alex_c

They are, it's called "Save the cat".

https://slate.com/culture/2013/07/hollywood-and-blake-snyder...

Appreciate the reply!

Mux is definitely on our shortlist, the website and developer documentation made a great first impression. Very clear and easy to understand, the developer focus is obvious.

I'm evaluating video platforms for a new project right now, and Mux is one of the options.

It looks like a crowded field with a big range of offerings, but also some very direct competitors. I'm curious what sets Mux apart from the others!

The "Show HN" thread from 2018 is a good read.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16431022

I just found out about Google Takeout through this thread.

I was able to schedule it to do backups every 2 months for 1 year, and upload the backups directly to my Dropbox account.

If it works as advertised, I'm pretty happy with that!

Interesting thought experiment! Let's take it one step further. Can the "pay what you want" value be negative?

As a manager I would be responsible for providing you with a steady stream of interesting or meaningful work. I would have to structure the work to fit around your flexible schedule, shield you from doing the parts you don't like, and change it up if you start getting bored. But I would not be able to rely on your output for anything mission critical.

How much would you pay me to provide this service to you?

(Please take this as tongue-in-cheek not as a snarky comment, it genuinely is an interesting thought experiment despite the obvious issues it raises).

You missed a banner nagging me to download the mobile app, I can still see actual content on about 25% of my phone screen!

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/when-should-i-wear... (this article is from 1 year ago today).

>It was simply unclear whether cloth masks or the simple medical masks would help significantly if the population would wear them.

That is under-stating what the early messaging was. In Canada, the official messaging was not neutral, it was actively anti-mask early on. It focused entirely on the potential (unproven at the time) dangers of wearing masks and discounted any potential (unproven at the time) benefits.

Given how many Asian countries were heavily using masks early on, given how many health professionals were arguing in favour of masks early on, and given how quickly policy did a 180 to mandatory masks, this messaging could only be one of three things: intentionally misleading to protect supplies of PPE, intentionally malicious (why??), or incompetence in communication strategy verging on criminal negligence.

I welcome any arguments to change my mind. That early messaging should not be underplayed as "it was complicated".

Golden Horseshoe population is 9 million, Vancouver area is another 2.5 million. It's not Canada, but it's a big chunk of Canada.

This is me. I've tried various note taking apps but I never stick with them for more than a few days.

My notebook is everything. If I don't have it for any reason (most often: it ran out and need to buy a new one) my productivity actually takes a big hit. Basically: if I don't write it down, I probably won't get it done.

>I can't believe how many took a margin call as some nefarious conspiracy

Why? We have the intersection of 3 things:

1. A financial system with opaque and often counter-intuitive inner workings (from an outsider's perspective)

2. A history of financial firms "innovating" (sometimes outright fraud, sometimes legal but leading to new legislation to restrict the "innovation"). Also the industry is not exactly known for being guided by strong moral principles.

3. A lot of money at stake.

If this is not a perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories, I don't know what is!

Thank you, I’ve been reading about this all day but this is the first time I see this referenced.

I guess the billion dollar question is, legally: does buying stocks in anticipation of a short squeeze, and communicating the same to others, count as manipulation?

Then block new accounts for a day or two until this blows over, not specific stocks.

Why would anyone use a trading platform that now has a history of picking and choosing what trades you are allowed to make?

Big if true (have to take everything with a grain of salt nowadays).

Can anyone with more knowledge than me comment on what Robinhood's exposure is in all this? My understanding is they do not have any direct financial exposure, only reputational risk (and of course downsides from their users potentially losing a lot of money, but that should be part of the game). Is that correct?

And does blocking specific trades today open them up to future liability?

It is infuriating that Google's default action for these automated takedowns is to remove the app and ask the developer to upload a new build with a new package name, which means not keeping any of the existing users.

It's happened to two of my clients in the past 6 months based on small infractions in the app metadata, but no issue with the app itself.

