Hacker News Reader

danielrakhon LinkedIn shares drop 40%, erasing $10B of company's value

That's roughly the market cap of Twitter. Let that sink in...

danielrakhon Twitter’s updated Mac app wasn’t made by Twitter

I think this project was put into works > 1 year ago. It's obvious it wasn't designed to incorporate Moments, the no character limit for DM's and Polls (all new features from 2015). Building out a Mac app shouldn't be a top priority of any company today, unless you're into productivity (i.e. Sketch, Adobe).

I'm almost sure that Twitter was stretched thin with Obj-c/Swift engineers building out the iPad app and refreshing the iPhone app (Moments) this past year.

danielrakhon Show HN: Open Hunt – an open and community-run alternative to Product Hunt

So who's going to be the first one to submit this to Product Hunt? :D

danielrakhon The Decay of Twitter

I just wanted to keep the post short(er)

danielrakh on Not Even Twitter Understands Twitter

I think the real core value prop of Twitter is the niche communities people can build around their interests. It's about the interest graph. I posted this in another article on the front page today, but I'll do it here also. I think they need to double down on growing communities within Twitter. It's just too hard right now.
Here's my proposal:
Twitter Rooms: https://medium.com/@danielrakh/twitter-rooms-e6f34e843e9a

danielrakh on The Decay of Twitter

That's definitely something to figure out. I have a few thoughts about it, I just didn't wanted to keep the post short(er). But yeah that's a great point.

danielrakh on The Decay of Twitter

Exactly.

danielrakh on The Decay of Twitter

I've actually recently designed a concept around the interest graph of Twitter that I think would be a step in the right direction.
Twitter Rooms: https://medium.com/@danielrakh/twitter-rooms-e6f34e843e9a

danielrakh on Twitter Rooms: a product design proposal for Twitter

Hey author of the article here. Thanks for posting. Would love to hear everyone's thoughts!

danielrakh on Jack in a Box: Can Twitter Be Saved?

That might have been the spark that lit the fire but I believe that people who are NOT celebrities that tweet actively, do it to reach a broader audience and engage in conversation with others in their vertical. This is in stark contrast to the network you would have in Facebook which is much more intimate.
Twitter is the internets water-cooler conversation. Facebook is the conversation you have at home with your family and friends.

danielrakh on Jack in a Box: Can Twitter Be Saved?

That's a great point. It's almost as if they're trying something new for the sake of trying something new rather than taking the risk to make the bold change where it could actually matter: their core product.

danielrakh on Jack in a Box: Can Twitter Be Saved?

"I like it, too, but, boy, does it need some rethinking—the visual dissonance between Moments and the Twitter Stream is deeply unsettling."
I agree. That's exactly what I aimed to remedy with my redesign: https://medium.com/@danielrakh/redesigning-twitter-moments-f...

danielrakh on Google Will Soon Start Punishing Mobile Sites that Use Annoying App Install Ads

I can't help but think this is a jab at Apple for allowing ad blockers in iOS 9.

danielrakh on Twitter Live

Hey! Author of the post here. Thanks for posting. Looking for any and all thoughts/feedback.

danielrakh on Apple Reports Record Third Quarter Results

I believe thats mostly due to the combination of the hype surrounding the release of Apple's latest product line, and the fact that Apple has A LOT more potential customers paying attention to it than it did when it launched the iPad and definitely when it launched the iPhone.

danielrakh on Apple Reports Record Third Quarter Results

No Apple Watch sales numbers revealed. They obviously sold millions on launch but I believe they don't want to set expectations too high by revealing the number until they see next quarters results. Making the overhyped launch sales the de facto benchmark will hurt the stock in the future because it will be a tough number to top. The more likely scenario will be that they'll wait till the year is over and come out with an average sales number for the year.

danielrakh on The Rewriting of David Foster Wallace

Here's an amazing commencement speech by David. Definitely worth a listen. https://soundcloud.com/cloudroutine/this-is-water-david-fost...

danielrakh on Harj Taggar Is Building a New Technical Hiring Pipeline with TripleByte

I'd love if there could be more information about what YC companies are participating in hiring through this process. Or have I missed that info somewhere?

