Founder of 23andMe buys back company out of bankruptcy auction (arstechnica.com)
from avidamoeba@lemmy.ca to technology@lemmy.world on 16 Jun 14:48
https://lemmy.ca/post/46220270

#technology

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avidamoeba@lemmy.ca on 16 Jun 14:49 next collapse

Start company.

Run it into the ground.

Go bankrupt.

Buy it back.

šŸ“ˆ

MrNesser@lemmy.world on 16 Jun 14:56 next collapse

Debts are gone might as well

driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br on 16 Jun 15:20 next collapse

In the capitalist system, the investors deserve all the profits because they’re the ones risking everything, or something like this, I’m not an economists.

avidamoeba@lemmy.ca on 16 Jun 16:40 next collapse

Yes, and the workers risk nothing, or something like that, I’m told. šŸ˜‚

SMillerNL@lemmy.world on 16 Jun 17:22 next collapse

I’m pretty sure the users risked a lot too for this one

rigatti@lemmy.world on 16 Jun 17:38 collapse

I get the sentiment and I’m all for workers sharing in profits, but what do they really risk by working at a company? Sure, the company can fail and they might be stuck in a bad situation, but shareholders and owners probably have it worse in that scenario, right?

pebbles@sh.itjust.works on 16 Jun 18:36 next collapse

Depends, are you considering the fact that 90% of stocks are owned by the top 10% of Americans? Also are you considering that being in the top 10% means you likely have rich friends and family that could bail you out? I think black rock is going to be fine.

Most businesses aren’t like my friends parents little Chinese restraunt.

To me using the, ā€œthink of the shareholdersā€ line is silly for a reason. The biggest privilege is the privilege to make mistakes without becoming impoverished. Workers have it much harder in that respect.

Edit: grammer

rigatti@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 02:53 collapse

You make a good point that the shareholder/business owner class is more likely to have better safety nets. So from that standpoint, if the absolute value of their loss is greater, it could have a much less significant impact on their lives.

I think you may be underestimating the amount of small businesses though, at least in the US.

pebbles@sh.itjust.works on 17 Jun 22:44 collapse

For most shareholders in most businesses, the risk is that you are no longer as rich as your peers.

Most US households can’t weather a $1000 unexpected expense without going into debt.

To be real, capital gains are the definition of inequality. It is making money by having enough money to own something. There is no other economic force that drives inequality more.

Small business is a decent minority of US employers. It can’t be ignored, but it is the unlikely case when sampling by employee or just by random citizen.

At most an owner can be reimbursed for their costs of starting the business. Past that I don’t see any reason to give them a special share of the profits. Even that feels generous given how unequal we are, and that fact that having the money to start a business means you are likely more privileged than your employees.

atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works on 16 Jun 18:51 next collapse

Remind me, who is it that gets laid off first when the line starts going down…

driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br on 17 Jun 01:47 next collapse

Workers give their entire lives.

rigatti@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 02:50 collapse

They don’t lose their life if a company goes under though? I don’t mean to diminish the contribution of workers. I think they need a much higher share of what companies take in, and they need more voices at their companies.

theneverfox@pawb.social on 17 Jun 16:38 next collapse

No, they do. They don’t die, but they lose their current life

Alaik@lemmy.zip on 17 Jun 18:14 collapse

I bet there’s far more cases of homeless and suicide due to a lost job than due to a shareholder losing value in one company’s stock.

jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 00:01 collapse

put it into actual numbers, not just playing on emotions

Alaik@lemmy.zip on 18 Jun 01:48 collapse

What does, ā€œI betā€¦ā€ mean to you? You’re welcome to find some numbers if you know how to evaluate P values, it was an expression but hell, name the price of the bet. Lol

dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 17:37 collapse

Workers risk a few things, depending on the job:

  • Health
  • Time
  • Opportunity (could be working someplace else that’s better)

These have a lot of dimension to them, including how one quantifies what ā€œpayā€ actually is/for, what legal restrictions there are around taking the job (e.g. non-compete, non-arbitration), work/life balance, and so on.

