Ben

@Jason A lot of people at Meta wanted to be laid off apparently… kind of sad to see this retention pattern/attitude

We're going to see a large number of new startups based on all these META layoffs... ... super talented people being cut because, well, AI is making folks twice as efficient, and a giant data center is considered a better investment than [ checks notes ], talented people.

I’m all for the intuit layoffs. If AI can do taxes then that’s great since right now it’s total bs

@ilyamiskov @dreamwieber that box 🤌🏻😌

@dreamwieber Recently got one boxed!

The first Mac I bought with my own money was a Titanium PowerBook G4. This is the machine I learned Objective-C on, and I made my first Mac apps using it.

@Jason "outsourcing" innovation

Fair warning, YC founders: if you take these tokens, there’s a non-zero chance that OpenAI will study exactly what your startup is doing, copy your idea and put your app into their free offering. This is the classic platform playbook — be careful, founders!

@bankertobuilder yup, and the whole idea is to keep bad mannered people away from your house. Japan does the opposite: convenient transit to everywhere, well mannered people by default. 🔁

17 minute drive to school 17 minute drive to Costco 17 minute drive to Target 117 minute drive to downtown (you’ll never need to go there) Life doesn’t get any better than this

@vascoabm @stripe the refund invalidates the chargeback if it was done against the original transaction

customer receives refund *charges back anyways* so if we lose this bs dispute we lose $708 x 2 lol this system needs fixing @stripe

@garrytan wow the revenge tweet

I went to BJ's Restaurant last night with my kids. The bathroom was disgusting. The front of house was kind but sloppy and slow. The food upset my stomach and I woke up at 4am this morning because of it. Whoever BJ is, they probably aren't a real person, because everyone acted like nobody's name is on the door. I studied the management history of BJ's. The original founders left after the seventh location. Then it was sold to their accountants. Then it went public. Then the CEO resigned last year after 19 years and was replaced by an interim board member from Darden Restaurants, who was then replaced by a "Chief Concept Officer" promoted to CEO. The CFO also quit. Roaches behind the takeout counter in Coral Springs. Rodent droppings and mold in the ice machine in Pembroke Pines. An "F" retention score on Comparably. Glassdoor reviews that say "management turnover is high... that should say quite a bit about the company culture." Seven layers of management between the person cooking your food and anyone who owns the outcome. General manager reports to area director reports to regional director reports to regional VP reports to SVP of Operations reports to the COO (who started in January) reports to the CEO (who started last year). 218 locations. Founders long gone. Managers rotate every 18 months. The kitchen is run by compliance checklists, not pride. A dirty bathroom is nobody's personal failure because it's nobody's personal restaurant. This is the stewardship crisis in America in one building. In Chinese restaurants, the 老板 (laoban) is there. He tastes the food. He watches the kitchen. His family's reputation is the business. The restaurant is clean not because of health inspectors but because his name is on it. Haidilao built a $30B hot pot chain with less than 10% employee turnover. Servers can give you free dishes without asking a manager. Why? Because they're treated like stewards, not interchangeable parts. The West replaced stewardship with professional management. MBAs who optimize spreadsheets for people they've never met. CEOs who've never touched the product they sell. Politicians who sign the bills and spend the people's money but never checked the money built anything that helped the people they claimed to care about. Founder mode isn't new. It's the oldest idea in Chinese business culture. We just forgot it. The best founders I fund at YC are natural stewards. They own the outcome. They're in the kitchen tasting the food. They care about the bathroom. Most of society's problems are a stewardship crisis. Not a lack of resources or technology or intelligence. A lack of people who give a shit because their name is on it.

@TokyoGameLife beep is awesome! can't wait to check out the new spot ✨

Today is the final day until BEEP closes and moves to a new location in Akihabara in early June. Yes it was cramped and underground, but the location was iconic!

@rjonesy when you go international, it's ridiculous to see the USA "Subway" logo on a transit ticket in some distant metropolis

HOW IS CATEGORIZING TRANSACTIONS NOT SOLVED 🤬 7 of 8 of these are fucking obvious. I don't get it.

@Scheidsa lol, no way he's losing this election unless it's rigged

This may be the song of the summer.

@LCSlates @stripe yeah, accepting credit cards at all is just a risk of doing business now. like staying at an Airbnb (and getting blamed for the host's failures by the platform) is a risk of travel

