Hacker News Reader

basseqon No One Wants Used Clothes Anymore (2018)

Original thread from 2018 on this article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16168410

basseqon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (December 2020)

  Location: Washington, DC Metro Area / Northern Virginia
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Yes
  Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnwhittet/
  Email: john@basseq.com

I'm a strategy and operations leader for high-growth SaaS with 12+ years experience. Could include things like Chief of Staff, COO, Strategic Projects, Revenue Ops, BizOps, etc. Ex-consultant with a background in full-stack web development who can get stuff done across product, marketing, sales, support, and finance.

basseqon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (November 2020)

Location: Northern Virginia (VA), Washington DC

Remote: Aren't We All Right Now?

Willing to relocate: Yes

Corporate strategy, operations, customer experience (CX), strategic projects, SaaS metrics with a background in full-stack web development.

Résumé/CV: http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnwhittet

Email: john[at]basseq.com

basseqon NYC's new subway tool settles the biggest debate in maps

This is a beautiful intersection of the iconic MTA design elements with digital mapping tech, along with real-time data feeds. The video is worth the 10 minute watch. I'd love to know more about the development and backend itself. And I'm shocked Work & Co. did this pro bono.

basseqon Microsoft's CEO is tired of working from home and he's not alone

There used to be soooo many small interactions that happen throughout the day that right now require way too much formal structure.

That's what I miss. It's those conversations in the hallway, or seeing someone in the break room that reminds you about something you meant to ask them about.

It's really hard to replicate that in WFH. I can't want to say "can't be replicated" or "shouldn't need to be". I think they absolutely should be replicated. But I don't know how. Things like slack help, but it's just too disconnected. You can have "fun meetings" (a contradiction in terms!), but those feel like a waste of time. Zoom happy hours exhaust me.

basseqon Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

You may have gotten this from other comments, but he is on leave right now, so you'll have to wait a little longer before you start getting those juicy daily musings.

basseqon Adventures in Dealing with Domain Squatters

This is a poorly-worded argument, and I’m not surprised they lost. I’m no fan of domain squatters or speculators, but spase.io doesn’t pass the burden of proof here. Is is annoying that someone is sitting on spase.com for many years and refusing to do anything with it except sell it to someone who will pay their premium? Yes. Is that illegal. Ehhhh.

basseqon The Treachery of Image Files

I enjoyed the writing and exploration of different image creation formats. So novice question, but are the resulting GIFs actually different (and if so, how)? Or is this just different ways to generate identical output?

basseqon Citibank's $900M Blunder

Revlon did not instruct Citibank to pay the $176.2M:

> Their first line of defence is Revlon’s own statement — “Revlon did not pay down the loan or any part of the loan”.

IANAL, but this seems pretty cut and dried in favor of Citibank.

Citibank does not have any liability to Brigade, and they paid the money "from its own account". Combined with Citibank's role as an intermediary between Revlon (who, again, did not instruct or actually pay the money) and Brigade, I don't see how Brigade has any claim on Citibank's money.

basseqon A more detailed, colorful map

This was my reaction as well. It seems to be a fundamental shift from showing human boundaries (parks, etc.) to natural clime changes. Forget "more colorful"—that's a massive change in the intent of the data that seems to be glossed over.

Personally, I care much more about knowing where parks and public spaces are vs. whether the surrounding land is "arid, icy, forested, [or] mountainous".

basseqon ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50B in takeover bid

Also, from the article:

"The investors’ bid values TikTok at 50 times its projected 2020 revenue of about $1 billion..."

So that's a projected revenue growth of 465%. That's still projected, but a big number.

basseqon Airbnb Was Like a Family, Until the Layoffs Started

Explicitly, the mechanism for that would be a furlough.

Not so explicit, but most laid-off employees are "eligible for re-hire". That assumes, a) the company re-opens your same position, b) you still want to work for the company and haven't found a job in the interim, and c) that "economic situation" improves quickly to allow for the above, which it probably won't.

basseqon Approaches to providing affordable housing for non-profit workers

And third, nonprofit doesn't mean you don't make money. Ikea is a nonprofit. A job at a nonprofit, thus, is a job for any other entity.

basseqon Tuvalu Makes $4M a Year

Obviously. More to the point, what other incremental costs exist, if any, that would account for a $20 premium in price when cost appears to be going up by $8?

basseqon Tuvalu Makes $4M a Year

To complete the title: "Tuvalu Makes $4M/yr from the .tv Domain".

