pembrook

57 ms·

961.
by pembrook 3y ago
Because there’s no better marketing for a probabilistic (dumb) language model than the idea that it’s so powerful it needs to be regulated. Just as Steve Jobs used to say when the media was constantly stoking fears about the power of person
962.
by pembrook 3y ago
A big factor in the decline of internet media companies that nobody talks about—every single dominant social platform (except this one) now aggressively penalizes external links in their algorithms. This should be illegal for any dominant p
963.
by pembrook 3y ago
Along those same lines, the weirdest thing to me about the concept of an “everything app” is that it basically just describes an operating system. iOS, MacOS, Windows, Android, Linux, etc. are already the “everything” apps. Why the do we ne
964.
by pembrook 3y ago
While your point is extremely valid, I think it's interesting how different the reaction would have been to a fun tool like this 15 years ago. I doubt this would be the top comment, which makes me wonder how many startups that grew fro
965.
by pembrook 4y ago
That's basically my point. HN people are wealthy and spend most of their working hours and free time on the internet. They also vehemently hate ad-supported business models. Hell, I probably built my entire career off internet search
966.
by pembrook 4y ago
I think this is why advertising will remain the default business model of the mainstream internet and search. HN might possibly be the wealthiest collection of people on the internet. And if we’re complaining about $10-20/month here, t
967.
by pembrook 4y ago
I find it fascinating how permissive openness to new ideas and challenging convention in people like Hsieh is likely both responsible for their success and also their downfall. Even though Hsieh had moved on from Silicon Valley after the fi
968.
by pembrook 4y ago
There’s been a bunch of studies that track CEO performance when the CEO has gone on to lead multiple orgs. No surprise, CEO performance has no persistence and is statistically random. Also higher compensation does not lead to faster EPS gro
969.
by pembrook 4y ago
Quant firms provide value to society, hence why they are compensated for it. Liquidity and price discovery are useful things. Nobody would pay them otherwise.
970.
by pembrook 4y ago
> We don't need more tech companies. We don't need more hedge funds. What we absolutely don’t need, is autocrats dictating what society needs. Luckily we already have this cool innovation called a market economy. It’s not per
971.
by pembrook 4y ago
It’s great outlook is finally ditching the 90s MS Word html rendering engine, but of course most big orgs do not update to the latest version for years. So we’re still many years away from being able to finally dump tables. And there’s stil
972.
by pembrook 4y ago
Every time this topic comes up I like to point out that Europe’s inability to compete in tech has been true even since the personal computer. Here’s an article from 30 years ago doing a postmortem: https://www.nytimes.com/19
973.
by pembrook 4y ago
Ahrendts (of Burberry) was such a weird choice, unless Apple's goal at the time was to maximize in-person watch band sales. Seems Tim eventually realized selling luxury trench coats isn't very similar to premium computer hardware&
974.
by pembrook 4y ago
Compared to Google, Bing is indeed a challenger startup. Microsoft could completely kill Bing in the EU with very little effect to their bottom line. But you do bring up a good point. Why be so conservative if Bard isn't even tied in w
975.
by pembrook 4y ago
Perhaps that's why ChatGPT is so overwhelmingly censored. Maybe Google can be more free-wheeling with Bard by keeping in the US for now?
976.
by pembrook 4y ago
You've apparently never interfaced with lawyers before. A startup is free to release globally, because nobody will care if they spit out something false, there's no money to extract for penalties and fines. If Google's Bard s
977.
by pembrook 4y ago
This suggests that banking is extremely efficient, basically a textbook example of the efficient markets hypothesis. The only way you can create outsized returns to pay outsized compensation in that business is by taking outsized risk. Henc
978.
by pembrook 4y ago
…and plausible is a direct ripoff of Fathom analytics (design by Paul Jarvis). A good rule of thumb: if you think something is original, chances are it’s because you’re just not very familiar with the space. Ultimately, none of this matters
979.
by pembrook 4y ago
Why not free Google analytics? "...but evil big tech and data privacy" Why not use Plausible self hosted (it's open source and free)? "...but it's not actually free if you have to spend many hours setting it up a
980.
by pembrook 4y ago
If you've got 500,000 monthly pageviews and $42/month isn't a rounding error to you, I think there's something wrong with your business. And if you're not running a business, why do you care about analytics at all?
981.
by pembrook 4y ago
It's insane how bad Elon stepped in it with this guy. While I'm sure there were many people at Twitter doing mostly nothing, he happens to publicly pick on a guy who single-handedly built one of the most well-respected branding
982.
by pembrook 4y ago
This. There's so much funny business that goes on with FX rates that it makes me almost pro-crypto. Even the people who claim to offer raw spot market rates (ie. Interactive Brokers), in fact do not offer that. I would not be surprised
983.
by pembrook 4y ago
The pay of a rank-and-file engineer is commoditized with pay-bands and kept in check by market forces (we're talking millions of people -- hard to prop up inefficient pay at that scale). Certainly there might some geographic inefficien
984.
by pembrook 4y ago
The managerial class looting public companies for outsized compensation while taking near-zero risk, is a huge problem in the modern economy. Being a steward of an already-giant company...one that has product-market fit, reliable sales&#x2F
985.
by pembrook 4y ago
A lot of people seem to be chalking this one up in the “memetic imitation among tech execs” column. However, in the case of Google, I’m not so sure. Google is an advertising business. And advertising revenue is extremely sensitive to change
986.
by pembrook 4y ago
The #1 thing you should be worried about is sales. I wouldn’t be too worried about things like SSO, that’s extremely well-tread territory for thousands of Saas founders so getting advice won’t be hard. If it’s not a bottoms-up, self serve S
987.
by pembrook 4y ago
Yes, like 80 years ago. Nobody would accuse Ivy League schools of being bastions of fairness. We all know nepotism & pay-for-play is a core part of their business model. But I'm not sure you could get away with that today. You&#x
988.
by pembrook 4y ago
You can’t invest in much of Vietnam and its biggest businesses due to regulations banning foreign ownership. Look into closed-end funds if you want to better approximate what a real index of Vietnamese businesses would look like.
989.
by pembrook 4y ago
Incidents like this go a long way toward teaching corporate America that software shouldn't be some forgotten "IT" vertical on your org chart that you staff with random contractors. Software is core to your business. If you d
990.
by pembrook 4y ago
Encrypted email just isn’t a thing. The minute you send a message to someone else it’s out in the wild.

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