deanalevitt

ThymeBase has two remote developer positions open with a preference for Africa and European timezones. https://remoteok.io/remote-jobs/75614-remote-full-stack-deve...

The new book Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor is slightly newer, a little more readable, and talks a lot about dilution, but otherwise covers almost the same ground.

Both books are great in understanding the space and motivations of various players.

This was the most fun I've had while building a ton of anxiety

Hiring remote gave my startups access to amazingly talented people where they were, not where we were. It allowed the team to work in a space they felt was productive and comfy and our employee turnover was non-existent.

I'm a big proponent of distributed teams.

When I worked as a director for a large tech company I had some similar questions. Because I joined through an acquisition, I never truly adjusted to the network of managers both above, below and alongside me.

Eventually, about a year after leaving to launch a new startup, I read High Output Management. Suddenly everything made sense. I'd strongly recommend reading it.

Many Bay Area companies are led by people who read this book, and I think you'll gain an understanding of what the mid-level managers worry about in their day to day.

Non-technical founder here. I found my side-project co-founder by talking about my ideas with everyone who might listen. He was a colleague who had a little extra time.

To invest in a hedge fund, I believe you need to be an accredited investor. Basically, you need to make over $200k a year or have a $1,000,000 excluding your primary residence.

I'm assuming you don't consider an accredited investor to be "ordinary" in this context.

Mutual funds (and ETFs) operate relatively close to how hedge funds do, but without the risky behaviors and aggressive speculation. So, I guess, a mutual fund is probably a hedge fund for ordinary people, if you take ordinary to mean someone unable weather losing a ton of money in risky investments.

I think you can probably find some ETFs and mutual funds that take highly risky stances or short sell (inverse ETFs) and those are often open to small investments. I'm not going to share them because, well, I have no idea if they're worth putting money in.

Yeah, you're right about the decimal point.

> There are some easy wins here, at least in theory. I think a great deal of fake news is spam-like and can be eliminated by similar techniques.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. As someone who ran an email newsletter tool that battled spammers on a daily basis (successfully), I see many similar tactics working.

The issue for me, however, is the subjectivity and inconsistent enforcement. Spam has clear lines drawn, especially around opt-in and authentication. Fake news is often susceptible to interpretation, especially around politics.

> For example, a defining quality of spam is that is not just it is unsolicited, but it is annoying.

Sure, that's true, but from a spam-prevention perspective and CAN-SPAM, it's mostly around unsolicited email, not the emotional impact thereof.

Personally, I think it's about definition. If we can define Fake News the same way we can define "unsolicited email" (rather than calling it spam), I think we can begin to tackle it.

> This could result in 175 million trees being planted in one year. If executed properly the Philippines will get 525 billion trees planted in a single generation.

This sounds a bit... well, odd. There are 390 billion trees in the Amazon, as a point of reference. As much as I love the idea of greening our world, how is this even feasible?

I'm a non-technical founder who generally doesn't bug my team about why a change took so long but that's because they communicate with me.

Thing is, working with a developer as a non-technical team member can be a frustrating, opaque experience. Communicating progress is eye-opening for non-technical colleagues but when a programmer does not communicate, then obviously the non-technical members have no idea what's going on.

Developers can forget too, that the one small change might be holding up marketing, sales and customer support, all of whom themselves are getting flack from above about why X customer is still angry, or why the press release isn't being sent out yet etc. "Waiting on a dev" isn't an answer that reflects well on anyone.

The "Dear Client" letter wouldn't be necessary if there was more communication. It can even be automated. Here's what I see in a Slack channel with my colleagues:

github APP [8:52 PM] New branch "fix-password-recovery" was pushed by xxxx [yyyyyy] Pull request submitted by xxxx #466 Improve password recovery • Fix styling • Ensure the visitor is signed out of all sessions • Redirect to sign in instead of 404 when an old recovery link is visited

semaphore APP [9:05 PM] xxxx's build passed — d61157d Improve password recovery on fix-password-recovery

I never need to doubt xxxx when I can see the myriad small tasks, failed builds, the commits etc.

Sure! Why not? You've got the experience, expertise and no contractual obligation. If you think you can compete, go for it.

