Not sure how the google one works, but does this introduce more risk?
If the parent is aware that your 'app block scam calls' does that make them more likely to believe a scam caller, if one get's through your screening?
Whereas if you educate the parent about the persistence and ever increasing complexity of scams, and they experience the calls and are competent to dismiss them, you make them more aware and more resilient in future - Scam awareness training of sorts.
Fair point — false sense of security is a real risk. The idea isn't to replace awareness, but to add a safety net. Even trained people slip up when caught off guard. But you're right that it shouldn't be install and forget.
Perhaps.... functionality will only be available to paid accounts/integrations.
OpenAI will be contractually bound to report offensive content, Disney Lawyers will get the direct contact details via the paid account to know the user and sue.
Not a lawyer but I'd be interested to know if you can sue an end user who uses AI ... In the past you could for using tools, but if AI has autonomy based solely on a prompt that might even open up free speech defenses
Purely conjecture on my part I might add! I have no affiliation to either company, but I know Disney likes to sue so if they are paying so much money... and putting their IP at risk... what's in it for them?
The real issue with these tools is taste. Most business people/clients have poor taste and they need creatives or engineers etc to actually rein them in, then produce the great work they need, gained through years of experience, and taste refinement .
The AI tools can produce the work, the quality can be good but taste is lost as the professionals are removed from the process.
There’s a quote I can’t remember the source of… “anyone can have an idea but not everyone can execute on it.”
AI gives the illusion you can create your ideas and compete with actual professionals
The ad is hilariously bad but McDonald’s has done many terrible ads over the years where “creatives” were involved eg the infamous random red couch ad.
This is an excellent example. It also highlights how if I tried this it would sound terrible as I lack have vocabulary to describe what I want, and how that relates to the code.
I can envision an HN where sometimes a mainstream news item about Israel and Palestine another political issues are worthy of discussion.
But in my experience of HN so far, a handful of accounts seem determined to turn HN into a “settler colonialism” struggle session, with Israel v Palestine as the ur issue, worthy of the front page every time either party so much as stubs their toe. When they don’t get it, they blame the mods or call their fellow readers “bots” for downvoting.
I wouldn't downvote it, I would appreciate context though! I'm open to other people's opinions and ideas, I don't like guesswork though.
I share a nationality with the author but I've not read her books. I thought that perhaps there was some connection in the themes of her writing and it's relevance to HN - there is a little bit but I think it's mostly oppression that the OP wants to highlight.
I think "vanity" is the wrong term because their existing credit rating, which they attempt to preserve, impacts all other borrowing (and possibly other agreements and finance vehicles, etc.) that they undertake.
So it's probably valuable to retain that credit rating.
The real issue here is how simple it is to game the rating agency in this way and how the market allows Meta to "launder" this activity through the ratings agency.
This is, in fact, a fairly close analogue to the housing crisis and the ratings laundering that was done with the CDOs[1]. The difference is, instead of drilling down to thousands of mortgages - each with different characteristics - you really just drill down to Meta ... which might not be too risky ...
Agreed. I know very little about financing but I’d bet if their rating fell that would trigger some debt repayment clause and the house of financial cards might wobble or fall.
…someone needs to shake the tree and see what falls out, like Peter Thiel did for SVB.
There are a lot of places where the credit ratings are hardcoded (to borrow a term) into funds. There are pension funds and other vehicles that might be bound to only invest in AA rated companies.
So if a company drops their AA rating it could force them out of a lot of funds and investment vehicles.
This complicated vehicle where the debt and assets are in another LLC isn’t actually tricking anyone in finance. If you’re reading about it from blogs then it’s already common knowledge. The structure isn’t actually a one way trick, it’s a set of tradeoffs and protections for the company. They probably could have achieved better terms going direct but with higher risk.
Surely the ratings agency people are "in finance"? Or are they in on the game, and sliding their way back to 2008, writing ratings for "deals structured by cows"?
They're not being "tricked" in the way these sensational substack posts would like us to think. You're not being given some secret knowledge that the ratings agencies don't have.
The mistake throughout this comment section is to assume that the debt is functionally equivalent to Meta haven taken it on themselves, consequences and all. It's not.
Putting things in an LLC vehicle provides some protections. Both for large corporations and you and me as individuals. However if you put an asset in the LLC the lenders also know that those protections exist and will adjust terms accordingly. Meta has taken this into account, found some favorable terms, and pursued that direction.
The narrative that this is a secret loophole that lets them take on debt but also not take on debt is the substack authors doing their thing to make it more sensational than informative.
Is anyone actually limited to only AA+? The usual meaningful separation is investment grade (AAA, AA, A, and maybe BBB) vs junk (everything else). (I don't think Meta would meaningfully lose access to credit if they were downgraded to A.)
Instinctively I try and simplify things. It this was a person with an excellent credit score, it’s as if the person is taking on extra debt to start to create something they need, but trying to hide it.
But that simplification isn’t the whole story. If that person took on debt as part of an LLC they started, not their personal bank account, then they have certain protections in the event of default of the LLC.
They will also have to pay a premium and give up more for debt to the LLC because the lenders know this.
The same is true for Meta.
The finance world isn’t blind. None of us hear are stumbling upon hidden knowledge that the lenders didn’t already have.
In the “teenagers learn to drive in 10 hours” part… that’s active learning, but they have spent countless hours in their life in a car, on a bus or other forms of transport, even watching the shows and movies featuring driving, playing with toys and computer games etc. There is years of passive information absorbed already before that 10
hours of active learning begins.