In both cases the app was taken down with no advance notice, and eventually reinstated after an appeal and several very stressful days of waiting.

Apple seems to be very selective during the approval process, and is often inconsistent so a minor update can get rejected for something that was approved many times before. I guess different people review and interpret the rules differently so maybe this is unavoidable.

Google (from what I can tell) seems to take a very different approach and relies much more on automated enforcement. The process is on average much lower friction for the developer, but getting previously approved app listings removed at any time without warning is not a good experience.

Edit: I forgot to mention that you can't actually edit the metadata while the app is suspended and re-submit it for review. The only two choices are to appeal and edit the description after the app is reinstated, or create a completely new app listing.

I mean... no? If there’s a trade off involved then the “best” solution is the one that works for me at the cost of inconveniencing others :) I don’t think you’ll convince people to think otherwise.

You know, I often feel like the success of a business is set at the beginning. There is certain trajectory created by initial starting conditions (founding team, vision, talent, timing), market fit, and external forces and events, and it is very hard to escape that. As CEOs and founders we like to think we have a lot more control than we actually do.

The point of VC is to inject money to achieve hypergrowth. But how much of that growth is achieved because of VC money, and how much because of the "natural trajectory" of the business? Or to ask another way, what portion of the VC money actually affects the trajectory and what portion makes no measurable difference?

This graph shows exactly what I mean. If you only had the "Creator earnings" part of the graph, would you be able to tell where spending was cut?

https://sahillavingia.com/operating.png

I've often felt this way, but this is the first time I see it summarized so succinctly in one image.

Probably related to this 3-year-old unresolved issue with Bluetooth headphones:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Ongoing-Issues/Spotify-won-...

>Maybe? Again, it depends on what your definition of "best" is. If not enough people in Toronto think it's important enough to have a robust public transit system, then it doesn't happen. I'm very confident Toronto has the resources required to complete an ambitious project if desired. >If the project isn't a good use of resources, indecision and inaction is the better outcome.

I wish I shared your confidence, but this suggests otherwise:

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/09/26/transit-the-number-1-...

I find it difficult to accept that this is the best outcome by any metric I can think of.

>Unlike in China, these discussions already happen regularly, and the key difference between the status quo in China and the West is the decision making process, so that's where the conversation is focused.

Is it? The conversation is focused on how China is authoritarian, not on how the Western (I really should say North American) decision-making process often leads to poor outcomes and stagnation when it comes to public projects.

This IS getting pretty far off-topic from the actual article, so I'll stop here.

I agree with your points about what is and isn't "better", but that is not what I am arguing.

Are you saying there are no lessons the West can learn from China's infrastructure projects without resorting to authoritarianism, IP theft, or environmental harm? That there is no way to pick apart and separate some positive learnings from the negatives?

Are you saying THIS is the best we can do as a Western democracy?

https://torontolife.com/city/transportation/tortured-history...

To me, this kind of paralysis on infrastructure projects is not "better" by any definition you use. It's not an intentional tradeoff between infrastructure and environmental protection, or between public development and property rights. It's just indecision, waste, and stagnation.

Every time a comparison to China's infrastructure comes up, the knee jerk reaction is to point out that it's an authoritarian regime so of course they can force through any infrastructure project they want. Which is fair enough, but it drowns out any discussion asking "Hey, CAN we do any better in the West than we are doing right now? Is what we have good enough?"

>Authoritarian regimes are often highly efficient

I would argue the opposite is usually true. Setting aside China, authoritarian regimes are usually NOT known for being efficient or well-run.

I am not American, but I came back from my visits to China with a similar feeling to the grandparent comment. The West tends to stick their fingers in their ears and yell "Authoritarian regime, I can't hear you!" at the mere suggestion that China does certain things better and there may be something to learn there.

This is also consistent with the old joke that developers count like cavemen: zero, one, many!

