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isalmon

1,298 karma · joined August 31, 2010

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isalmon··on A Cop's Case for Flock
I understand the problem is privacy, but I don't understand why people choose the solution that basically throws the baby out with the bathwater. Clearly there are benefits of ALPR's in terms of reducing crime. Would it not be better to implement some measures to prevent privacy violations by the cops and also toughen the penalties for doing it instead of taking the path of least resistance (and an easy idea to sell) and simply ban the cameras?
isalmon··on Found a simple tool for database modeling: dbdiagram.io
If you need it for your warehouse (Snowflake/Databricks) - take a look at SqlDBM: https://sqldbm.com/
isalmon··on Google Gemini Pro API Available Through AI Studio
I know it's just an anecdote, but my biggest problem with Google's Bard/Gemini is that the moment I tried to ask a question about something - I started getting ads all over the internet and social media related to that.

Doing this with ChatGPT 4.0 for months and months did not cause this type of behavior.

isalmon··on Launch HN: Sidekick (YC W23) – AI support bot for developers
I was about to comment on the trademark issue but then I saw this top comment. I think you're making a mistake with your approach of 'crossing that bridge'. Trademark violation is no joke and it's so much easier to change the name early on rather than when you have some brand recognition and thousands of users. Learn from other people's mistake, don't make your own.
isalmon··on Ask HN: Any certification that is worth it? Legitimately helped your career?
Personal story time. Back in 2005 I came to the US for the first time through the Work and Travel program. I was working as a lifeguard and had a lot of free time while nobody was in the pool. I decided to take a Zend Certified Engineer certification - back then it was PHP 4 - thinking it might help me get a CS internship in the US next summer. I passed it and 3 months later Zend offered me to take a PHP 5 certification for free. I was already back in my home country and of course I agreed. After passing the exam it turned out I was #8 overall and #1 in my country to pass it. I put it on my resume.

6 months later I found a job and moved to Boston. After working at that company for a few months me and my boss went out for drinks and I asked him why he decided to hire me. He said that my certification was basically a deal-maker. He thought it was a sign that I was at the top of my profession. I thought it was funny, but, hey, it worked.

Super fast forward - a few years later I Fat FIREd at the age of 33 and I'm absolutely sure that the initial certification set a certain chain of reaction that led to it. So even though I think in most cases the certifications are absolutely useless, I'm absolutely sure that when you have to stand out from the crowd, especially at the junior level - they are super useful.

isalmon··on Ask HN: Why is Docusign a $50B company?
If you need recommendations - I'm using this: https://www.sejda.com/sign-pdf
isalmon··on Ask HN: Who else sick of “Rich” people teaching moral/life philosophy?
>> I mean they become rich by putting everything on backseat

That's a pretty big assumption

isalmon··on How HTTPS works – Explained in layman terms
Right, but when it comes to VPN, as oppose to ISP, you have hundreds of choices, so you can pick one that you can trust.
isalmon··on Users hate change
I agree and I think Craigslist is a good example here.
isalmon··on Ask HN: What’s the legality of web scraping?
#3 respect robots.txt
isalmon··on Family Sues Tesla After Model X Accident
>> soon after Halcourt’s toddler entered the SUV through the open back door and crawled into the driver’s seat, he first pressed the brake pedal then shifted the gear selector to Drive

How is it even possible for a 2 year old? The whole story is just really hard to believe

isalmon··on Tesla: Insane or Clever
Well that's the beauty about Tesla - it's the most fun car to drive. I feel like 99% of people who don't like Tesla have never takes a test drive - it's just very different from all the other cars out there. Software is just the icing on the cake (but also a strong competitive advantage in the future).
isalmon··on Tesla: Insane or Clever
I have 2018 P100D - never had these problems. I'd take it to a service - might be a quick fix.
isalmon··on Nets on the outlets of drainage pipes save waterways from pollution
Not just older cities. I live in San Diego and we have exactly the same problem here. Can't swim or surf after the rain. Not exactly sure why it was done this way - maybe because it rains very rarely and they just did not design the sewage system to handle rare (but sometimes heavy) rains.
isalmon··on Tesla: Insane or Clever
Tesla = iPhone
isalmon··on Ask HN: How do I ask for a raise?
Scenario A - it's a startup: I strongly discourage you from taking "I have another offer" approach first if you really like your current job. I've been on the other side of the table so many times and I can tell you that by doing this you immediately destroy all emotional capital and sense of loyalty with your employer. If you really like your job - I'd simply talk to your manager and say something like "I really enjoy working here and I've done X, Y and Z since my last raise. I think my current salary is below the market. What can I do to get a raise?".

If you're valued there - you'll get a raise. If not - time to start looking for a new job.

Scenario B - it's a big company: Just find another job. In most cases they have BS rules like "3% salary increase per year maximum", but it depends on the company.

isalmon··on Why I turned down my Y Combinator interview
>> I think the biggest difference between today and 20 years ago when I first go into Silicon Valley is that most founders are generally already planning their exit. There are a lot of startups whose mentality is "get big quick enough so that we can get bought out by Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc".

