I work for a company that provides a product that tries to make IPsec a little easier and I can say like 80-85% of our support burden is helping our customers configure their ASAs, Junipers etc. to talk to our cloud based VPN concentrator/router/app firewall. We basically run people through a checklist [1] and it is non-trivial. IPsec can be a real pain.
Ok, cabal is a strong word and the election stealing/truth hiding is certainly off the rails in my opinion as well.
But here's some perhaps interesting information on top 5 shareholders of largest US banks [1]:
JP Morgan Chase:
Blackrock 6.4
Vanguard 4.7
State Street 4.5
Blackrock 2.7
Blackrock 2.5
Bank of America:
Berkshire 6.9
Blackrock 5.3
Vanguard 4.5
state street 4.3
Fidelity 2.1
Citigroup:
Blackrock 6.1
Vanguard 4.5
State Street 4.2
Fidelity 3.6
Capital world Inv 2.4
Wells Fargo:
Berkshire 8.8
Blackrock 5.4
Vanguard 4.5
State street 4.0
Fidelity 3.5
US Bank:
Blackrock 7.4
Vanguard 4.5
Fidelity 4.4
State Street 4.4
Berkshire 4.3
So although yes this does go off the rails a bit, not unreasonable to question the (possibly perverse) incentives banks face given their ownership. Book by Eric Posner and Glen Weyl called Radical Markets explores those incentives a bit.
Aren't most of these holdings through funds? It's not Blackrock, Vanguard or Fidelity that's holding those shares, it's people and institutions who are investing in their funds.
Exactly right - BlackRock and other large indexers have no legal obligation to follow the recommendation of an independent adviser (like ISS, Glass Lewis) in a proxy contest, even for a passive fund. In most cases they passively anticipate the index provider's (S&P, Russell, MSCI, etc.) moves for corporate actions, but management elections for the board and executives are much more subjective as they don't influence the position itself (note that the manager can sometimes also be the index provider, like BlackRock = iShares). The smaller index managers almost exclusively follow the proxy adviser's recommendation because they don't have the resources to analyze board decisions for ~8,000 different companies.
Also worth noting they have similar ownership stakes in other public companies for the same reason, and somewhat limited leverage over any of them because they can't threaten to pull their investment
This is a bit of shameless plug, but seems relevant as its about providing end to end encryption for Jitsi. My company provides a VPN product (really a full-fledged API driven SDN) that you can plug containers into. So a network edge that supports plugins. We just spun up a Jitsi plugin. All packets run over the encrypted overlay network for VPN clients. We'll post a little blog post on it soon. PM me if it sounds interesting.
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Mission-Driven, For-Profit, Online Lender to Small and Medium Sized Businesses in Developing Markets.
Pimes (formerly Include Capital) accelerates the success of profitable small businesses led by motivated, capable and ethical entrepreneurs in select developing markets by providing access to innovative and comprehensive debt financing. At the same time, we offer our investors market returns and access to a new asset class. But we have our sights set on much more than lending in developing markets!
Our engineering team aims to be humble (i.e. no jerks) and disciplined, considering ideas, testing them (sometimes in production), and moving fast. As the third engineer you'll be expected to do it all: architecture, data modeling, frontend, product and UI design, even deploy ML models.
Our Stack: AWS, Lambda, Django, Python, Java, frontend is custom design with jquery (dont worry, its clean, considering React for some apps), Docker, Fabric, CircleCI, DynamoDB, CI/CD, Segment IO for data pipeline.
on the article: I like to wrap up these sorts of treatments into my own simplified cultural causal models, if you will (hopefully my syntax is intuitive).
Invention of telegraph := ~immediacy of information, minimal context -> incredible boon for society! Essentially the beginning of modern technology, dare i say. The ability to CREATE networks as technology! ooo the power of (high bandwidth) networks!
Invention of Television := immediacy of visual information, lots more context, modern entertainment -> oh the theories abound for what this caused. I like to consider televisions pacifying effect on modern society. This subtle lie about what it claims to be: a window in a room. Oh but of course we know much of it is fictitious! But do we? All the more confusing with "reality TV" and, as discussed here, modern news-tainment.
Just some of my thoughts!
meta, on this comment section: I'm a little surprised this article is getting so easily dismissed. Its simply an attempted synthesis and application of media/normative/critical theorists' work. That is, this is philosophical at heart and I appreciate the author's attempt (it brings to mind David Foster Wallace's constant questioning of entertainment and the effect of entertainment's reflexivity). I think many hackernews readers (like myself) are scientifically minded and so this sort of thesis, i.e. not empirically verifiable, can lack the thrust that we want. But that said, I think it provides a valuable ontology for thinking about modern society and provokes some questions that actually may inform my behavior.
Much more difficult to parse out the noise with these types of articles, I grant you.
The board's statement of opposition pretty cleanly argues against this type of equity overhaul.
That said, I do appreciate the spirit of the proposal. Specifically, how do users that are contributing to the value of the network somehow extract some of that value in real terms? Of course, there's a lot of complexity to that sort of system and the cost of implementing it substantial. But whereas some people are working on architecting that sort of system from the outset as more a technical feat, this tact would get legal momentum that would almost guarantee some sort solution, be it good, bad or more likely, somewhere in between.
> how do users that are contributing to the value of the network somehow extract some of that value in real terms?
If users aren't getting any value out of using the service, they won't use it. The fact that they are using it, without any force or coercion, indicates there is sufficient value being extracted from the service by it's users.
Seem to be 2 camps here:
1. dismiss this as a tenuous connection which stems mainly from the fact that Lobbying firms have many big clients
2. grant this connection deserves some attention and perhaps some explanation
For me, I think the author has some thoughts that are bleeding through . But I don't think its necessarily fair to judge an article mainly on its author's history (though an undeniable factor).
While granting this is the nature of a lobby firm, it does seem odd they would agree to representing Sberbank. We're talking John Podesta (Clinton campaign chairman) -> Tony Podesta (CEO Podesta Group) -> Sberbank (Podesta Group client). Is the latter connection really not cause for suspicion?
The tricky thing is that it could be a cause for suspicion, but you could also read it other ways.
Before John Podestra was the campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton, he was the Counselor to Barack Obama. Before that, he was the founder of the Center for American Progress (a left-wing think tank). Before that, Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff. Before that, Deputy Chief of Staff, Assistant to the President, and a senior advisor.
Which is to say, he has been a big part of the Democratic Party / progressive movement for a long time.
And before that, he co-founded a lobbying group, the Podesta Group, with his brother Tony Podesta, who still runs the Group.
So, do I think that a giant bank / nefarious Russian secret agency is likely retaining the Podesta Group because it was founded and still run by the brother of a powerful and influential member of the Democratic Party, who has served in several Democratic administrations and is likely to serve in future ones? Yeah, totally.
And it's probably worth being aware of the potential chain of influence and corruption -- client to lobbyist, lobbyist to advisor, advisor to politician -- but I find it far more likely that John Podesta is in Hillary's campaign (and potentially, future administration) because he's a good, useful guy who gets the right stuff done, rather than that he's there as some sort of corruption-conduit, proof (PROOF!) of Hillary Clinton's unworthiness.
[1] https://cohesive-networks.s3.amazonaws.com/dnld/Cohesive-Net...