pHollda
In Plain Sight
Show HN: Leaked plans of a company which will dominate the world
A deeply integrated suite of products around information management is what I think needs to be the short-term to medium-term goal of the company.In the long-term, just "information", in general. That is everything around information and knowledge: acquiring it (including things like tutoring), storing it, protecting it (e.g encryption), manipulating it, proving that you have some information...
Ask HN: What are the best New Yorker profiles of people in tech?
They've done Thiel, Altman, Andreessen, Sandberg and Zuck. They weren't bad. What are others that are good?
Re:Elon Musk's $55B Tesla Pay Package Voided by Judge
on Wednesday January 31, 2024 @08:55AM (#39203798)
The revisionism is sickening
i. Tesla’s Elon Musk May Have Boldest Pay Plan in Corporate History http://web.archive.org/web/20180208004856/https://www.nytime...
ii. Tesla’s Pay Deal to Keep Elon Musk: All or Nothing https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/23/teslas-pay-deal-to-keep-elon...
Re:Elon Musk's $55B Tesla Pay Package Voided by Judge
on Wednesday January 31, 2024 @01:38AM (#39200725)
I remember very clearly what everyone thought as it all happened in 2018. No one thought they could actually achieve all of the milestones. Everyone knows how much Musk overpromises. That they have is incredible and makes Musk totally deserving of the compensation.
Re:Elon Musk's $55B Tesla Pay Package Voided by Judge
on Tuesday January 30, 2024 @10:02PM (#39199278)
Musk is getting robbed. At the time, everyone believed the challenges were too big to surmount and he would never actually achieve them.
He does and suddenly "oh the reward is far too much"?
Ask HN: Why is Bret Taylor so highly regarded as part of management?
Re:Your Board of Directors Is Probably Going to Fire You (2021)
on Friday November 17, 2023 @10:54PM (#38314907)
lol. Just tried to post this and got re-directed here. Surprising that it's not doing a lot better, considering what just happened.
Re:My solopreneur story: zero to $45K/mo in 2 years
on Sunday September 24, 2023 @01:36AM (#37630398)
yup yup. cc Why don't people realize that 'high software profit margins' are fugazi?(https://buttondown.email/tZero19e/archive/why-dont-people-re...)
Re:Ask HN: Why are most US startups not solving novel problems?
on Friday September 08, 2023 @12:46PM (#37436027)
Almost everyone is chasing the same $$$ from cheap software. Cc https://buttondown.email/tZero19e/archive/why-dont-people-re...
Entrepreneurial Statecraft Gets the Goods
Re:No, the elite do not 'gamble' on development
on Wednesday May 31, 2023 @09:08AM (#36137933)
HN should neither be dunk-istan nor snark-istan. Don't be an idiot.
No, the elite do not 'gamble' on development
Re:Ask HN: Why don't people realize that 'high software profit margins...
on Thursday May 11, 2023 @01:53PM (#35905729)
In the case of compressed air, actual work is being done to make it... compressed air.
With water, it is still very very cheap relative to the value it provides. Why isn't water 20% of the GDP of the world? Isn't it that important? (https://alexdanco.com/2015/11/23/ways-to-think-about-water/, never read this essay btw, read several of Alex's other essays though. I'm assuming the essay talks about the importance of water)
Re:Ask HN: Why don't people realize that 'high software profit margins...
on Thursday May 11, 2023 @01:51PM (#35905702)
Your first and second paragraphs are better arguments for subscriptions over one-time payment than they are for the existence of high profit margins despite software's cheapnes.
3rd paragraph. I'm not arguing against profits just, overly high ones in the face of cheap 'raw materials'.
4th and 5th. Questioning high profit margins in businesses (didn't realize eggs too had high margins tbh) and wondering if profits should be capped seem like obviously related things.
Solutions? In the case of SaaS:
— Product pricing starting high, but declining over time (yes, literally making laws that new software MUST be absurdly expensive at first).
Would mean:
(i) Fewer 100th x competitor software product since it's hard convincing people to part with say $100, you need to actually have a 10x solution.
(ii) Increased organic word of mouth growth, since users have an incentive (declining pricing) to increase total users.
Ask HN: Why don't people realize that 'high software profit margins' are fugazi?
