> Morey is not even an especially notable NBA figure, Twitter doesn't even work in China, it would have been easy to block news of this in China.
NBA fan, who will NOT be renewing league pass, checking in. Morey is considered one of the top NBA GM's of one of the top teams (Rockets) that have a strong Sino-centric fan base because of former Rocket great, Yao Ming. Yao was the first Chinese superstar in the NBA. The Rockets are the 'adopted' team of China.
> Isn't a backlash among the US population over this plainly foreseeable?
I agree - I'm not paying for league pass this year. I did not like the response from the NBA.
Another longtime NBA fan here, just backing up what you're saying about Morey. Especially in regards to the NBA in China, he's a fairly significant figure, more so than the original comment implies.
On a different note - I was in the same boat as you and actually wrote an email to the league pass support address (did not get a reply yet) telling them that I had been a customer for years and would not be renewing this year because of the NBA's spineless capitulation to an authoritarian regime. I'm still disappointed they didn't respond correctly more quickly, Adam Silver really needed to make a strong statement over the weekend, but the statements he made earlier this week were much, much better. Unfortunate that it likely only happened because they underestimated the $$$ hit from American customers being pissed, and I'm under no illusion that anything but the bottom line is the primary concern, but I'm curious what you didn't like about Silver's most recent press conference. He pretty unequivocally said that the NBA will not infringe the free speech of its employees and gave the classic "sorry you were offended" non-apology-apology.
Part of me would have liked to see a stronger statement, but I'm also not sure it's the NBA's job to escalate an international relations issue, particularly when many of its players (including LeBron James, who has to be the most valuable asset the NBA currently has) were/are actually in China as this plays out.
I'm holding out a small bit of hope that there will be a stronger statement once no more NBA employees are in China. I have a couple of friends working in NBA front offices and a few rumors have reached their ears that the NBA is afraid to react too much for fear of retaliation in the form of players getting detained and stopped from leaving China (just to be clear, I have zero proof of this, but it seems logical).
On Morey, sure, basketball fans know who he is, and he’s a respected guy, but relative to say LeBron or Harden, in a list of Q scores, he’s certainly behind at least hundreds of other NBA personalities,
And this was a 2 line tweet,
Which again is blocked in China.
I maintain that had the Chinese government just ignored this, or stuck it behind the Great Firewall,
This would be a complete non-story.
Now millions of Chinese citizens are wondering why exactly they can watch the NBA games they enjoy (even if they don’t agree with Morey at all).
It couldn't be ignored because the kids of the elites there all have VPNs and access the real/free internet. Someone posted to social media there and it blew up. But no one asks how the tweet was seen in the first place and why access is only for the rich.
I'm glad Silver took his time and got it right. The response was perfect -- de-escalating, respectful, yet firmly refusing to get into policing their employees, as you say.
The NBA shouldn't be the vanguard of American foreign policy.
My ideal statement would have gone something like this:
"I (Adam Silver) support the principles of democracy and human rights, and stand with the people of Hong Kong in trying to secure those for themselves. The rest of the NBA stands with them as well. We apologize for responding to this incident incorrectly initially, we were deeply worried about losing the Chinese audience for many reasons. Our revenue and growth as an organization is certainly one of them, and additionally we feel that exposure to other cultures, even through the limited lens of broadcasted basketball games, can only be a positive thing for any people. But after some reflection, we've decided that the principles Daryl Morey was expressing support for when he tweeted are ones that we cannot in good conscience shy away from supporting as well, even at potential financial cost."
I realize that this is a pipe dream, and the NBA will never do it. But since you asked =)
You say that the NBA shouldn't be the vanguard of American foreign policy, and I don't disagree with that statement. But if the NBA were to hypothetically make a statement like the above, is that really them being the vanguard? Or is it a group of private citizens (organized under the banner of a for-profit corporation) deciding that there are certain principles they stand for as a company? And what's wrong with that?
Yeah, I'd call that type of statement being the vanguard, considering the US government is very much not getting involved in the HK matter.
Silver doesn't even have the right to speak for all NBA employees on the matter, which he wisely recognized. He should definitely not be getting out ahead of the State Dept.
Agree to disagree. To me there's nothing more American than citizens/organizations coming out in support of what they believe in, and forcing their representatives to either advocate on their behalf for those beliefs, or face the consequences come the next election. And of course he doesn't have the right to speak personally for all individual NBA employees, but he absolutely has the right to speak on behalf of the NBA itself and the resources it controls. He's actually the only person who does have the authority to do that, it's his job. And if any employees disagree with the direction the organization goes and the principles it chooses to stand for, they are free to seek employment elsewhere.
