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JohnnyConatus

610 karma · joined June 13, 2016

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JohnnyConatus··on CTO Lunches
NYC group?
JohnnyConatus··on Is the Lean Startup Dead?
Theoretically you're right. In practice not enough customers think about that risk for it to have a material impact on the startup's financial viability.
JohnnyConatus··on The End of the TV Writers’ Room?
I met up with a pro TV writer I know and he said he was so happy the season was over because he could finally go to a mattress store and buy a new mattress. He said he didn't have time to do it for the last X months.

Basically being a TV writer is like working in video games; there's another person right behind you who would love to have your job because of the perceived glamor so terrible conditions persist.

JohnnyConatus··on The Middle Child Is Going Extinct
Going extinct? Typical middle-child attention getting stunt.
JohnnyConatus··on Please stop asking me to use the app
They should have bought Shine and called it a day. Amazing how poorly their new UI works compared to a Chrome extension.
JohnnyConatus··on Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings
See this AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/comments/6lvwh4/im_an_ar...
JohnnyConatus··on Ada Diamonds sells lab-grown diamonds and jewelers can't tell
I.e. the mattress in a box business model.
JohnnyConatus··on When a College Takes on American Poverty
The Atlantic and other sites regularly change A/B test article titles so they likely changed it
JohnnyConatus··on PatternFly – a web UI framework by RedHat
Probably because complaining isn't allowed at work. They mandated the usage so that's not a good sign especially when OPs complaints are deal breakers for anyone who isn't mandated to use it.

I.e. the emperor has too much kb.

JohnnyConatus··on How to Run a Blockchain on a Deserted Island with Pen and Paper
SpaldingCoin is the hottest ICO in the archipelago
JohnnyConatus··on Ask HN: How do you handle long-running workflows at your company?
Have you tried integrating home-grown services into their workflows? Curious as otherwise it looks pretty good.
JohnnyConatus··on Google is bleeding cash trying to take on Amazon in the smart home
Smart lights are the killer app for Alexa. There's no going back once you have it. And the only thing keeping most people from getting smart lights is the cost which will fall.
JohnnyConatus··on Chasing fake volume: a crypto-plague
White label exchange providers openly advertise wash trading as a feature. Also many provide liquidity from other exchanges so using aggregate market cap across exchanges is extremely inaccurate.
JohnnyConatus··on Uber enters dockless bike wars with Jump acquisition
Also winter. Most of the dense cities in the U.S. also have significant winter weather that makes biking less ideal.
JohnnyConatus··on Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails
IANAL, is this a real risk? This sounds like suing a paper company for a ransom note written on it's paper. You can bring a suit for nearly anything but it feels like there would be a lot of precedent to immediately dismiss it.
JohnnyConatus··on Foxconn buys Belkin for $866M
According to sources, Foxconn really didn't want to buy Belkin but that's all they had at the store.
JohnnyConatus··on Lessons from Spotify
Spotify is an excellent product. They have addressed and solved almost every problem users cited for why they wouldn't pay for music via other means.

It's time to admit it: consumers do not deserve this level of product in exchange for listening to a few ads. These users are obviously unprofitable. And the premium version could likely be more expensive, too.

The devaluation of music was a collective moral convenience. Now it's time to pay.

JohnnyConatus··on Eight Years On, Google Fiber Is a Faint Echo of the Disruption Promised
I have FIOS and aside from finally syncing my online backups, I've been struck by how little difference / improvement there is over cable. I'm not a gamer so the latency doesn't matter. My TV isn't 4k so no help there and I suspect video "CDNs" will be the primary fix for most of the market.

What is the best use case for fiber? I feel like I'm missing it.

JohnnyConatus··on The WeWork Manifesto: First, Office Space. Next, the World
Look up B Corporations. There is another way. However most founders really want to be rich and few VCs will invest in this structure.
JohnnyConatus··on Optimizely’s decision to ditch its free plan
This should be higher. Optimize will eat the low end portion of the market just like Google analytics did.
JohnnyConatus··on Writing Dockerfiles for Node.js Web Apps
When does it make sense to run Node on docker vs Heroku dynos or something similar? Is it just a cost thing at a certain number? Are these significantly specialized containers? The types mentioned in the doc seem like basic web apps.

I've used Docker for things like complicated java dev environments. But it seems over-applied for basic web apps.

JohnnyConatus··on Artist Nan Goldin​ takes on the billionaire family behind OxyContin
While the pharmaceutical companies deserve penalties, it's ridiculous that someone with a pre-existing Valium addiction and a history of "hard drug" addiction is blaming the pharmaceutical companies.

Nan, admit it, you like getting high.

JohnnyConatus··on Carphone Warehouse fined after failures put customer and employee data at risk
Stewart Lee on the values of Carphone Warehouse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2firijxQOo
JohnnyConatus··on Ripple cofounder is now of of the world's richest people
I'm not an expert but has anyone made a solid argument for why the banks would use XRP as the medium of exchange versus the existing fiat reserve currency (USD) or a general use crypto currency (BTC/ETH/BCH/whatever wins)?

In contrast, I've seen multiple articles like the below which basically say 1) Ripple good, 2) XRP unnecessary. Based on nothing more than one person suddenly becoming one of the world's richest people with next to no market penetration, the hype vapors seem strong.

(I know there are proof of concepts being run but a PoC is no guarantee an implementation. Otherwise all fortune 500 employees would be wearing Google Glass while they ride their Segways.)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/ksamani/2017/12/20/the-bear-cas...

JohnnyConatus··on Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?
Built a fintech-ish startup all by myself, zero funding. I didn't intend to do it all by myself but it's not a sexy business so no one was jumping to go full-time. It came close to breaking me as a human being, honestly.

Anyway, I went from being a CTO who was constantly being pitched horrible no-good business ideas by first times CEOs - who as a rule, wanted to give me 10% equity but also wanted me to build the project for free - to a CEO who closed countless sales and knows his CAC and LTV like the back of his hand.

If I can, so can you but you have to manage CAC:LTV.

JohnnyConatus··on The Loneliness of the Long Distance Rocker
The nice thing about the old world of music was that when you played for an audience there was nothing going on but what you were doing. Now the band has to compete with everyone's phones.
JohnnyConatus··on The Loneliness of the Long Distance Rocker
The more competition that enters the market the more essential marketing and branding become to differentiate the product.

Everyone who told us musicians that flattening the barriers to entry would lead to more income were either ignorant of economics or willfully ignoring it further their interests. Few bands make more money off of Bandcamp then they did flogging their CDs.

JohnnyConatus··on High Sierra macOS freezing and stops
I think your right. But if the idea is the halo effect that keeps me in the ecosystem, they need to do better on the OS/laptop front and on the Siri front. Both are slipping.
JohnnyConatus··on Uber is officially a cab firm, says European court
That's one hell of a post hoc justification to justify the unethical and illegal behavior of the 1% to capture even more of the economic pie.
JohnnyConatus··on Estonia is planning to launch Estcoin
Reminds me of the QZ article where the Chinese bitcoin miners all swear they're only interested in blockchain as a technology, not as store of value. Suuuuuure.
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