emmett

10 ms·

61.
by emmett 11y ago
Great point! That sounds like a genuine disagreement. Can you expand a bit on why economic inequality is intrinsically bad, rather than instrumentally bad?
62.
by emmett 11y ago
Of course it's prescriptive and there are regional differences. As you say, it's just like spelling. "Colour" still looks wrong to me. Just like a different stroke order looks wrong to a native reader. The point is the d
63.
by emmett 11y ago
I think a key point about this, which was only clear to me after I learned to write Hanzi in Mandarin, is that if you write the strokes in the wrong order it will not look right at the end. To someone looking at characters for the first tim
64.
by emmett 11y ago
You've seen ads, unless you've managed to avoid almost all video content. They're just "native ads" -- advertisements worked into the content itself. It's just another evolutionary arms race...
65.
by emmett 11y ago
And now I am sad again because cleaning service discovery is still broken. Not that you're wrong, just that it would be really nice to be able to find cleaners through a service with good reputation tracking and recommendation. Which i
66.
by emmett 11y ago
“The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.”
67.
by emmett 11y ago
Technically he uploaded the picture himself when he was working at Twitch (then Justin.tv) -- it used to be an employe e benefit that you could add your face to the emoticon list. As to how Josh feels about it, I leave you with this link to
68.
by emmett 11y ago
[citation needed] What makes you believe this is true, beyond simple assertion?
69.
by emmett 11y ago
Quoth Yale's website: "Yale does not require students to take out loans for their education. Instead, Yale meets 100% of demonstrated need for all admitted students with a financial aid package consisting of need-based scholarship
70.
by emmett 11y ago
Paul would strongly disagree with the idea that a startup is defined by a random list of traits and that you "know it when you see it". He very clearly defines a startup as a company aiming for (and potentially capable of achievin
71.
by emmett 11y ago
A startup, by Paul Graham's definition, is any business designed to scale up very quickly. A business aiming for say, 5% weekly growth or higher. http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
72.
by emmett 11y ago
It's interesting how much it really is a problem of alienation, not of the work itself. Stage magicians who obsessively practice the same motion over and over own their work, own their output, and feel empowered by the hard work and th
73.
by emmett 11y ago
Many people have far more than 10k objects though. Based on that math, if you stored 10 billion objects in S3 (certainly well within the realm of possibility), you'd lose an object on average every 10 years, which is a length of time o
74.
by emmett 11y ago
Based on this comment I suspect you didn't actually read the article, which explicitly evaluated this option...
75.
by emmett 11y ago
(Caveat: I think the existing interview process is fundamentally broken, but because asking people to code on a whiteboard is suboptimal not because the specific questions are wrong) I've asked this specific question in interviews befo
76.
by emmett 11y ago
Have you ever been involved on the other side of hiring programmers? If so, did you hire them exclusively from their resumes or did you have them demonstrate their ability directly to you in some way?
77.
by emmett 12y ago
Please also consider pushing Twitch "Let's Plays" as well. We have a lot of programmers watching! I agree with what you're saying about video advertising CPMs, though it is quite possible to make a living on Twitch once
78.
by emmett 12y ago
Where are you seeing these numbers from? What stage of startup? If Uber offered you 1% equity and $60k/year you'd have to be an idiot to turn them down at this stage. If an unfunded just-an-idea startup did, you'd never take
79.
by emmett 12y ago
It would be simple for the public to provide this support for seniors and people with disabilities on ride sharing services. Just create a monthly subsidy that can be used for the purpose of any public transit. It doesn't have to be us
80.
by emmett 12y ago
You don't need to spend a bunch of capital on mining equipment to speculate. You can just buy Bitcoin. Usually you buy mining equipment because you think you can make BC cheaper than everyone else with operational efficiency.
81.
by emmett 12y ago
Secondary stock sales means the founder sells a portion of their stock in the company in exchange for cash today. There used to be a widespread belief in the VC world that you wanted to prevent founders from seeing any cash until the ultima
82.
by emmett 12y ago
You don't need to take the meeting. If they're serious, you will get another phone call with "How does $1 billion sound?" If a company really wants to buy you, saying no will not make them go away. It will make them up t
83.
by emmett 12y ago
This is completely, 100%, wrong about how YC thinks about things. If you've not advised a large number of fledgling startups, you wouldn't know, but really truly talking to corpdev is demoralizing and dangerous. If they really wan
84.
by emmett 12y ago
Focus groups are about getting feedback on a draft of a product. They're completely different from what I'm talking about, where you're getting feedback on your thoughts on what problems exist.
85.
by emmett 12y ago
It's subtle, but there's a difference between abandoning something because people don't have the problem you're trying to solve and abandoning something because people don't think your solution is good. Take your Ub
86.
by emmett 12y ago
Would you let your child interact with any stranger alone under any circumstance? If so, I don't see what the big deal about Uber or Lyft is in particular. If not, that seems awfully sheltered. We're talking about teens here, not
87.
by emmett 12y ago
I think the point of the article was the opposite. The first two times they applied, they were focused on YC. The third time (the time they got in), he says: "Nothing else mattered, including YC. Application time came around and we tho
88.
by emmett 12y ago
Hey, I think you might be slightly confused on some terminology. Pro-rata is about investing MORE money into the company when you raise a round, to avoid being diluted. It's not something you can get "above". I think you&#x27
89.
by emmett 12y ago
That's a gross exaggeration. If you own 0.1% of the company, you're likely to be diluted to around 0.02% at the very worst, and most likely 0.04% or so assuming 3 rounds of funding. That's assuming a positive outcome that cle
90.
by emmett 12y ago
Speaking as an engineer who made the transition to management in a big way (from primary web engineer and DBA to CEO with no time to code at all), I have mixed feelings. I love programming. It's a zen activity for me, turn me loose on

More ›