That only applies if it happened before January 19th. That's why his 75 day EO just says they won't go after companies who violate the law, rather than say he's using the 90 day extension provided in the law (because it's too late to use that).
Some of the media isn't picking up on this nuance, but it's clear that's why it's a 75 day lack of enforcement, not a 90 day extension.
"This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person."
In practical terms, this means:
1. Private parties (like TikTok or its users) cannot sue to enforce this EO
2. If the government doesn't follow the EO, you can't take them to court over it
3. Companies can't use this EO as a legal defense if they're sued
For example, if app stores keep hosting TikTok and get sued, they can't point to this EO as legal protection
This is important because while the EO tells app stores and other companies they won't be prosecuted, this disclaimer means they can't legally rely on that promise. If the EO is later found invalid or a new administration changes course, they could still face liability for actions taken during this period.
This creates a risky situation for companies trying to decide whether to comply with the law or follow the EO's guidance. A $5,000 fine per user of a 170M user platform means financial ruin for even Google and Apple if enforced. Larry Ellison (Oracle) might be willing to take that risk, and as a controlling founder he can do so without risk of being fired, but I don't think Tim Cook or Sundar Pichai are going to stick out their neck on this one.
> For example, if app stores keep hosting TikTok and get sued, they can't point to this EO as legal protection
Sued by who? Private parties can't sue other private parties over lack of enforcement, for example you cannot sue your neighbor for violating the federal ban on using pot.
Only the govt can prosecute or sue over certain laws. And judges would be certainly sympathetic because of this EO.
As I stated in my other comment, Biden refused to enforce the ban[1], so I really doubt democrats would enforce it 4 years later. It's not exactly a partisan issue, democrats don't hate Tiktok much more than republicans or something.
The real answer is that both sides don't want to take the blame from Tiktok users that rely on it for income, news or entertainment.
That's why the best outcome for them would be the sale of Tiktok to an American, and that's what the law was about. The issue was that Supreme Court ruled at the last minute if it was enforceable.
Biden refused to enforce the ban for his last day in office. I don’t think that says anything about anyone’s general appetite to follow through.
Obviously the political calculations you mention are real, but also POTUS is legally obligated to faithfully enforce the laws. Many laws they can wriggle out of enforcing under prioritization, but given that this is just a matter of fining companies for unambiguously doing an illegal thing, I suspect that’s going to be a harder argument to make in court (and an especially hard one for Apple/Google et al to bet on them making successfully).
SCOTUS didn’t rule “at the last minute” it was enforceable. Last minute of what clock?
Bribes are generally illegal. This should be "compensates," not "bribes." "Bribes" is just hyperbole. This is standard practice for a lot of businesses in a similar space.
We put quotes around that word in the title. I'll add an explanation here in a bit.
Edit: ok, here's an explanation.
We put quotes around "bribes" because that's the tiniest intervention I can think of that still addresses your concern. Why so tiny? That takes a while to explain, so read on if you want to understand how we approach this.
The title breaks the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) by being both baity and misleading. It also contradicts the article text (assuming I read it correctly), since it declares a thing to have happened which the text itself reports as not having happened, if you read it to the end. Such a bait-and-switch is a marker of a bad article.
Normally the moderation on this would be a no-brainer. We'd replace the title with one that is accurate and neutral, and we'd apply a standard downweight that we put on outrage stories which don't contain anything of intellectual interest, especially when the topic has appeared many times before. If we didn't do these things, HN's front page would consist of nothing but dime-a-dozen outrage and the elves would leave middle earth.
Frankly, it bites to see an article get away with this kind of thing on HN when we spend every day trying to keep the front page good. But that's the price we pay for being able to answer users' concerns about conflicts of interest in moderating HN. It doesn't prevent a few people from saying awful things about us—this is the internet after all—but it does let us answer in good conscience. Doing our best and answering questions seems to be enough to keep most HN users happy, which is the thing we care most about.
FWIW (and I realize what it's W is minimal), despite the shade I sometimes throw re: certain policies on HN, I think you guys do an excellent job of threading the needle with regards to YC-related companies.
He's in a tough position, and I appreciate that he is transparent about it, even though I am still a bit disappointed. Normally I'd be a whole lot more outraged if he _didn't_ disclose his differential treatment towards YC companies, even though I would've definitely suspected and even expected such differential treatment.
I say this as a happy AirBnB host and guest: the article captures the feelings of powerlessness that people often feel when private companies attempt to shirk their obligations, and to do so in a way that is particularly infuriating, insensitive, and manipulative. The proper recourse is legal, but the legal system is prohibitively expensive for anyone who isn't worth tens of millions. So, name and shame it is!
This is the smart way of dealing with this kind of situation. Better have light moderation than risk being seen as taking a partisan stance and protecting your own interest.
Then again bribe does not feel out of place. Offering direct deposit money outside of the official documented channel is akin to giving cash under the table. Even more when the recipient has to ask repeatedly to use the proper channel.
Bribe would be accurate if they were offering payment outside someone else's remediation process.
Apparently payments+NDA are part of the remediation process that they actually set up in practice.
There's also no reason to assume why a private remediation process should be universal and the same for everyone, it's not a court - it would be unfair to close down options that they advertised, but it's completely reasonable to offer extra options on a case-by-case basis if they want, even if they weren't included in the advertised remediation process.
The only thing that's might be viewed as dishonest is that their statement "The Host Guarantee will reimburse eligible hosts for damages up to $1,000,000." doesn't explicitly mention that certain conditions apply on how the Host Guarantee is implemented; though it does say 'eligible hosts' which quite likely is explained in the full Host Guarantee text as 'hosts that, among other things, agree to an NDA'.
