How _lucky_ that github itself was the subject of the attack in npm.
Unless I'm missing something, this attack could have gone unnoticed for a long time (it would be hard for someone to connect a random breach in their infrastructure to an oauth intrusion affecting two of their service providers).
An interesting side note about this story is the homogeneity and lack of relevant background among Theranos's board of directors. All the outside directors were white, prestigious (former generals, senators, cabinet secretaries, etc) and relatively old. Research shows that homogenous groups are less likely to challenge each other.
My coauthor and I wrote about this in our book Meltdown (Published by Penguin Press in in March). We drew on Carreyrou's excellent reporting and some pretty interesting research about how team diversity affects decision making.
> Lack of relevant background among Theranos' board of directors
Yeah, it's pretty clear that it was by design.
Moreover, Holmes seems to have known the impossibility of her claims, or perhaps, was over confident initially about the possibilities of technology and later came to the realization that current technology cannot fulfill her vision.
At that point, she should have come clean, but chose to continue the charades.
I'm not sure that accuracy/HP are the right things to tweak. I've always wanted to be "surprised," in an unscripted way, by AI enemies in FPS and RTS games.
One game experimented with smart enemy units that could sneak up on a player and attack them from behind, or outflank them. The players hated it and assumed the computer was cheating and just spawning enemies behind them.
The same is sort of true in RTS games. The new rerelease of age of empires 2 has vastly improved AI that was developed by modders. Lots of players thought it was just cheating.
But in general it has been very well received. I think players can get used to good AI. They've just been trained to expect stupid AI that cheats.
For the vast majority of players it's probably irrelevant whether the AI cheats or not. The goal is not to play fair and beat the human usually, but to put up a good fight and make things challenging and, most importantly, fun for the human. Of course, competitive and professional players have different expectations or requirements in that regard.
Still, AI in games is mostly a trade-off. It usually can't take too much resources (because it usually has to run on the same machine the human is playing on), it has to be believable and fun to play against. This usually rules out too fancy algorithms and approaches with dubious returns.
I think the majority of players would prefer AIs that are challenging through better strategy and tactics, rather than just being bullet sponges or having better aim. People also get frustrated when the computer wins through cheating, rather than actually being better.
It's an interesting point, but I'm wondering how to unpack it.
"If Twitter was open... a dozen people innovating on it..."
Though not 100% independent of their funding model (loss-aversion bias might lead us to conclude that big companies take less risk), presumably Twitter has at least a dozen people trying to innovate on it?
They may not be doing what [parts of] the community wants, but that's not quite the same thing as not innovating.
One thought is that we could reframe the question (as e.g., Sweden has done) and work to increasing gender equality.
If the starting point is recognizing that people have kids and it takes time to care for them, and both parents have that right and obligation.
From there, one could devise policies that encourage BOTH men and women to take parental leave and invest in high-quality childcare for when that parental leave is over.
I believe it's a licensing arrangement. Those locations often buy and license Starbucks coffee (though often not their baked goods), but are not run by Starbucks. e.g., Barnes and Nobel, Safeway.
Just to confirm, that's exactly what it is. From what I can tell around here, it's mostly for places that already have a larger unionized food service organization. Two examples that come to mind are the local university and a local hospital. These "Starbucks" use all of the branding and coffee, but are staffed by the organization that hosts the store.
Agreeing with you, I'm pretty sure there's no way for an individual to open their own Starbucks store; the licensed stores pretty much have to exist within a larger organization where it would be impossible to open a store independently (in the local cases, that'd be due to the food service unions).
In Canada at least, there's also instances where Starbucks has worked out some kind of cross-renting deal. Chapters/Indigo Books is a prime example. Every Indigo I've gone into has had a Starbucks, but those are staffed by Starbucks employees and not Indigo employees.
Unless I'm missing something, this attack could have gone unnoticed for a long time (it would be hard for someone to connect a random breach in their infrastructure to an oauth intrusion affecting two of their service providers).