This is a silly analogy, actors are unionized and the actor-agent relationship is mediated by the union, just as the actor-employer relationship is. Working through the union is such a big part of acting culture that Ronald Reagan ran it for a while. ... if you are going to make an acting analogy, Uber is more like SAG, than a super-agent. Sure, there are other unions an actor could join, but most actors are going to make the most money working under SAG rules. The difference here is that the actors get a vote in how SAG is run.

We have a reputation based economy in academic scientific research. Like in StarTrek, this works well when there is growth. As long as there is no external limit on advancing good people into desired positions (professor), developing a good reputation leads to professional success. In a stagnant economy (i.e. the past 7 years), people who have developed enough reputation to justify independent projects have no opportunity to do so as resources for additional positions aren't available.

I did leave that off. Because of the money they raised, they needed to boost revenue significantly. This is where people get the idea that she did the "dirty work" of trying to institute advertiser friendly policies (including firing people who were internal advocates of community over profit).

People didn't give Reddit millions of dollars to be nice to the community, they invested that money to squeeze profit out of the community (and to trigger a higher performance based buyout clause from the initial Conde Nast deal). That was a problem she inherited. Obviously those efforts have been a debacle. I think she (and the board) honestly thought that being PC police and having a hands off approach to the community was the better business decision. It's not like they picked her at random to lead the company, they knew what they were getting. It wasn't until the community shut down the site that they all realized this approach is bad. Both she and the board are now paying for those mistakes.

Huffman has made his money off of Reddit, he doesn't need another big payday, and the board will have very little effective control, they can't lose another CEO. I don't think he goes back to Reddit if the board is still strong. Good news for the community, probably bad news for the investors and advertisers.

This is part of a broader DARPA driven effort to expand what biology is capable of.

The end goal is to be able to create new materials (better fuels, medicines, building materials, etc) using biology. This requires expanding the "toolkit" biology uses to incorporate biologically incompatible elements, chemicals and processes.

So, starting from the end: We want a better biofuel. To do that, we want proteins that can better incorporate inorganic catalysts and work at higher energies than existing biology. To do that, we need different amino acids and protein construction machinery. To do that, we want to expand DNA to code for these new amino acids.

This is a "good" DARPA project in that we're not able to do all of this yet. What this means is that technology is pushed forward significantly, and we're able to clearly identify the real challenges.

Whatever you think about Pao, she was in a very tough position. Reddit was in full on shit hitting the fan mode when she took over.

The company had just raised $50M they didn't actually need, with no real plan of what to do next. The new board was micromanaging and not looking out for the good of the company. The corporate culture was self serving and tone deaf. The prior CEO couldn't get a simple office location change through the board and quit. Pao is promoted to interim CEO. The title of "interim" CEO should NEVER have been used publicly. That it was shows the stance of the board towards management. She got some control of the company back from the board, was able to institute some changes and show that the position of Reddit CEO was still meaningful in the company. Think about that transition from when she started and the CEO couldn't change the office space without board approval (that he couldn't get!) to today when everyone can agree that the CEO runs Reddit. She realized when it was time (ish) to go and (presumably) helped get a very good replacement that the board actually likes.

I don't think I would actually like working with her, but I do think she did a good job there.

We're working our way back to the 2D electron gas work done in the decades before graphene.

Phosphorene is not a true 2D material (this is a "few layer" material, it's not a perfect analog of graphene), yet electrons in phosphorene can be made to behave as if they're in perfect 2D confinement. This is not the only material you can do this with. There are many ways of creating a 2D electron gas, with a wide range of applications and properties. There are some old hands at making these structures in the nano community, don't be surprised if in the next couple of years much is made in the academic literature of GaAs and GaN (again).

My comment wasn't actually serious. It was intended to make fun of the cultural differences between California and Iowa.

You're describing the "tragedy of the commons," a concept we understand very well in California right now because of the drought. Hamburgers work too, but we do have a giant blind spot when it comes to roads.

