skewart

60 ms·

241.
by skewart 10y ago
That's a good point. We certainly don't know everything there is to know about the situation. There could very well have been circumstances beyond his control, or, circumstances that otherwise made the decision to push the limits
242.
by skewart 10y ago
But then he wouldn't have had a cool story to post on Medium. He wouldn't have gotten all this attention. Alternatively, one could argue that he took one for the team - he did something risky and stupid so he could find out what w
243.
by skewart 10y ago
> A friend of mine has created and run several user-generated content sites and he said: "user generated content is worthless; largely racism and porn." It's driven by the lowest common denominator. What about HN? I don&#x
244.
by skewart 10y ago
I get where that quote is coming from. And there is some truth to it. But having no idea how big the market is doesn't necessarily imply that you timed things well and have a great opportunity. Market sizing should be done to set rough
245.
by skewart 10y ago
This is good advice not just for how to pitch a startup but also for how to pitch anything - say, a project within a company, or even yourself for a job. Obviously the market size would be more about quantifying the potential return on wha
246.
by skewart 10y ago
For sure, homeowners are very often rent-seekers. In fact, I would be willing to wager that there are a lot more rent-seeking homeowners than professional real estate investors. I took the question in the thread to be more about real estate
247.
by skewart 10y ago
FYI, the vast majority of rental real estate is owned by investment firms who buy and sell entire buildings, not people buying units. In general capital gains in an otherwise depreciating asset are tied to outsized increases in the revenue
248.
by skewart 10y ago
Phantom stock is super interesting. Do startups ever offer it? I'd be curious to know how it worked out. It seems like it would be better than the worst case with traditional options but not as good as the best case. I mean, ideally
249.
by skewart 10y ago
I think you might be comparing apples and oranges when comparing investing in a company and investing in real estate. There are different ways to invest in a company and different ways to invest in real estate. Investing in a company to hel
250.
by skewart 10y ago
Real estate investing is not inherently rent-seeking. The fact that the word "rent" is in "rent-seeking" and we pay "rent" for an apartment seems to often cause some confusion. Rent-seeking involves seeking out
251.
by skewart 10y ago
Yes. Yes it is absurd. A lot of people have been screwed over by this situation. I think it's basically a bug in US tax law. The scenario is such an edge case for most Americans. The other not-so-nice aspect of this is that it dispropo
252.
by skewart 10y ago
I'm cautiously optimistic that the vendor lock-in will fade away over time. Hopefully open source frameworks can provide a jQuery-like abstraction layer over all of the vendor-specific implementation details. Of course, there are lot
253.
by skewart 10y ago
Yeah, sadly the bit just before that about them putting their heads together "to create something that could have a real impact on the lives of millions" doesn't really give it away. It's too believable that a real start
254.
by skewart 10y ago
Oh yeah, for sure, there are plenty of other ways a nefarious app could scrape a user's credentials during OAuth on iOS. If UIWebView didn't allow the app access to the DOM then it wouldn't be possible this way. But,of course
255.
by skewart 10y ago
Well, on the web you're generally following redirects to a URL. You can verify the owner and authenticity of the host. (A phone app could kick you out to a browser app (not a web view) to authenticate.) Then after you've signed in
256.
by skewart 10y ago
It's because the app has access to and control over the DOM of the UIWebView. Suppose some app called EvilGameFoo is asking you to authenticate with your Google account. They should kick you to a UI controlled by Google, which EvilGam
257.
by skewart 10y ago
Who exactly pays for what - whether buyer or seller - is often negotiated. It's tied to the price of the house, but if the price ends up a little higher to cover those costs then the buyer is paying for it. Of course, both the buyer&
258.
by skewart 10y ago
Ah, I see, that makes sense. The protocol level does seem like a good way to enforce it. Though I do have to wonder if, had that enforcement been put in place, people would have moved away from HTTP and toward a different, looser protocol o
259.
by skewart 10y ago
You mean HTML, not HTTP, no? Otherwise I'd be curious to hear how or why including web page layout semantics in HTTP would be useful.
260.
by skewart 10y ago
I'm guessing the reason this is getting down-voted is because the article makes it pretty clear that the Berlin school's aim is to _teach_ kids to be motivated and disciplined. It provides a lot of structure along with opportunity
261.
Ask HN: What companies have successfully disrupted themselves?
2 points by skewart 10y ago|3 comments
262.
by skewart 10y ago
I completely agree. Very often the skill set needed for employees changes dramatically over the first several years of a startup's life. It's best for everyone if there is a highly liquid job market and employees can easily leave
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by skewart 10y ago
> Cities reflect networks effects as strongly as anything, which is why the same cities that were important 100 years ago are, by-and-large, the same cities that are important today: there has been no doubling of exciting, the-place-to-b
264.
by skewart 10y ago
I'm generally in favor of letting companies like AirBnB, Lyft, Uber, and Turo operate in cities. But I completely agree with you that it's infuriating to see the word "sharing" being used to describe them. They're
265.
by skewart 10y ago
Haha, good point. I don't have time to go into much depth right now, but basically the ascendent languages don't seem to offer many compelling technical advantages. For example, I've yet to hear a compelling reason why JS mak
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by skewart 10y ago
> The truth of it is, is that once you've picked up Ruby, nothing feels quite as nice as a scripting glue language. I today agree. Ruby is amazing as a light scripting language - heck, I think it's pretty great as an all-around
267.
by skewart 10y ago
> No. One cannot refuse a whiteboard test. I completely disagree with you on this. If a whiteboard test is such a strong turnoff to a candidate that they won't want to work at the company because of it, and they're willing to m
268.
by skewart 10y ago
The whole interviewer-interviewee dynamic is so messed up in technical hiring these days. Recently I've been thinking about asking the candidate to ask me to whiteboard something. I actually think that might produce a more interesting
269.
by skewart 10y ago
I dunno, it really depends on the details of how (s)he said it. One could refuse a white boarding session in a very professional way - tell the company that you don't do white boarding when they first schedule the on-sight so you don&#
270.
by skewart 10y ago
You should quit. Life is short. It's not worth wasting time at a place that makes you unhappy. And from the company's perspective, it's better to hire and onboard someone who would be a better match sooner rather than later.

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