curiouslurker

From what I've read, Kanye is too much of an egomaniac to pull off something like this. From the stories in Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holloway. And also the "grabbing the mic" incident with Taylor Swift.

Indeed! And you Stephen, are also very bad at reading people :)

I came cross this book some time in 1991 or 1992, growing up in a developing country. Not having access to or being able to afford Playboy or Hustler, it was popular among my early teenage friends because of the explicit pictures of the female anatomy!

You are clearly a puny human :)

Agreed. Here is an excerpt from the WSJ. I couldn't finish even the excerpt!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-human-promise-of-the-ai-rev...

Hagiography at its finest! But, a, cool, review!

It is hard to say Seattle "gave them the opportunity". They would likely have succeeded anywhere and one could argue they "gave to Seattle" with their creations.

Another billionaire, Ballmer, said at a private party that he does not care about the Seattle startup community. "Not in a callous way--I am all for more startups succeeding--it is just that I have only so much time in a day. Right now I care about my basketball team , my non-profit and learning Hebrew".

Could he just be pandering to his hosts? The concentration of talent and a whole ecosystem that supports entrepreneurs is a significant advantage. It will take time for any other region to amass the same advantages.

why is this on the front page? It is devoid of content.

"Yeah, it pretty simple. If it is hard to raise money figure out how you don’t have to—get to profitability.

That discipline is healthy. There are very few companies that have the hyper-growth that allows them to forgo profitability in the short-term and everyone wrongly assumes those examples are the norm, whether it’s a Facebook or a YouTube."

I think more Silicon Valley CEOs need to internalize this. They may have heard it, but from the looks of it, they have not internalized it.

Interesting but I often wonder how much better VCs are than the rest of the population at determining startup success. In hindsight they can always say "see, those two factors were important, for my X exit. Told you so" but they also pick companies that make zero sense. Like the $400 juicer company (backed by the most respected VCs in town).

Some also claim to have a thesis but will quickly drop it the moment a hot company comes along that violates their thesis and everyone seems to be investing. I'd like to see a VC publicly state a thesis and then invest in only companies that fit it for 10 years and then do better than average.

And how much of it is confirmation bias? If you back a Facebook early in your career, the very best entrepreneurs will gravitate to you and you will have more success.

Sounds likely, given that GS and Elon are tight. They gave him a huge personal line of credit on extremely favorable terms!

"There’s the old saying that A students become professors, B students become mid-level managers at large corporations and the C students endow buildings and professorships."

Is this really true? Where is from?

Perhaps hate is a strong word but he clearly does not like them! He does talk about how they only care about themselves, boss around founders and then claim credit for the founders' success.

Great read but did Steve Jobs really have personal integrity? He was famously double faced, manipulative and as petulant and petty as a child, often settling personal scores with business decisions.

Not true. To most corporate recruiters 'doing a startup' for a couple of years is almost the same as being unemployed. I faced this myself after years of slogging away at an unsuccessful project and then trying to get back into the job market.

Here's one of Austria's most famous exports.

Arnold's 6 Rules for Success: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RQO_OoNASU

Surely it can't have been too bad for him!

> A reassuring story for those of us who feel we are strong in many areas but fear we have deep, dangerous holes in certain fundamentals.

Then you will likely enjoy The Man Who Knew Infinity. Hardy and his peers were often shocked at the gaps Ramanujan had on basic fundamentals given his brilliant findings--based on this lack, his discoveries seemed like magic. Wolfram reviewed the movie here: http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2016/04/who-was-ramanujan/

can't say unfortunately!

It does happen. I am from a third world country and one year my friend worked on the databases for counting election results. In certain regions where the ruling party rigged the elections, there were more votes (for preferred candidates) than registered voters!

The internal database checks would not allow this and the minister in charge of elections called him in the middle of the night to complain that the system was not working :)

Agreed. I skimmed over it and reached the same conclusion. I upvoted it anyway so it could get more comments and I could come back and get any other insights from the scary smart HN community!

A taste for makers

Btw, one of the most brilliant engineers/architects I met a Microsoft, now a distinguished engineer at Amazon, started his career as an auto mechanic (he attended trade school for this). He is also the principal architect of IBM's DB2. His name is James RH. See this: (Why Amazon Hired a Car Mechanic to Run Its Cloud) http://www.wired.com/2013/02/james-hamilton-amazon/

Btw, here the B.B King documentary on Hulu.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/691662

Enjoy it while it is free. Just saw it and now I know why he is a big deal! Didn't know much about him before today!

google the headline to get a direct link!

I wonder how long it took Kernighan and Ritchie to write 'The C Programming Language'? Amazon says the 2nd edition (1988) is 272 pages long but looking back, it felt like it was 80 pages :) Going by the OP's math (of the language creator being twice as productive) prolly 4 months?

By the way this is a serious problem, highlighted on the page below. BE WARNED: VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES:

http://ulwaluko.co.za/Photos.html

It is good to celebrate cultural traditions but not at this cost!

It would be inaccessible to most. But the stories about the man can be enjoyed by everyone.

I wonder how much of this is AK-47s. It is arguably the most successful arm.

Why do companies with documented shady ethics like JustFab continue to excel?