danielrakh on Twitter CFO Anthony Noto Privately Analyzes Facebook

" Specifically if ads on mobile are more engaging for consumer and more relevant than desk top ads than the addressable ad market for mobile will be bigger than desktop ad market and the valuations of mobile companies will be greater than desktop all else equal on audience size etc etc. Ie this would be a very positive factor for Snapchat
If Facebook knows this to be true it would result in them being willing to pay higher valuation for mobile companies than other acquirers because google won't know nor will yahoo msft etc because none of them have scale in mobile to understand these powerful secular trends and in essence they under value mobile vs FB and thus under invest and fall farther and farther behind."
Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit naive to assume that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft..etc don't understand that mobile is dominating desktop because they don't have the mobile scale of FB? It seems like an obvious insight in today's world.
In fact one could argue that Yahoo REALLY understands it considering the shopping spree for mobile first companies these past 2 years.

danielrakh on New York Taxi Mogul, Seeking a Bailout, Says He’s Too Big to Fail

“I have delivered, personally, in excess of $300 million to the city in these auctions,” he said. “Do I not have a little bit of standing to say there should be support from that institution that I delivered, personally, $300 million to? To do what the government does for every other industry? Am I not being logical?”
In other words: "I've been paying you corrupt chumps off in an excess of $300 million, doesn't that mean anything anymore?"

danielrakh on My Swift Dilemma

Great post. I'm not sure if it's because of my Objective-C bias or not but Swift just seems messy to me. Everything from how it's spaced and structured in the editor to how it's read. (Lack of headers, clear separations between data structures, methods..etc). Say what you want about Obj-C but it was damn organized.

danielrakh on Go support for Android

Apple releases a series of books with hundreds of pages and hours of video using Swift, and Google releases a one page Google Doc proposing to use Go. And then people wonder why Apple is able to attract so many developers to their platform...

danielrakh on Introducing Anonymous Login and an Updated Facebook Login

This is great. As an iOS developer this lowers the barrier of entry for people to try out your app.

danielrakh on Still Starting Up

Let's stop with the comparisons to the Valley. Let's stop trying to be like the Valley. NYC's edge is the fact that we're exposed to so many different industries and cultures, many of which have not yet been "modernized" with tech. Let's focus on that.

danielrakh on Rethinking What We Mean by ‘Mobile Web’

There's two points to this:
The first technical: When you search for something in Google or Bing you are being surfaced information related to your keywords. Whether that would be an article, a web app, a blog...etc When you search for an App, you are being surfaced an application to solve a certain task.
The second is behavioral: We have conditioned ourselves to use Google to find an answer to our question. In that case, Google is an app we use to find answers to our questions. We have also conditioned ourselves to use the App Store as the gateway to find a certain experience for our smartphone. The average consumer can't differentiate between a web app or a native app, they just know that in order to get an experience on their smartphones the app store is the place to do it.

danielrakh on Rethinking What We Mean by ‘Mobile Web’

I think the more important point to discuss is the trend of our "smart devices", specifically wearables. The software is becoming increasingly coupled with the hardware. Think about that for a second. Web languages have evolved within the browser. That is their native environment. What happens when the browser does not exist on a future device?

danielrakh on Rethinking What We Mean by ‘Mobile Web’

On the contrary, Apple's and Google's app stores have ENCOURAGED tinkerers and self-publishers. There are so many more people who were inspired to become developers as soon as these devices hit mainstream. I was one of them. I would have never got into programming if I didn't know that I had the chance to develop an experience that millions of people can actually FIND and use in novel ways.

danielrakh on Alcatraz – Package manager for Xcode 5

I think it's awesome. A part of me wishes there was a drop down summary of each plugin when you click on it, rather than heading to the github link.

danielrakh on Google buying Nest Labs for $3.2 billion

WOW. This was a no-brainer Apple acquisition. For god's sake the man in charge was who spearheaded the iPod. It's the least they could have done with their $100b war chest.

danielrakh on Learn to code like it's 1996

Similar story here. We never understood the magnitude of what our parents sacrificed when we were younger. But it's truly inspiring now.