring screenwriters and directors looked bleak for someone with a six-figure debt load. He recalled Mr. Bollinger saying he understood the concern but that Columbia was a really good school.

“My immediate takeaway is that there’s a huge disconnect between the administration’s perception of the School of the Arts,” Mr. Morrison wrote to a faculty member a few days after the meeting, “and what’s actually happening for students.””

Hasnain says:

Thoughts on remote work aside; I think being fair and consistent with policies makes an incredible difference in morale when they are rolled out. I think there will be a decent number of employees who were considering leaving that will finally make the jump after seeing this.

“Two Google employees said Hölzle's situation encapsulated the company's "hypocritical" policies. Both complained that the relocation represented a double standard in which different rules apply to executives in senior ranks. While his approval came last year, Google employees now undergoing the remote work application process have been told decisions won't come until August, at the earliest. Approval for Hölzle's move came before the procedure was instituted.

News of Hölzle's relocation especially stung because he has been particularly vocal against remote work, employees said. De Vesine, the resigning Googler, said Hölzle had a policy of not letting people work remotely unless they were assigned to an office and that he wouldn't consider remote work for people who hadn't reached a certain level of seniority. “

Hasnain says:

Really important read on impostor syndrome and how it manifests.

“While my daughter was pounding a handball against the outer wall of a public restroom, I vividly remember feeling like a loser, a big one. I was in a trance, standing under a tree, staring at spotty shadows of leaves on the ground.

My sense of failure was profound and overwhelming. Even though I had many important accomplishments (three U.S. patents on system anomaly detection and document integrity; DARPA, ONR, ARO, and NSF projects; degrees from Peking University, Princeton, Indiana, and Brown; multiple best paper awards, NSF CAREER, and ARO YIP; technical news about my work; and many cybersecurity publications in respectable venues), at that moment, I felt that I knew nothing; I had done nothing useful, nothing that mattered.”

Hasnain says:

Uh oh. Also, initial reports claimed the DEA was involved, which would take quite a while to straighten out (to determine whether it’s true or not)

“Joseph said in a statement that a group of unidentified individuals stormed Moise's home at around 1 a.m. and fatally wounded the head of state. He described the assassination as a "heinous, inhumane and barbaric act."”