From a December 2019 Washington Post article[1], there are ~500,000 registered .tv domains. The math on that works out to license fees of ~$8/domain ($4M/500k).

Considering .com is around $10/yr and .tv is around $30/yr[2], I'm interested to know where the incremental $12 goes ($30 - $8 - $10).

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2019/12/23/tuvalu...

[2] Namecheap

basseqon Wirecard CEO exits as search for missing billions hits dead end in Asia

Which, if you want to get pedantic—and yes! let's get pedantic!—probably correlates with a lower probability that the assassination isn't successful. Because if they're irrational, they're going to end up meeting an undercover cop in the parking lot of the local K-Mart or something.

See also: Tiger King. Which is probably the best citation and the best thing I'll type all day.

basseqon Wirecard CEO exits as search for missing billions hits dead end in Asia

With the important caveats of 1) the implicit costs of murder-for-hire are probably pretty high (risk of going to jail, e.g.) and 2) killing someone doesn't necessarily make the lawsuit go away—though that doesn't help the person being killed.

So the utility formula is something like:

  (p[c] * c[f] + c[a]) ÷ p[l] > c[l]

  where:
  p[c] = probability of getting caught
  p[l] = probability of the lawsuit being dropped
  c[f] = value of your freedom
  c[a] = cost of an assassin
  c[l] = cost of losing the lawsuit

You can layer in additional probabilities—like the probability of the assassination being successful, or the probability of winning the case. This is just fun to talk about the utility formula of assassinations on HN.

But it's probably true that as c[l] increases, c[f] increases as well, and p[l] drops. So it's rarely (never?) worth this trade-off.

basseqon You Can Pay Credit Suisse Not to Work There

This is an interesting way to spin an unpaid furlough... which many people are being forced to take right now.

It's basically equivalent. "You are going to be furloughed for 2 weeks without pay" means, "You have an additional 2 weeks of vacation, but we're going to cut your annual salary by 1/26th."

Which is the same thing as, "Give us back 1/26th of your annual salary, and we'll give you 2 additional weeks of PTO."

basseqon Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

Which, if you break it down further:

1. Everyone's "algorithm" is different. Even if you could bake every possible filter into your eGrocery product, can you imagine the UX nightmare?

2. The "that I like the most" is a tough thing to quantify. Who is "I"? Me? My wife? My kids? My mom who's coming to visit this weekend? What do I like? Specific brands? Things I've bought before? From that store, or a different one? Things I might like because they share characteristics?

basseqon Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

Even if quality is there, how ripe do you want? Are you going to use those avocados tonight, or later in the week? Do you like green bananas or ones that are turning brown?

Let alone the "what looks good today?" or "what's on sale today?" method of shopping!

Even packaged goods are tough. When I'm in a store, I know quickly which product I want. I may not remember the brand name, but I can scan the shelf and find it.

Online, I have to sort through a myriad of options, not to mention sizes and variants.

BBQ sauce, for instance, returns 58 results on Peapod. Sweet Baby Ray's, which I like, is 22 of those. There are 13 different variants (original, hickory & brown sugar, honey, buffalo sauce, sweet'n spicy, honey mustard, honey teriyaki, sweet teriyaki, sweet vidalia onion, maple, sweet chili glaze, honey chipotle, no sugar added) and 7 different sizes (14oz, 16oz, 18oz, 18.5oz, 28oz, 40oz, 80oz).

Holy crap!

I know what the label looks like, and I know the bottle is about yea-big. The images online are 200x200... I can barely SEE the label.

Then, what if what I want isn't in stock? Is it going to appear on the page? Am I just not going to get it? Would I get a substitute, as I might if I was in the store?

By the time I do that mental exercise for 50 items, I might as well drive to the store.

These are hard challenges.

One thing that might make a difference is integration with club cards. Giant knows what I buy down to frequency and UPC. Why haven't they done better integration to link my in-person buying with encouraging me to buy the same items online?

basseqon Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

Absolutely true. You have to decide where your priorities are, and what you’re willing to sacrifice.