The popular reason pure software companies have great profit margins is for marginal investment in providing the product/service to more users, given software's replicability. That's the reason everyone likes to repeat.The true reason is that they price similarly to physical infrastructure companies, without the same recurring costs. The difference between physical infrastructure costs and...
Re:What do you think about the next-gen bookmarking tool?
on Saturday April 22, 2023 @12:21PM (#35668124)
Could you build in a feature to allow people download stuff instead of to local, but to G Drive/Dropbox into it? It's a way to permanently have stuff you like on your own drive. Personal web archiving too. There are these suite of tools around "personal information management" which need to be built.
Re:Coinbase suspending USDC:USD conversions over the weekend
on Saturday March 11, 2023 @01:36AM (#35106059)
If anyone doubts that this is just a theory, I can confirm it. I live in third-world countries and use USDC exactly for this.
Re:Hard time figuring out basic things in reactjs
on Thursday December 29, 2022 @10:16AM (#34173445)
Ask ChatGPT whatever questions you have about React.
Re:Ask HN: Do you use a bookmark manager?
on Monday December 26, 2022 @03:33AM (#34135831)
Yes. Raindrop.
RSS clients, read-later apps, and bookmark managers are all in the same category in my head. I have no idea why the companies who make the most successful app for one of them doesn't make apps for the others. It's exactly the same kind of person who needs all 3 apps.
Re:Show HN: Create a Paid Link to Anything
on Tuesday December 20, 2022 @10:41AM (#34067409)
What's up with all of this financializing of everything??
Ask HN: Past examples of new multi-applicable software (AI, Blockchain)?
I'm looking for examples of new software from the past (contemporarily: AI, Blockchain) upon which entire companies (and a new category) were going to be built, but ended up absorbed by real companies in real sectors?We currently have a "Blockchain sector" in tech, with "Blockchain companies" . But that's not a real sector. The Blockchain itself not a platform, it's a tool.( Ditto AI).What will...
Ask HN: Why are downloads in browsers still default to local and not the cloud?
Why, in 2022, are downloads in devices/browsers default still to local? Shouldn't downloads by default to the cloud not be an option in all browsers/devices by now?It is 100% what will happen in the future for tons of reasons. It makes more sense as people download things to have access to them at a later time. The cloud is the cloud, independent of physical devices which do get lost and will...
Re:Arc Browser Company: Chrome and Safari face a new challenger
on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @05:24PM (#31575135)
Why aren't they doing this on mobile?
Re:Ask HN: Which country/city are you most bullish on?
on Tuesday May 31, 2022 @01:33AM (#31566403)
Haha. This is one of the weirdest things people seem to believe on the internet, but is 100% going to be proven to be wrong. Incompetent governance and terrible culture >>> large populations of dynamic young people.
Re:Ask HN: Why didn't Coinbase 'IPO' by issuing tokens via an ICO?
on Monday May 30, 2022 @03:30PM (#31562708)
Why couldn't they issue as low as $10,000 of equity as crypto coins? How is the entire idea ever going to get tested in the real world when the company best positioned to do so lacks courage?
If they lack the balls to do this, why are they positioning themselves as being representative of ideas around decentralized tech? Doesn't that make them pansy little fraudulent boys only excited about number-go-up bullshit like NFTs that fleece the public?
Ask HN: Why didn't Coinbase 'IPO' by issuing tokens via an ICO?
Why did coinbase IPO by selling shares traditionally instead of issuing tokens via an ICO? Wouldn't that have shown a real belief in what they are doing?If there are current legitimate legal risks to issuing all their publicly-sellable equity via an ICO? Why not do only some of it as crypto coins?What's stopping them from issuing a few coins even now? They don't need to need the money. They...
Re:Ask HN: Why don't startups running out of cash cut all salaries by ...
on Saturday May 28, 2022 @10:31AM (#31540623)
Edited the question to include 'temporary'. You would pay them back in the future, after the company has recovered from the economic setback.
I'm asking the question in the context of the current downturn. Say the need to reduce burn were not a result of poor hiring decisions, but larger macro reasons like difficulty raising funding in the face of a general downturn.
Ask HN: Why don't startups running out of cash cut all salaries by a % instead?
Why don't startups running out of cash temporarily cut all salaries by a % instead of firing a % of staff?If you can comfortably decide who to cut in a bad financial position, weren't you hiring poorly in the first place? And how does firing affect morale and team spirit Vs cutting everyone's salary?