Exactly the same mentality 20 years ago, except back then it was mostly about the IPO.

isalmon··on Show HN: Chrome Extension to See IMDB Ratings Directly on Netflix
Love it!

Bug:

- Does not show the rating for all movies. Examples:

-- https://www.netflix.com/title/80189213 (empty)

-- https://www.netflix.com/title/70136120 (N/A)

Feature requests:

- Show "IMDB rating" right away and a spinner while you're fetching the data from the API call.

- Let me click on it and go to IMDB to see more information

isalmon··on German town votes ‘No’ to street names
This.

For the past 10 months I've been travelling constantly staying at hotels, AirBnb's etc and in a lot of cases not having the permanent physical address is very inconvenient. I've tried multiple solutions but none of them work well. Yes, there are companies that offer "virtual mailboxes", but I can't ship any packages to them.

isalmon··on Two creators are not always better than one
I'll share my story.

Solo technical founder. Hired my first sales employee long after I established a product-market fit, got a few paying customers and $300K in annual revenue. I gave him a co-founder title, but we were never equal. It was one of the best decision that I have made. The company would not have been able to survive if 2 of us were equal - we would have gone out of business. Instead, 1 year after I pushed him out we had a moderately successful exit (8 figure).

I think that having a solo founder is beneficial AS LONG AS that one person is great. Otherwise you, as a VC, kind of bet that at least 1 of them will be great and it will all work out.

isalmon··on Tesla Gave Me Control of Their Site Forums
Roadside assistance companies including AAA now have options for EVs
isalmon··on Sales engagement startup Apollo says its massive contacts database was stolen
My theory is (I work in this space): - Contact database was stolen - User database with emails+passwords was not

Basically it's about the emails that they were scraping / guessing, not their users' emails.

isalmon··on Ask HN: How to be found as a technology co-founder?
I simply sold it they way I wanted to be sold - in an honest, no BS, personalized approach, focusing on customers needs.
isalmon··on Ask HN: How to be found as a technology co-founder?
I'll share my personal story - maybe it will help.

I'm a technical guy, always wanted to start my own company. 6 years ago I finally got my green card and started looking for a "business" co-founder. Months went by, nothing happened. As many commented, it's usually not a good idea to found a company with somebody who you have not known for at least a few years.

Finally I decided to just go for it and learn "sales" myself. After achieving some moderate success these business people started to knock on my door. Finally I brought a "co-founder" for less than 10% equity. It really helped long term to make sure we had a tie-breaker during disagreements.

6 years later it's a 60 person, multi-million-a-year SaaS company.

isalmon··on Ask HN: How to become a remote contractor?
It's funny how with all the job sites and modern tools we still live in the world where employees and employers can't find each other. I'm the CEO of a US based startup, but we're hiring everywhere. We actually have a few digital nomads at the company. Somehow we still have troubles finding more talent.

There are a few job boards dedicated to digital nomads, but the volume there is surprisingly low.

isalmon··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2018)
Datanyze | Head of Growth | Remote

About us Datanyze is a small, profitable startup and we’re looking for A+ talent. Our mission is to empower modern sales and marketing professionals to make smarter data-driven decisions. We choose to be great, not big. We want to grow through making our customers successful, not by raising another round of funding.

About you You love growth and you love hacking it. You are results-oriented. You have an arsenal of tools to 10x anybody’s lead gen efforts. You are efficient and effective. You love working with smart individuals like yourself. You prefer to be flexible with your location and spend time having fun instead of staying in traffic.

Location Anywhere in the world!

Responsibilities - Grow new recurring revenue and generate upsells - Define strategy and tactics across multiple teams and align them around a growth strategy. - Drive a strong focus on performance and goal attainment. - Be a part of the senior core executive team and work closely with the CEO. - Be biased towards action. You will know the data, and be in the details. - Collaborate with other teams to drive demand and adoption

Must-haves - Previous experience working in a distributed team. - Experience working on SaaS / B2B web applications. - Data-oriented mentality - Great product intuition and deep experience with marketing, sales and customer success concepts. - Experience with Salesforce.com and Marketing Automation platforms (we use Marketo)

https://angel.co/datanyze/jobs/349112-head-of-growth

isalmon··on What is an MVP for a B2B startup?
It's more of a B2B2C rather than B2B. Also it's a hardware-first startup, so it's going to be hard to iterate, no matter how good or bad the MVP is.
isalmon··on Anthony Levandowski Faces New Claims of Stealing
Iframe at the bottom of the page: https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/16/the-nanny-of-former-uber-e...
isalmon··on Ask HN: What's the best way to recover from burnout?
It would be awesome to read the details about your journey. Do you have a blog and if not - are you going to write about it at some point?
isalmon··on Ask HN: What was your best $1000 investment?
Did you change your diet at the same time or it was just gym?
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