brianmcconnell

16 ms·

91.
by brianmcconnell 13y ago
Buying property is a long term decision. People in my family tend to buy a home and then get dragged out feet first 50 odd years later. I bought my place 15 years ago in San Francisco. It seemed like an unreasonable shitpile of money at the
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
Another possibility is that intelligent life is relatively common, but highly technological civilizations are rare. How would human civilization have panned out if we had not been lucky enough to discover huge, easily accessible reserves of
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
The biggest argument for not investing in Bitcoin is that anyone who is familiar with technology history can see that it is too early to pick a winner. Bitcoin is better compared to something like TCP/IP. The winner is likely to be som
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
I sold a business about ten years ago, and netted about 2M from the sale. Not lifetime FU money, but definitely life altering. The main thing I appreciated about it was being able to choose what I worked on and with whom, and being able to
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
Another point. If they opt to let consumers copy their own cards without the issuing bank's permission, I'd be very surprised if copying the mag strip is not a very big violation of TOS. If they go the guerrilla route, they'l
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
Two issues with Coin. One is this has been done before, exact same approach, and it did not work out because the card issuers didn't buy in (a credit card is also part of the issuing bank's brand). Maybe that's changed in the
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
I would add a question about vacation policy as a signal about whether you want to work there. Wrong answers: two weeks, or "unlimited" (because everyone knows there will be peer pressure not to use vacation time). Right answer: f
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
Ah! The equity position as fake compensation. Unfortunately for the worker beeze, said "equity" usually turns out to be worthless in a exit, except in unicorn situations (Facebook, etc). The founders, early investors and insider s
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Astronomers Conclude Habitable Planets Are Common(ifa.hawaii.edu)
2 points by brianmcconnell 13y ago|0 comments
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Healthcare.Gov : How Not To Launch A Web Service(medium.com)
2 points by brianmcconnell 13y ago|0 comments
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
I work on translation technology, and have seen some pretty bad examples of companies choosing names that have bad connotations elsewhere. One of my favorites is Evite, which means "avoid!" in Spanish, not exactly a good name for
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
I sold my first company in 1999. We had a rapidly growing online catalog of business phone systems and related products and service (PhoneZone). In late 1998, we got a term sheet from a well known VC. The terms were ok, except it was clear
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
I agree 100% with the author about the spoiled brat mentality of this generation of developers. I personally prefer to hire older developers because a) they tend to be steady producers, and b) they have the maturity to understand that somet
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VirtualPBX : How To Blow The Opportunity Of A Lifetime(medium.com)
1 points by brianmcconnell 13y ago|0 comments
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
Self taught, learned to program on a TRS-80. Studied electrical engineering in college, but switched to business so I could get a degree quickly and get out. No regrets. I think computer science undergrad degrees are highly overrated. If yo
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
There are two pilots. So assume they sleep in shifts. The point is that the several hours en route are a good time for the pilots to rest. Takeoff and landing are the riskiest phases of flight. I'm mainly concerned that the pilots are
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
This is why I have my credit/debit cards cancelled and re-issued once or twice a year. I can't be bothered to spend several hours on the phone trying to cancel scumbag/parasite operators like this (AOL was notorious for this
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
Pilot here (learned to fly at age 16). There really should be a system for allowing air traffic control to remotely control flights en route, so pilots can sleep, read a book, bang their favorite stewardess/steward, etc. The only phase
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
The trick then is to get clients who know they just want to "have it taken care of", and have much higher billing suppliers (IP lawyers, pharma experts, etc). In that case, they don't really think twice about paying for proce
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
The basic problem isn't so much having a standard distribution of rich and poor (a large bump in the middle with tails on either side), what's happening now is we are trending towards having a big pile of poor people, relatively s
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
There was a lot of talk about why things were different because we had entered a "new economic era". Some attributed this to the Internet. Others to Alan Greenspan.
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
I've lived in SF since the early 90s and have been through several business cycles. It feels like 1999 all over again, maybe 1998. A couple months ago I saw an ad on the NY subway for a company that delivers dog food and pet supplies t
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
George Carlin was IMHO one of the most insightful people America produced. Yes, he was a "comic" because in his time that's how he could follow his calling and make a living. While he was very funny, and he was riotously funn
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
And I thought my middle school math teacher had it bad. His name was Dick Working.
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
On a related note, how's seasteading working out?
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
Agree 100%. I had the misfortune to run across someone who took great pleasure in bullying people with his lawyers, a profoundly dishonest and unpleasant person. It's hard to overstate how damaging these people can be. Ever since then,
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
Since virtually every service has a 'forgot password' option, all the OP is suggesting is to formalize this as a default login process for second tier services that are too much of a bother to keep track of. The net positive, if t
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
I've been working in tech for 20 years. The key to getting decent gigs/clients is to avoid tournament situations (i.e. a conventional job application/interview process).
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
Fair enough. Atlas Shrugged was such an awful book I couldn't make it past the first few pages. However, I have enough experience with Rand's followers and their "got mine, screw you" attitude to see how a shitty book ca
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by brianmcconnell 13y ago
I was referring to the generally sociopathic attitude they tend to adopt toward The Poor. BTW, this is a privatized operation wherein predatory debt collectors buy the liens, foreclose the property, and then flip it at a huge profit. Just a

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