My point was the simpler one that having kids in of itself doesn’t hold you back.

basseqon Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

My point is that having kids massively strengthened those attributes in me—and others I've spoken with. I wouldn't have been in the same position otherwise.

All this is to say... it's not about fast or slow. It's about different and finding what works.

And there are counter-examples, too. I worked with a guy who ran a global business unit—a couple billion dollars, probably—and had 5 kids. Might he have been even more successful had he remained childless? Maybe... who knows. He was good either way.

I volunteered with a woman who is now the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. She brought her daughter with her, and doing social good as a family was an important part of her personal and. professional life.

If you're good and driven, it doesn't matter.

basseqon Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

One of the hardest things for me pre-kids was standing up for myself. Unrealistic expectations, people with no respect for your time, meetings that stretched well past 5pm with no good reason.

Kids don't make that easier—and in fact, make it harder because you simply can't roll over and let people walk all over you. That transition was painful. And, if I'm being honest, is still hard for me.

The first time our CEO suggested we meet at 6:30pm, and I said, "Nope, I have to cook dinner and put the kids in the bath" was... terrifying.

While there are still times where my family gets the short end of the stick, I've found it to be empowering, and I think begets respect.

No one respects a doormat—kids or no, don't be one.

basseqon Ask HN: Do kids drag your career down?

Kids—I have 3—reinforce attributes that should be valuable in the workforce.

* I ruthlessly prioritize — you have to when you're balancing a family.

* I don't dwell on mistakes – milk, quite literally, is spilled on a daily basis.

* I'm a better manager – kids teach you to be clear and immediate in your feedback, not to mention more empathetic

* I speak better – reading bedtime stories means you practice public speaking every night

A company that measures performance in hours or dedication will not reward those attributes. But the good ones will happily give you flexibility in exchange for good work.

If you're struggling to find a balance, know first that you're not alone. But recognize quickly that your employment environment may be incompatible with family life, and so what's "slowing your career down" is your management... not your kids or your own performance.

basseqon Covid-19 at a homeless shelter in Boston: Implications for universal testing

This is fair feedback on the headline, as the linked article does NOT make that claim. Instead, it makes the same point as @zadkey that "illustrate the rapidity with which COVID-19 can be widely transmitted in a homeless shelter setting and suggest that universal PCR testing, rather than a symptom triggered approach, may be a better strategy for identifying and mitigating COVID-19 among people experiencing homelessness."

basseqon CSS Zen Garden

I was a huge fan of the CSS Zen Garden, and was so excited to have my submission accepted back in 2006 (#106!) when I was first starting out.

Generally, it was a great demonstration of CSS at a time when CSS was rather novel, and the "separation of content and presentation" sticks with me today, and forms a good foundation for things like built-once responsive web design.

For me personally, I met a lot of interesting people through CSSZG, including Bill Zeller (RIP[1]) and others.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2074109

basseqon Google Fonts Analytics

> why don't browsers just include the most popular fonts, so the underlying OS doesn't matter?

Well, pontificating here:

1. Because many applications don't ship with additional fonts, and it's an additional layer of complexity. Some do—Microsoft Word comes to mind, IIRC.

2. Because you're still left with the same problem: unless all browsers can agree on an additional set of standard fonts, you as a web developer will only want to use those installed by Chrome and Edge and Safari and Firefox.

3. Because licensing for desktop application may (?) be more of a pain than licensing for web usage. Which may not matter for Google Fonts, since they may be the license holder for all anyway. I don't know.

basseqon Google Fonts Analytics

Font selection in browsers isn't limited. Browsers don't have embedded fonts—they rely on whatever fonts are installed in the operating system.

The challenge is that to ensure consistency, you need to use the "lowest common denominator" of fonts that are installed by default across all operating systems. Which leaves you with (like) Arial, Times, Courier, Verdana, Georgia, Palatino, and (hahahaha) Comic Sans.

The real answer here is why web designers use Google Fonts as opposed to embedding their own fonts. To which the answer is: it's so much easier. (Tech, licensing, formats, compatibility, etc.)

basseqon Reasons not to become famous

The link between "no photo" and "couldn't find a photo" are different things. #36 (Dieter Schwarz) pops up with a ton of photos when I google him, for instance.

basseqon No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

At least do SOMETHING. Perfectly fine with an email.