Ahh good find, and according to CrunchBase that Stripe fund was $10M total.

That makes a bit more sense now.

I was incredibly confused to read "Investors are writing off their $800,000 investment". Sure, $800K isn't huge money for a fund, but it still seems... odd... to be so nonchalant about it?

Then I checked General Catalyst, they manage multiple funds in the $500M - $1B range[1]. In that context the $800K really is a rounding error, around 0.1% of a single fund's size.

It never ceases to amaze me how money stops being money past a certain amount (which would be life-changing for most people), and just becomes numbers to move around.

[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/general-catalyst-par...

I very very strongly reject the idea that "What people are saying on social media" is worth summarizing or covering by the media.

I can list many reasons, the top few would be:

1. It is too easy to game "what people are saying" on social media

2. Loudest voices / most extreme positions get picked up, amplified, and passed off as "what people are saying"

3. It is too easy / predictable to game what kind of messages the media chooses to summarize

4. None of it matters (see my original post about what people say vs. what people do)

If an idea is worth discussing, it is worth discussing regardless of its source (social media or otherwise). Conversely, and I know this is open for debate, but Twitter is not a great medium for discussing ideas.

Social media regularly reminds me of the Douglas Adams quote:

“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

That is, on average, what people are saying on social media. It is not worth summarizing and covering.

Sometimes I wish I had a way to block Twitter from my life completely. I don't even use it, but I wish for an AdBlock-like tool that would:

- block Twitter content in news articles

- block links to articles with Twitter content from ever being shown to me in the first place

Most news articles provide little value to my life anyway, but I don't think I've ever read an article referencing Twitter quotes that was worthwhile.

While I'm dreaming, if I had any way to filter all the news about what public figures say, and keep only the news about what they actually do...

>But the number of your customers who want unbounded complexity is very, very low.

It's worth making a distinction here between complexity and flexibility, which I think some designers / product managers fail to grasp.

Users don't want complexity, but they do want flexibility, especially from tools they use all the time. It's a hard balance to make products that are simple and flexible, but the products that pull it off tend to rule the world. The humble spreadsheet software is the ultimate example.

For example: adding more whitespace and limiting the number of fields on a screen will reduce complexity for users, but it may also reduce flexibility and end up as a net negative. (looking at you FreshBooks, I'm still angry about that redesign a few years back!)

>Second, for apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no longer be delayed over guideline violations except for those related to legal issues. Developers will instead be able to address the issue in their next submission.

This is good news. We've had instances in the past where a critical bug fix was delayed because of a completely unrelated and minor issue with the update (for example: issues with the store listing content that was approved in previous updates but now rejected).

This was a bad experience for everyone involved. Obviously for developers, but I'm still not sure how much Apple cares about that. But more importantly for users, who may be stuck with a broken or unsafe app for another day or more for relatively trivial reasons.

I think this change is made in good faith by Apple. Of course there are always bad actors who may try to game it, but overall it should improve the process for developers and users.

I’ve been there. It was incredibly stressful and tiring, especially towards the end. I could not focus on anything for weeks after, let alone think about starting something new.

Give yourself some time. Eat, sleep, work out, live - chances are you might not have done much of that lately. I would suggest travel, but maybe not right now :)

Look after yourself first, allow yourself to be bored again, the creativity and the itch will come back. But you can’t force it if you’re running on empty.

Can you explain?

Hong Kong and Tokyo somehow manage to stay creative and interesting despite being more expensive per square foot than the new Toronto.

The difference, in my uneducated opinion: commercial and retail space in those cities goes up. It is not strictly at street level, as in Toronto. Look up and you will see signs for bunny cafes, stationery, restaurants, all kinds of small/odd fashion stores...

All the condo districts in Toronto look the same: a small sliver of retail on the ground floor, invariably Rexall, Rabba's, or Aromas. And that's pretty much it.

Would love to hear from someone more familiar with urban planning on this topic.