Well so much for that. Already lost. The system is utterly fucked and broken. @stripe 48-page evidence package. Easy to read, Table of contents, filled with visuals (a junior bank employee could easily understand everything). The customer used the product for 49 days, was logged in 13 hours before filing the chargeback, then canceled the subscription 5 hours after the dispute was already filed. *Technically they are still ACTIVE. Here's everything we submitted: PAYMENT INTEGRITY • AVS postal-code check: PASS • CVC check: PASS • Stripe Radar score: Normal (22 / low risk) • Auth success rate on customer email: 100% • Card brand, last-4, fingerprint, exp, billing ZIP all confirmed by issuer CUSTOMER USE POST-CHARGE • 35 distinct active days in 49 days • 393 authenticated session-refresh events • 17 long-form SEO articles generated • 18 AI images generated • 3 WordPress sites configured (admin credentials added) • 4 Google accounts authenticated via OAuth • Customer added their own paid OpenAI API key (BYOK) • 4 team members added TIMING • 49 days between charge and dispute • Logged into the dashboard 13 hours BEFORE filing the chargeback • Canceled the subscription 5 hours AFTER the dispute was filed INDEPENDENT IP CORROBORATION • Stripe captured IP at checkout: Manchester, UK • Microsoft Clarity captured 22 of 38 sessions over 60 days: also Manchester, UK • Two unrelated 3rd parties placing the same person in the same city across payment + 60 days of authenticated use THE KICKER - THE CUSTOMER'S OWN PUBLIC WEBSITE CURRENTLY DEPENDS ON OUR PRIVATE CDN • Articles generated on his account are LIVE on his own public WordPress sites • Page source contains img tags pointing INSIDE our private R2 bucket • Last-Modified headers on those CDN files match the EXACT minute his account generated them • Currently fetched by every visitor to his website CRYPTOGRAPHIC IDENTITY CHAIN (Automattic / Gravatar) • Every WordPress author avatar = SHA-256(author email) • 3 of his sites, 3 perfect SHA-256 matches against the gmail addresses in our DB • Automattic has no relationship with us, the customer, or the bank • Effectively unforgeable email-to-WP-admin binding DOMAIN OWNERSHIP (third-party attestation) • Google Search Console verified ownership on 4 separate domains • Public WHOIS: 2 of his domains registered 9 SECONDS APART through the same registrar account • Both registered 5 MONTHS BEFORE he bought our subscription • Pre-existing content business, not a stolen-card test VISA CE 3.0 ELIGIBLE • Same payment credential had a $0.00 trial-start invoice marked "paid" 7 days before the disputed charge • Same customer, email, payment method, subscription • Exactly the prior-undisputed-transaction proof Visa CE 3.0 requires The chargeback dispute system is broken.

@BRICSinfo no way, somebody def has some at their house 🙂‍↕️

JUST IN: 🇨🇺 Cuba says it has completely run out of diesel and fuel oil.

@mrdoob nice

Whenever I visited Japan, one of the things I always loved was its strong magazine culture. After moving here, I’d regularly buy CGWORLD to see behind the scenes of anime, games, and movies, even when my nihongo was zero. To my surprise, they reached out a couple of months ago to invite me into a conversation with @kenjiokabe, @_unshift, and @ikeryou as part of a @mount_inc special feature. Thanks to @CGWjp for the opportunity! Hopefully next time I won't need a translator 🙇‍♂️

@nicbarkeragain I had this problem on my PowerBook G4 like 20+ years ago but they eventually fixed that iteration of it

So after a lifetime of assuming that I had been accidentally hitting some esoteric hotkey, I just found out that there is a bug on mac OSX where the audio balance random pans left or right during heavy CPU load, that has been unsolved for at least 15 years. lol.

@Twolfrecovery @mattdorsey obviously not, we can’t lose the city’s defining cultural elements

Will this finally apply to fentanyl and meth too? 🤷‍♂️ @mattdorsey

@TakoTreba @Airbnb it's weird that if a host fails the guest somehow, Airbnb pushes that risk onto them while operating the platform and acting like it's somehow your fault they don't have that part figured out yet

On Sunday evening, I had the worst experience I’ve ever had with @Airbnb. A few hours before arriving in Hamburg for OMR, a conference that brings more than 70,000 people to the city, my booking was suddenly cancelled. I immediately contacted customer support, expecting them to help me find another place. Instead, they told me they couldn’t assist because “Airbnb didn’t cancel your booking, the host did.” Excuse me? This happened around 11 PM. I spent the entire night on calls with customer support and did not sleep at all. At around 1 AM, things got even worse. I received a message saying I was no longer allowed to make bookings on Airbnb because my account had been flagged as potentially dangerous. I honestly couldn’t believe what was happening. I was traveling with my three-month-old baby. I explained that multiple times. It made no difference. No meaningful help. No travel credits. My account was blocked. And by the time I arrived in Hamburg, I had to scramble to find a hotel on my own. The ironic part? There was no AI involved in this experience. Only humans following scripts and passing me from one person to another. And, Brian, I genuinely wish I had been dealing with AI instead. It would have been faster, more logical, and probably far more empathetic than the people I spoke with that night. What shocked me most was realizing how few real alternatives there are to Airbnb. At midnight I was completely on my own trying to solve a problem that should never have happened in the first place. Worst customer experience I’ve had in years.

@FrancisPSantora actually VCs in Japan may tell you there aren't enough "good startups," (not even great) yet there's somehow no way to fund them… especially if they're run by foreigners 😂

Japan is a massive pool of great startups. But these startups are largely ignored. This is a giant opportunity. And of all American investors, I’m one of the best positioned to exploit it. I’ve been to Japan many times. I can speak, read, and write some Japanese. And I love this beautiful country. It’s time for American and Japanese tech to unite!

@kron4news why would you pay? everything in SF is free including at walgreens

According to San Francisco public transit officials, nearly half of all trips on Muni do not result in any form of payment, and up to a quarter of trips involve fare evasion. The SFMTA director said, "We can’t afford to sustain Muni service without people paying their fare." Story: kron4.com/news/bay-area/…

@APompliano you mean fart coin isn’t going to be everyone’s retirement fund?

Most of the crypto industry is dead and never coming back. Eventually people will realize it.

@MorningBrew the new ENRON

GameStop's eBay offer........$56 billion GameStop's market cap......$11.9 billion