> [Silver] should definitely not be getting out ahead of the State Dept.
I hope I'm not misunderstanding you, but I can't find another way to read this other than that you think the NBA shouldn't take a stance because the US federal government hasn't taken one. This idea is extraordinarily dangerous in my opinion, and I am vehemently opposed to it.
I think the NBA shouldn't take a stance because shared love of basketball shouldn't be an international battleground. Even if you're taking a purely American POV, there's a reason we don't weaponize the Peace corps.
From a more global viewpoint.. there are reasons why a lot of Chinese get mad at the idea of westerners expressing an opinion over Hong Kong's system of rule. And it's not because they're brainwashed. Silver probably listened to their perspective, based on his wording.
One could be forgiven for not knowing such a perspective exists, given the HN threads on the matter.
This will be my last reply since it's quite clear we're at an impasse, but I assure you I have been exposed to many more perspectives than just HN, and frankly am offended that you would assume otherwise. I think it reflects poorly on the strength of your argument if you have to resort to "you disagree with me, you must not be as well informed as I am". Particularly when you proceed to not clarify in any way which perspectives you're referring to, it is a sign of arguing in bad faith.
Your comment reads to me as a very thinly veiled "shut up and dribble" [1]. Not quite identical, mostly due to the lack of racist undertones, but the idea is the same. If the NBA standing in support of democracy and human rights creates an "international battleground", the blame for that lies exclusively and totally with China, full stop. These are things worth going to battle over, whether within the context of the NBA, state department negotiations, or anything in between. Your point about weaponizing the peace corps is a complete non sequitur.
I understand, I think as well as any western person can, why the Chinese get upset about this. I'm familiar with their history of issues with territorial sovereignty particularly in the 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries [2]. I simply completely disagree that said reaction is justified. People advocating for the right to govern themselves to some extent or another, particularly when the alternative is falling under the jurisdiction of an authoritarian regime, is justified precisely 100% of the time, and anyone who thinks otherwise is simply wrong, or yes, brainwashed. Silver may have listened to other perspectives, but I'll eat my hat if he cared at all about them, as opposed to caring about the NBA's bottom line.
For the record, I wasn't assuming anything about your exposure to various ideas. Just didn't want to belabor the points. I was snarking the one-sidedness of the board a little bit.
If you wanted to hear what I was thinking:
1) Installing western-friendly government in HK achieves full naval encirclement of China (SK, JP, Phillipines, Taiwan, HK).
2) As you say, there's the history of colonialism, which gets compounded by the importance of 1).
3) We consistently ignore these things from our allies and then get all moralizing when it's strategically advantageous for us. 12 hours ago we let Erdogan invade kurdish syria, and that's just today. I could list another dozen countries/disasters that we're enabling right now.
4) Almost every time we have gotten involved in 'liberating' countries because our values are so great, it's not only had ulterior motivations but it's also been an absolute humanitarian disaster. We did this on their borders twice in the latter 20th century.
When you add all of that up, and mix in the post-colonial resentment.. I can see a reaction of "America in particular can kindly shut up about it". It's not that they can't comprehend democracy, it's that they specifically don't want any American involvement whatsoever.
I'm not saying you have to agree with them -- feel free to join a divestment movement or something -- but they do have their reasons, the issue isn't completely one-sided.
I appreciate that you're mostly sticking to the right side of posting respectfully, but you're still breaking the site guidelines by using HN primarily for political and nationalistic arguments. You've posted many dozens of comments in the last week, apparently about nothing else.
Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended? As you surely know, this is a site for intellectual curiosity. Political battle, especially about China, may be dominating the threads lately, but that's not a stable or ok situation—that's the needle going into the red, and we need accounts like yours to not just constantly be ramping that up and making it redder and redder. (I know you're not the only one.) If that happens, eventually the pressure hits a breaking point and the whole thing blows up. I had to go a long way back to find a comment that was distinctively about something else (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20060328, if you're curious).
You've got a balance of hundreds of comments calling for civilizational confrontation. With dozens of actually racist comments in the mix as well. Over, what, 2 dozen threads in a few days?
Go ahead and ban me if you like but I'm not your problem here. That comment was, if I do say so, mind expanding compared to the raw emotion on display in these threads.
> Google is by far the most serious about fraud prevention.
I agree - they've had 'Verification' in DFA > DCM > DDM and the associated tools and reports keep getting better. And if you have ReportBuilder skills, you can really ID and find discrepant/fraudulent data.
we are buying an actual bank, its not a credit union we're just buying a small one in good health and with a charter already in place.
