HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

bproper

4,726 karma · joined February 1, 2011

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Player

Farm fresh lover

Tech blogger and strategist

submissionscomments
bproper··on Any employee can build apps and it's hell for developers
Sounds about right:

"Business users are spinning up AI agents left and right, feeling like they can build anything. Meanwhile, developers are stuck being the ‘reality police’ — trying to make these things actually work in production while secretly wondering if they’re automating themselves out of a job.

At the end of the day, many devs feel like they go through all this chaos … only to end up with a solution not that different from the software they’ve built before."

bproper··on Kickstarter launches Drip, a Patreon competitor
Kickstarter acquired a startup called Drip last year, and this product was built off that team/idea.

https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/drip-joins-kickstarter

bproper··on U.F.C. Sells Itself for $4B
At this point, however, they have built an interesting business beyond their own league and live events.

They have a subscription service - $10 a month - that has both the biggest library of important MMA fights and acts as the streaming platform and distributor for dozens of smaller leagues.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/8/12122826/ufc-200-sale-strea...

The UFC is even branching out to stream more niche combat sports that aren't MMA.

Because they were banned from television for so long, they were forced to focus on the digital side of the business, and it is now paying big dividends.

bproper··on Do You Love Music? Silicon Valley Doesn’t
"The song “Drag Me Down” by One Direction appeared on YouTube 2,700 times after the service was asked to take down unlicensed copies. These 2,700 pirated uploads allowed Google to continue profiting from advertising while the artists got nothing."

That is objectively not true. Labels are very strict about issuing takedown notices. The only videos that stay up are those using content ID, in which case the artist gets paid.

I know this is an op-ed, but shame on the NYT for allowing such a blatant falsehood to be published.

bproper··on An exoskeleton to make you feel older
Does it have a button to reverse the functionality and create a younger, stronger you?
bproper··on Samsung's Big Bet – American Software Startups
Going from a seed stage startup to a feature on 10 million TVs in less than a year sounds fun. Only downside is you aren't going to build your own billion dollar business with this model.
bproper··on How baseball’s tech team built HBO Now
You can't log into HBO now with you HBO Go credentials because they are two totally separate business models. You need a pay-tv subscription to authenticate HBO GO, while you pay a la carte for HBO Now and don't need cable. Cord cutter versus traditional.
bproper··on How baseball’s tech team built HBO Now
Another nail in cable TV's coffin
bproper··on This startup is bridging the gap between today's web and tomorrow's VR
I can see this being useful for sharing 3D models and perhaps some items in augmented reality commerce, but I doubt it will have much of a role to play in serious VR
bproper··on The story of Jelani Henry, who says Facebook likes landed him in Rikers
Jelani did not waive the right to a speedy trial, and in fact his lawyer filed the motion demanding one on three separate occasions before it was granted. This was more than one year into his incarceration.
bproper··on The story of Jelani Henry, who says Facebook likes landed him in Rikers
That's exactly what it was IMO
bproper··on The story of Jelani Henry, who says Facebook likes landed him in Rikers
The DA needs to present enough evidence at a grand jury to get an indictment. After that, at least in NY, much of the evidence does not have to be shared until trial. Plea deals in these big crew conspiracy cases often occur without the defendant seeing much of the evidence against them.
bproper··on The story of Jelani Henry, who says Facebook likes landed him in Rikers
I started the story after a friend, who is a social worker and civil rights activist, told me that he knew several kids from a large Crew Cut raid in Brooklyn, and that they were good kids who had left the city for college, but been dragged back by a conspiracy indictment relating to a crew they left years earlier. Very similar to Asheem's situation.

As I worked on the story for two years I became pretty depressed at times. I mostly write about technology - new gadgets and startups - which keep me feeling generally excited and optimistic about the future. With this story i really came to grips with the way the deck is stacked against poor people, doubly do for poor people of color growing up in high crime areas.