If everything is case-by-case and determined by "eligibility," what is the purpose of the word Guarantee here, and funds released are subject to conditions having nothing to do with the actual rental (e.g. an NDA)?
Seems to me, using the words "Guarantee", "Trust" "Peace of Mind" is no different than the customer using the term "Bribe".
but maybe this is just situation where consumers need law degrees to fully understand what it is they are getting.
AirBNB relies on economies of scale, so the remediation process should be the same for everyone since the contract is more than likely the same too, and if it is not, then "Trust", "Guarantee", "Peace of mind" are the wrong words to being used to advertise the service.
The core reason Bribe is being used, is because AirBnB was withholding payment for something that they advertised as part of the service and would only release it in exchange for an NDA. That IS dishonest.
But they ARE honestly fulfilling the guarantee - the host is able to get the requested damages. Yes, it's not an unconditional, no questions asked compensation, but it's not advertised as such. Terms and conditions apply, just as it's reasonable to expect e.g. paperwork and evidence of damages before funds are released. It would be dishonest if they had included terms or conditions that are unreasonable or difficult to fulfil, but an NDA isn't such a condition; it doesn't disqualify anyone who wants to finalize the dispute. Just as it would be very reasonable if the release of funds was conditional on an agreement not to sue for further damages, i.e., that the guarantee happens only if it's agreed to be the final resolution of this matter.
The described events don't seem to violate any promise that was actually advertised, the only mismatch is between reality and wishful thinking.
You may think it is perfectly reasonable to have the customer sign an NDA before the warranty work or guarantee is fulfilled, but I find it dishonest and ridiculous.
What if one day the Airbnb exec privately pockets money for getting someone into an apartment? You've already used "bribe;" where do you go from there?
The problem with hyperbole is you will pay the inflation tax on your word choice. Crying wolf, basically.
The central problem with SQL is a lack of modularity and reusability. The syntax is easy to learn, it's just onerous to do complex things.
Dev teams and analysts use text files, Gists, and emails to save hundreds of useful queries containing similar patterns, subqueries, and clauses that could easily be repurposed if the language had any reusability features. There's a lot of waste and it can feel like a big task to ask a simple question.
That said, it's very easy to learn SQL and the author's suggestions don't seem to maintain that learning curve. I disagree that "human language mimicking" is a problem -- SQL syntax actually makes a lot of sense (I'm "SELECTing FROM a table and ORDERing the results" etc).
What we need is a higher level language or tool to describe relations in a database -- something like an ORM or XML used in legacy BI tools. SQL still lives underneath. IBM Cognos, SAP Business Objects, Microstrategy, and others tried this to varying levels of success. Another commenter (siganakis) gets it right: "I would prefer a syntax layer that can be compiled / transformed back to SQL."
We're actually working on something very similar to that at Looker (http://looker.com) if anyone is interested in hearing more about it, but we aren't quite at the point where we can release the language spec to the world yet.
> The central problem with SQL is a lack of modularity and reusability. The syntax is easy to learn, it's just onerous to do complex things.
From what I understand of it, the author here is describing a completely different avenue by which relational programming language could be made more powerful. Namely, through a higher-order type system. This is surely more powerful a proposal than merely providing a mechanism for modularity on top of SQLs existing interpretation of the relational model.
> What we need is a higher level language or tool...
ORMs and framework layers that compile to SQL have been around for decades, and while they do allow modularity, they remain a source of perennial dissatisfaction^1. Why is yet another such language or tool what we need?
If modularity and reusability really was "the central problem with SQL", surely the problem can be called solved given all of the existing solutions that you describe?
SQL syntax is easy, but judging from co-workers and my own experience, it takes a fair bit of time to begin thinking in sets, and being able to do more complex queries (for example queries with the same table joined in more than once).
My team leader always describes the output as "if this, then that". SQL isn't imperative. I translate his ifs to wheres then I have a reasonable start on the query.
A data ETL tool. Now that lots of companies are moving to MPP databases like Vertica, Redshift, Teradata, and Netezza, it's incredible that there is still no straighforward way to do so without extensive systems and data engineering experience.
Every time a customer asks us to recommend a tool to do this, we are baffled that nobody has taken this on yet (and wonder if we should do it ourselves).
The opportunity to build the Stripe for ETL is only going to get bigger.
You should check us out[1]. We're haven't quite got to the full ETL stage as we've focused on individual databases first. If you've got a decent imagination though then you can figure out what we're trying to get to.
Hey, on the marketing team at Fab. Honestly for us we never really considered the cost savings or have had to worry about being blacklisted. The decision wasn't almost entirely jump-started by anecdotal evidence from customer service that it would be a good idea. Obviously there are plenty of financial and operational reasons to do this, but ultimately if it's good for the customer then it's good for us and the brand.
Yeah I work for a daily email site and we do this too. We just don't send another email letting them know - that's more spam! I was surprised that this was considered newsworthy... Most people in the industry do this. It's definitely considered best-practice - it reduces costs, improves metrics, and probably doesn't subtract much value compared how much it costs to keep sending them emails.
You'd be surprised at how little most startup focused journalists know about the day to day of the industry. If it hasn't been touted in a press release or mentioned at an investors conference they probably don't know about it.
I think it's often not that cynical. I worked for a fairly large B2B email newsletter company and we would periodically clean the list mainly because we wanted an honest, accurate count of our list size.
yep, mine is keetsa as well. keetsa = warby parker without the hype or e-commerce focus (but maybe there's opportunity there). the salesman actually suggested i should get a lower end mattress than the one i thought i was going to buy. great company.