I might have missed it when scanning the article, but nowhere did it mention how the formal ethical codes for docs and lawyers are backed up by licenses and review panels and exams. Are they proposing the same regulation before allowing someone to build an app?

Would they call for the same for journalists too? Arguably, the media has an equal need for ethical oversight, but we generally prefer the media to be free of partisan interference.

I believe journalists and technologists are better off without state or federal licensing to enforce ethical codes.

That sounds really cool, actually. I rely on YouTube/Daily Motion for shows in foreign languages but I struggle without a transcript due to dialect and speed.

When there are subtitles, it helps immensely, so I imagine your idea would be a benefit on top of this already helpful technique.

I moved, in my 30's, to a non-English-speaking country. I tried Babble and DuoLingo. Babble was crap, and DuoLingo was alright at slowly expanding my vocab, but the sentences were idiotic. One example was "The horse is touching me" which I found particularly useless. I also tried private lessons, but the cost was high and required more effort than I had time for.

Rosetta Stone has, so far, been the best, precisely because it relies on immersion.

The downside is that I think the situations are traveler centric, and overly simplistic.

To my mind, the best way I've improved is by memorizing "scripts" of common interactions. For example, ordering coffee, or memorizing answers to the common questions people ask me about myself.

I've never said "The boy jumps over the water," in any language, but I have said, "I'd like a double espresso with hot water on the side, no milk or sugar" or "I'll be at home at 2 pm" many times. As I add scripts, my vocab improves.

Most fluent immigrants I've spoken to say that watching a ton of TV in the language was a massive help.

re: Chesterton's Fence - great analogy. Until they mention the significant benefits of the lower capital gains tax, and how raising taxes won't detract from those benefits, the entire premise appears woefully unprepared.

How will this impact retirement plans?

Unless I'm reading it wrong, the premise is that deferring taxation allows for wealth to grow "unfairly" and that the annual growth should be taxed annually. Wouldn't this decimate retirement funds, increasing the risk of investing in stocks and put even more pressure on Americans who already likely to outlive their retirement savings?

I know it talks about only taxing the 0.1% but that doesn't appear sound to me. I'm skeptical. I'd feel better if the proponents of this actually addressed the benefits of a lower capital gains tax and how their plan would maintain these benefits.

Shkreli himself played a deliberate role in the public's perception of him. I've always wondered why but I suspect it was pig-headedness.

I'm most amazed that Netflix has retained this aspect of their business. My guess would have been it was more effort than benefit, considering the focus of Netflix and their direction.

This is absolutely brilliantly cool!

> Contrary to commonsense belief, attempts to measure productivity through performance metrics discourage initiative, innovation and risk-taking.

Is this really contrary to commonsense belief? I think most business leaders are very aware of this, however, the alternative is chaos. That's why certain specialist teams are given leeway.

Right, that's why I brought it up. In Italy, they were selling houses for $1 but the regulations around it plus the ongoing property taxes change the entire calculus.

Regardless, land is valuable but only if you own it and have some control over monetizing your ownership.

> For example, one OfficeMax employee complained to corporate management in 2012, saying 'I cannot justify lying to a customer or being TRICKED into lying to them for our store to make a few extra dollars

Looks like yes.

I'd be curious about taxes and other costs involved in ownership.

The big question is land ownership. Does the buyer get to own the land? Or is it more like a 100-year lease from the state?

$100k for large swathes of land anywhere in Europe sounds like a steal to me.

I found Meditations: A New Translation by Gregory Hays to be quite accessible.

If you're relatively young, no kids, etc. then it's definitely worth trying out for a couple of years. You won't have lost much time.

Oh good, government regulation of browsing habits. What could go wrong?

I wonder how this differs by location. I grew up rural, and my childhood experience was wildly different from suburban and city kids.

While I loved video games, I also rode horses or ATVs to see neighborhood friends and the area kids had large open spaces in which to explore and get up to mischief in.

So true. I recently began taking college math courses online for fun and the ALEKS system was great up to Pre-calc, but once I hit calculus, and only found video lecture-based courses, things became frustrating, half-clear and confusing.

Suddenly textbooks and multiple other sources became necessary to combat what you so cleverly called "math anxiety."