vm

55 ms·

211.
by vm 14y ago
Link bait title - the ship was seized in Ghana by a court-ordered injunction. Highly unlikely that the investors walked on the boat. Nevertheless, really interesting. In general, we expect a debt holder to try to seize assets after the loan
212.
by vm 14y ago
"The best business guys are dumb as hell" -- this generalization in particular is egregious. It's easy to dismiss something that you don't understand. This article may have been the least thoughtful one I read on HN this year.
213.
Active Reading(worrydream.com)
11 points by vm 14y ago|0 comments
214.
by vm 14y ago
Revenues are not cash flows. That $375M of revenues from car orders has real costs associated (i.e. materials, labor). Ford and GM, established car makers, have gross margins of about 12-15%. Tesla's margins are much lower, at least today.
215.
by vm 14y ago
Excellent analogy. Tesla has major challenges to lasting as a company. It spends about $100M per quarter and it has $200M of cash [1]. So in the next 6 months, Tesla will need to bring margins way up (unlikely), dramatically cut expenses
216.
by vm 14y ago
I found that disturbing too, so I looked up Jeff. His twitter account is active with recent tweets: http://twitter.com/MyNameIsJeff Probably doing fine!
217.
by vm 14y ago
I'm surprised by how poor this Nokia comparison is. Maybe it highlights the difference of that company vs Apple or Google. The post focuses on the reach of their maps by showing lots of numbers in a comparison. They would better demonstrate
218.
by vm 14y ago
Check out Machinima. They have 18 billion views in 2011-2012. That's billion with a B! Even with standard YouTube ad rates, that's a nice business. But they can bargain for higher rates because of their scale and audience demographic. Nearl
219.
by vm 14y ago
RPX Corporation was created to be the white knight that you describe. It is a for-profit company with a $600M mkt cap. Kleiner, CRV and Index invested significant capital in it (I believe Kleiner incubated it). Basically, your company pays
220.
by vm 14y ago
The advice is for startups. No startup could have released the iPhone as its first product. Imagine the dev cost! Apple's first product - the Apple I - was an assembled circuit board. Basically a motherboard. Very targeted audience, very na
221.
by vm 14y ago
UX nitpick - the site disables my Mac trackpad "swipe to navigate back" feature. Your site picks up the lateral scroll as a vertical scroll. Frustrating for trackpad lovers like me. Otherwise, great minimalist interface!
222.
Warby Parker Sees Its Way To $40M Series B, Led By General Catalyst(techcrunch.com)
2 points by vm 14y ago|0 comments
223.
by vm 14y ago
What legal recourse do consumers have against companies that violate this? LinkedIn and GetGlue both require logins to unsubscribe, so I mark their emails as spam and filter directly to trash. It works, but philosophically it still pisses m
224.
by vm 14y ago
Do we know that any lives have been saved as a result of flame retardants being used in furniture? The article suggests that flame retardants do not slow down furniture fires in real world scenarios. The problem is that they are used in
225.
by vm 14y ago
I feel tricked by link-bait on this one. Fred Wilson makes no mention of the "collapse" of VC. He doesn't even come close to the concept. Tl;dr of the article: -many VCs are having trouble fundraising because of mediocre returns -Fred think
226.
Ask HN: Good way to display internal metrics?
1 points by vm 14y ago|0 comments
227.
by vm 14y ago
Seemed like a joke or an effort to raise awareness. I took as devs poking fun at the White House and found it hilarious :)
228.
by vm 14y ago
Herein lies a problem with communication. Someone takes the time to write you. Social conventions obligate you to respond (though you'd be better off if you didn't respond to most). Even if you choose to "put it off for later," it weighs in
229.
by vm 14y ago
A lot more of these low-quality "research" pieces from The Atlantic are popping up on HN. For a while, the only Atlantic pieces that trickled up were well-researched and well-thought. So now I'm eager to click on links from what I thought w
230.
by vm 14y ago
Obviously the library authors make this happen and I mean no slight to them. They rock. But this thread is about Github so I focus my comments on how they add value. Github made it easier to share code and created a community. Now more peop
231.
by vm 14y ago
Github, I love you. You have saved my company months of engineering time because of all the third-party libraries that we can easily find and use through your service. We're only a year old, so taking the time to build all those features
232.
by vm 14y ago
The OP's chart is meaningless because of selection bias. Presumably, the college grads would be more employable because of higher intelligence, greater access to resources or better habits, which led them to college (I know there are many e
233.
Task Rabbit CEO: How to Hire Extraordinary People(huffingtonpost.com)
1 points by vm 14y ago|0 comments
234.
by vm 14y ago
At first, I didn't understand why well-networked entrepreneurs, like the founders of Uber and DuckDuckGo, use AngelList. Now that answer is clear. So many investors use AngelList, that it just opens more doors. Even for the super connected.
235.
by vm 14y ago
tl;dr Nope. Bill Gates checks out fine. Gary Kildall's claim of DOS theft could not be supported by modern software forensics.
236.
by vm 14y ago
Excellent point - Samsung looked at the iPhone design as the definitive source, rather than deconstructing use cases or consumer needs. Even the icons and color themes are the same on many screens. That by itself shows that Samsung copied A
237.
by vm 14y ago
Wired mentions Apple 46 times in the article (including twice in the title)... and Amazon 3 times. In fact, most of the public and HN outrage about this incident has been directed at Apple. That's the downside of Apple being so close to per
238.
by vm 14y ago
The most senior execs I know tend to send the most poorly worded, cursory emails. Can't let those slip in the junk folder! This system works well if you're on the top of the pyramid.
239.
by vm 14y ago
I'm not convinced that the best CEOs have to work such crazy hours. It comes down to efficiency. We should all focus on being as effective as possible in the shortest amount of time. Prioritization is another way to look at it - spend time
240.
by vm 14y ago
So elephants can hear sounds at frequencies that humans can't. This seems like the most obvious explanation of why elephants ran to higher ground before the Thai tsunami. Does anyone have authoritative insight on the topic? http://news.nat

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