I'm a Californian. Nothing in this discussion makes any sense to me. The idea that you may not need more roads is... completely foreign. Do I need a visa to move to Iowa? It sounds great.

Just being an "idea" person is useless. Ideas are a dime a dozen. What most people are missing in this exchange is the part about "getting other people to build it for you." That's very non-trivial, and requires it's own skill set. Anyone who has actually tried to start a company knows that getting investment and creating a team is difficult. Most people in the "investor class" don't know or don't remember what it's like to not hang out with other wealthy people looking for investments.

You really need three roles to get something going: vision, execution, and fundraising. It's VERY rare that one person can do all three efficiently.

Of course a company should try to be profitable, but it's the job of the CEO and the board to make sure your business plan is reasonable and fits with the money you're raising. Many companies in Silicon Valley choke on oversized valuations and unreasonable expectations.

Reddit had revenues of $8.3M. That's not insignificant. Their initial fundraising round was $100k, they'd been bought out by a big company for $20M, and then spun back out with a target value of $240M. It's not like they had old investors calling them at midnight to complain, they were well set up to get off the startup (constant growth) treadmill and simply run the company.

Instead, they decided to raise money. Traditional online advertising efforts weren't effective for them, and they wanted to try some new expensive approaches. That's a decision by the board to more aggressively monetize the community rather than trim operating costs. It's a lot less expensive to run a company in Las Vegas, Austin, Seattle, Boston... evidently it was more important to stay in San Francisco.

They agree to take money on a $500M valuation. Ugh. If you're the CEO, that's just asking for an ulcer. After raising the money, the CEO tries to move the office to a city 10 miles south, in part for his own sanity, and the board shoots him down. Evidently, it is really important that Reddit officially be in the city of San Francisco. After that combination of extreme pressure to succeed and thorough emasculation, he quits.

Now, this would be reasonable if the board was simply setting the company up for their hand-picked Series B CEO, but the board has been unable to get a replacement in over 6 months, relying on a controversial "interim" CEO. (Why the "interim" title at all? At least pretend you like her.) What a mess. If Pao can turn this around, it will be a miracle, even if that means selling out to "shills and ideologues." It didn't have to be this way.

The lessons here are that sometimes cutting cost is a better thing than raising funds, and that just because an investor offers you money doesn't mean you have to take it.

Yeah, this is really the amazing thing in science. There are a few high paying private sector jobs, but the best early-to-mid career positions are in the government.

When I worked in government, there was no understanding that while it was necessary to pay early career engineers well, there was no need to offer high salaries to scientists to recruit good people. The lab I worked at paid engineers and scientists on the same scale, which was great (for me, a physicist).

Retaining scientists is a different matter. Particularly if someone is good, it is extraordinarily difficult for the government to hold on to a scientist. Generally, simply trying to pay more isn't going to help there either.

Wow, this is an excellent idea for a very limited, very niche application.

As a physicist and a (very out of practice) trombone player, this is a niche I can get behind!

If you don't have designs already (or they're just along the lines of "what if..."), you should definitely find someone who knows something about acoustics to collaborate with. That's the kind of thing I would have done for fun in grad school.

For 3D printing, you may want to find someone who can help you out commercially. I used the UPS store for some very high resolution prototype parts for a medical device. I can't speak for all the UPS stores, but the one I went to had a guy who was very experienced with 3D printing. He did some minor tweaking of my files (I generally design for CNC, evidently designing for 3D printing is a little different). He also knew all the high-end 3D printing services in town, and was able to contract with one of them when his in-store printer was insufficient for what I needed.

In my case, I wanted to get my parts made, I didn't want a hands-on tutorial about 3D printing. So this all worked very well.

I make 2D (graphene based) devices all the time...

San Diego has median house costs 2nd only to San Francisco in the nation, yet is also one of the least dense cities in the country, San Jose is similar...

Of course, San Diego and San Jose are both also "conservative" cities, so they don't fit the pattern of the parent either.

No, in the case, he really is a crackpot.

Don't mistake "careerism" with an actual understanding of physics. Sometimes people just don't know what they're doing.