The idea is that we can expand from there, but this is not something we are trying to form and have a new charter issued, this is continuing on an existing bank that we hope to be able to use as a testing ground for our ideas with actual customers
We tried this at Daltic and I know Standard Treasury (YC) tried this as well.
Buying a small bank with a healthy federal charter is definitely the way to go over trying to start a new charter (FDIC hasn't given out a new charter in years and even if they do, de novo status is very cumbersome). The real challenge is getting around the Bank Holding Company Act with respect to raising capital. Basically, if any entity has a significant stake in a US bank (5-10% can trigger this) they are subject to BHCA which includes scrutiny from federal regulators (Plural!) over your books and a legal duty to bail the bank out. Our idea around this, consulting with a top financial attorney and consulting firm, was to get a consortium of wealthy individuals who would not exceed the limits individually and wouldn't be "acting in concert" with each other (which also triggers BHCA).
But even after this, any major shift in the bank's operations, including a re-architecture of technology is subject to regulatory oversight, similar to de novo status. Also, not to mention background checks from not only the FBI but also the CIA. Replacing management (which you probably want to do) is also a major change in bank operations. You also need a CEO who the regulators approve, and has previous CEO-level experience at another charter. We also had someone like this lined up.
We got pretty far in this process, but decided to put our efforts elsewhere. Seems ST did as well. Curious if you've found the same things, happy to chat further about what we learned (email in profile).
Edit: Of course, all the fun begins once you successfully acquire a charter. The real business in acquiring a bank is not to make money on loans. It turns out, despite the monopolistic access to cheap capital from depositors, non-bank lenders do a much better job at making high margin risk-adjusted loans (see https://foundationcapital.com/fcideasfintech). I believe the real opportunity for a tech-first bank is to be a whole sale and commercial bank, and tackle the $300B+ treasury services industry.
They make a mechanism for certain types of users to create accounts -- lets say only those with a valid HN account with a karma and age of over X + Y
I create the account and get the account and routing number
I then use this to direct deposit some portion of my pay into this account.
I have no access to the account aside through their meta app.
I give full autonomy to their bank and app to the funds in that account -- and I only get reports on usage and spend through the app - and I gate keep all transactions with a yay/nay -- but I never have access to the account itself in the chartered bank.
Instead, I just must commit to depositing say $1K per month in the account.
In the app - I can then only sign up for transaction types or vendors that fit within that particular deposit level.
They don't raise money for the bank at all.
They raise money for the app only.
(needs tweaking -- but the seed of what I mean is there)
unfortunately there are regs about chartered banks doing non-banking activities ... we'll talk more over the weekend, but I can give you way more details
The recent Standford ETL talk by Jeff Seibert (Senior Director of Product at Twitter) provides some insight into the development of the Twitter API's/SDK (Fabric). Overall, I thought it was one of the better and more practical talks.
I spoke with a laptop reseller a few minutes ago and according to him, the 980 will only fit in laptops thicker than 1" - so it will not be available in a slimmer, lighter gaming laptops like the MSI Ghost series.
This was 2x GTX 970M SLI model, pretty slim at ~23 mm with 3 kg weight.
I wonder though how well cooling will work with GTX 980. All previous Aorus models kinda struggled with cooling, and that was with less powerful GPUs (albeit SLI).
Out of announced notebooks, the least weird ones are MSI GT72 and Clevo P775DM:
My father's/family friend opened a McDonalds franchise about 20 years ago. He needed to have approximately $350k, 'non-borrowed' cash on hand to be considered as a franchisee.
> How's the experience?
It must be good because he now owns 4 McD franchises. All his kids worked there through HS and (some) college. His son is the "Manager" of all 4.
> Does it require lots of work?
I think after their first couple of restaurants, they have developed and refined their management system. The son works a typical work week floating between restaurants and balancing books, hiring managers, etc.
> Or just require passive monitoring?
My fathers friend was at the first restaurant from almost open to close everyday for several years. (I used to ride my bike there for free ice cream and he was always there). The son seems to have enough free time - its almost like a 8-6pm type job for him.
> How's the cost vs payout?
He and his family are very well off and have been able to invest in other money making areas as well. A lot of hard work on the front end but now he has 4 cash cows that his son manages.
NBA fan, who will NOT be renewing league pass, checking in. Morey is considered one of the top NBA GM's of one of the top teams (Rockets) that have a strong Sino-centric fan base because of former Rocket great, Yao Ming. Yao was the first Chinese superstar in the NBA. The Rockets are the 'adopted' team of China.
> Isn't a backlash among the US population over this plainly foreseeable?
I agree - I'm not paying for league pass this year. I did not like the response from the NBA.