I didn't come away from this thinking anyone was 100% guilty or innocent. But I certainly know, based on what I was like in high school, that I would have made the same or worse choices as these two boys if my teenage reality had been like theirs.

bproper··on The story of Jelani Henry, who says Facebook likes landed him in Rikers
The state's attorney and mayor's office have both called for major changes at Riker's and threatened to sue if conditions are not improved there. But sadly that won't solve the problem of a clogged court system that allows prosecutors to delay trials for months or even years.
bproper··on The story of Jelani Henry, who says Facebook likes landed him in Rikers
Hey - writer of the story here. The goal was to show two brothers, very much two sides of the same coin - born one year apart, raised in the same environment. What choices did they make, how did that lead to different outcomes (or not).

It's a very long story and I don't honestly expect everyone on the internet to read it closely or all the way through. But to be clear, it was the older brother who owned a gun. Law enforcement never produced evidence that Jelani, the younger brother accused of double attempted murder, owned or used a firearm.

bproper··on The story of Jelani Henry, who says Facebook likes landed him in Rikers
Hey - I'm the reporter who wrote this story. Feel free to ask me any questions.
bproper··on Google Employees Secretly Live on Campus to Avoid Paying Rent
Hey Tomp - I wrote that post. I cited the author, linked extensively, and gave credit in multiple places. If there had been a contact on his HN bio, I would have reached out that way as well.
bproper··on Uber's playbook for sabotaging Lyft
This seems like cutthroat tactics, but not illegal as far as I can tell. Anyone know if this is by the book?
bproper··on Facebook acquires link-sharing app Branch for $15 million
This app never had any users outside the media bubble...seems like a soft landing acqui-hire.
bproper··on Fairfax strikes $4.7-billion deal to buy BlackBerry
One of the attractive things about Blackberry is that they have no debt.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/blackberry...

bproper··on Google vs. Death
Can anyone find meaningful detail in here about how Google hopes to solve the problem of death? Beyond the name of the company and the guy running it, this seems like a stock profile of Google X.
bproper··on Cyanogen raises $7 million to build a better version of Android
CyanogenMod, the company’s free open-source replacement firmware, has more than 8 million users, CEO Kirt McMaster says. But that counts only users who have elected to share data with Cyanogen, he says, estimating that the true number is two to three times that amount. "There’s always been lot of talk around who’s going to be the third dominant mobile computing platform," says McMaster, who previously co-founded Boost Mobile. "Windows Phone would probably be number three now. If you look at what our actual user base is, we might be equal to or greater than that."
bproper··on Will the Singularity turn us into gods or end the human race?
I don't know. Seems to me like artificial intelligence hasn't lived up to the hype. We've had great progress in increasing processor speeds, but not as much luck at the Turing test.
bproper··on A Letter from Tim Cook on Maps
Google was not going to give them turn-by-turn and they didn't want to keep falling behind. The only choice was to pull off the band-aid, release an inferior service, and then improve it with the help of users.
bproper··on How Social Security numbers became our insecure national ID
If SSN is so insecure, its amazing to me that the government has done more at a federal level to prevent private companies from requiring them.
bproper··on Failure is a feature: how Google stays sharp gobbling up startups
Google managed to hire Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Dick Costolo, but couldn't produce a meaningful competitor to Twitter.

Failure is a feature indeed.

bproper··on Google Acquires Snapseed iOS photo editing app
Great app, not sure this will really help them take on Instagram, but could bring some strong photo editing features to G+ app on mobile. Maybe even into Android as whole?
bproper··on SmartThings: Make Your World Smarter
very cool - love me some internet of things.

A side note: crowd-funding platforms are really sparking a renaissance in hardware startups. VCs have stopped betting on these companies, because software companies have a much cheaper and faster to scale. But the really interesting advancements are going to happen on the open-source hardware side, and consumers are willing to fund that in exchange for early access and involvement in the creative process.

bproper··on Cyborg America: inside the strange new world of basement body hackers
Smartphones made technology a ubiquitous part of our lives. Google glass will make them part of our body. This is the next step.
bproper··on FoundersCard Kicks To Expand Global Membership [Lifetime Discount Code]
Free4Life
Page 1 of 7Next →