Risk comes into play where the employee takes a bet that the job won’t destroy their health, work only as much as is absolutely necessary, and have taken a position at the optimal balance of responsibility, personal growth, retirement prospects, and income. It’s a risk since there are substantial barriers to changing to a new job, so you can wind up ā€œstuckā€ in a bad position, but can’t know until after you start.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 17:50 collapse

Bondholders are having a haircut.

CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de on 16 Jun 15:25 next collapse

You missed 2. Sell (IPO)company

I’m not sure what he she actually did as far as divestiture, but evidently he wasn’t the current owner. I wonder to what degree unreasonable growth expectations flushed the company.

newnton@sh.itjust.works on 16 Jun 15:48 collapse

She

ThePantser@sh.itjust.works on 16 Jun 15:26 next collapse

So fraud? They defrauded the investors by destroying it. I bet she sold before the news the company is going under.

TheTechnician27@lemmy.world on 16 Jun 15:41 collapse

OP, you linked to the comments instead of the top of the article. šŸ’€

Krauerking@lemy.lol on 16 Jun 21:38 collapse

Ah dang you did point it out. They even just copied the top comment there, unless they are ColdWetDog.

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 Jun 23:19 collapse

At least they quoted it.

deathbird@mander.xyz on 16 Jun 15:06 next collapse

Actually an interesting turn of events. Sounds like she’d been fighting hard to get it back, but they’d been fighting her on it.

Not sure what it all means, but there’s something going on there. It’s all very unusual.

zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com on 16 Jun 15:25 next collapse

Selling off user data but has an excuse to ā€œwasn’t meā€ the whole situation

Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works on 16 Jun 16:31 collapse

There’s still some gift left to squeeze out. She’s not giving up on a good bad thing.

drspod@lemmy.ml on 16 Jun 17:21 next collapse

I thought they had already agreed the sale of the genetic data to another company?

TachyonTele@piefed.social on 16 Jun 18:16 collapse

There's an article in the link.

rumba@piefed.zip on 16 Jun 18:04 next collapse

Debts are gone AND now he can sell the user data with impunity! No NO, that was that OTHER GUY

WhiteRice@lemmy.ml on 16 Jun 21:06 next collapse

She*

rumba@piefed.zip on 16 Jun 21:23 collapse

heh fair, gender bias for me.

100_kg_90_de_belin@feddit.it on 17 Jun 03:36 collapse

Hey, don’t talk about Guy Incognito like that

witty_username@feddit.nl on 16 Jun 20:59 next collapse

This roller coaster keeps on rollering

Krauerking@lemy.lol on 16 Jun 21:35 next collapse

Ok so I think I’m the first person in the comments to actually click to read the article, cause I’m gonna say something I’m not seeing.

How did you get it to auto snap to the article comment section?
Didnt realize you could share that and it wouldn’t default to the article.

HereIAm@lemmy.world on 16 Jun 22:23 next collapse

The ā€œ#commentā€ at the end of the URL. It’s a title/heading/fragment in HTML that hints to your browser to go there directly.

Like this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL#fragment

Krauerking@lemy.lol on 16 Jun 22:26 collapse

Oh. Neat.

Thanks for the Wikipedia link

avidamoeba@lemmy.ca on 16 Jun 23:10 next collapse

I’ve no idea to be honest.

drmoose@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 03:18 next collapse

Everything after the # character in the URL is called an anchor and it’s not actually being sent to the website server so it’s meant for your browser (though the server can see it using javascript). The anchor can point to any ID in the HTML of the web page and browser will scroll it into view on page load. You can find the ID of any element using right click -> inspect though not all elements have explicit ids.

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 Jun 23:20 collapse

Some webpages have a bad habit of automatically appending tags to the URL, or outright changing it, as you scroll down.

SplashJackson@lemmy.ca on 16 Jun 22:27 next collapse

How about the data they sold

sugarfoot00@lemmy.ca on 17 Jun 18:50 collapse

That’s exactly where all the value is. Selling people’s fucking genetic information. What makes it even more valuable is that it can be used against all subsequent descendants of the person that willingly gave it up. Do a DNA test like this and you’re selling out your entire family.

Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 17:53 next collapse

TTAM later said it had obtained backing from a ā€œFortune 500 company with a current market capitalization of more than $400 billion and $17 billion of cash on hand.ā€

That’s not at all concerning.

Tinidril@midwest.social on 17 Jun 18:34 collapse

A little searching finds only one company that really fits the bill. Costco has a market cap of $433B and had a reported $14.8B cash on hand as of May 11. That’s an interesting possibility that I wouldn’t have guessed. Costco is less evil than most big corporations, so that’s a little hopeful if I got it right.

Oracle comes close with a market cap of $583B. That’s indeed over $400B, but that would make the description a bit weird. In any case, Oracle makes more sense from a business angle. Unfortunately, they are near the top of the evil scale.

Tinidril@midwest.social on 17 Jun 18:44 next collapse

Shit, Oracle was down in the low $400B range in May. Apparently being evil pays well in the current administration.

musubibreakfast@lemm.ee on 17 Jun 22:53 collapse

Calling it here, Costco is going to use the genetic information to create the perfect hot dog.

lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 Jun 23:18 next collapse

Costco already creates the perfect hotdog.

I say they should invest in bringing back the Polish dog. That was fucking delicious.

surewhynotlem@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:47 next collapse

Soylent dogs

ouRKaoS@lemmy.today on 18 Jun 00:40 next collapse

Membership is going to be linked to your DNA, the register will prick your finger to make sure you’re valid.

insomniac@sh.itjust.works on 18 Jun 01:02 collapse

It’s almost certainly Oracle but there’s a slight possibility this is correct

chiliedogg@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 01:30 collapse

If it costs $1.51 I’m gonna flip shit.

nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 Jun 18:19 next collapse

how the fuck did this company go bankrupt what did i miss

Tinidril@midwest.social on 17 Jun 18:27 collapse

It’s not a great business model if you think about it. Customers pay a small fee once then never again.

solarvector@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 01:28 next collapse

When did selling a product instead of a subscription become a bad business model?

Edit: I have a lot of trouble believing that a product that could theoretically have value to every person on the planet for current and every future generations, that can’t be passed along used or resold, couldn’t develop a successful sustainable business model.

13igTyme@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 01:57 next collapse

When quarterly profits must always be green compared to the previous quarter.

viking@infosec.pub on 18 Jun 02:00 next collapse

Selling a product is a good business model if the product has a shelf life or naturally degrades over time, but served you so well that you’ll replace it in kind or with an upgrade.

A product that does something exactly once and done doesn’t scale long term, so once the hype was over, that was that.

Tinidril@midwest.social on 18 Jun 02:32 collapse

When it’s an inexpensive product that nobody ever has a reason to buy twice yet remains an ongoing cost for the company? (They keep the data available for review and continue to update it with useful information as knowledge of genetic traits and lineages grows). That’s not a way to build an ongoing cash flow to cover expenses. Especially when all the people inclined to be interested have already purchased.

nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 18 Jun 14:55 collapse

I assumed they were making absolute bank by selling the data

Tinidril@midwest.social on 18 Jun 17:37 collapse

Not really. They used to have pretty good privacy agreements. I don’t know about now. They do supply agrigate information to pharmaceutical companies, but that has become a pretty fungible resource. The only big consumer of individual DNA information is law enforcement, and that’s more of an expense than an income flow, since reviewing warrants and providing responses costs money.

An important lesson in infosec is that the best way to reduce the cost of discovery and warrant compliance is to regularly delete any data you don’t need or aren’t legally required to retain. Companies like this don’t have that option. Data is both an asset and a liability.

Buske@lemmy.world on 17 Jun 23:55 next collapse

All your DNA just got bought.

viking@infosec.pub on 18 Jun 01:57 collapse

Bought back by the one person who already had prior access, and bought by her own research non-profit. As far as privacy concerns go, that’s the best case scenario.

RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world on 18 Jun 00:22 collapse

So glad I never did this one.