Hacker News Reader

johnrobon Snapchat launches Spectacles V2

The underwater capability could be huge. Given the timing here (mid spring in northern hemisphere), I suspect Snapchat is fully aware of this killer feature. Influencers could have fun with it while enticing the masses to buy a pair.

johnrobon Billionaire Khosla Is Asking the Supreme Court to Keep People Off His Beach

Given how the state of California has ruled, is there any practical obligation for local authorities to prevent people from using the road? Would a federal ruling change that? This reminds me of the marijuana situation where states are making their own decisions without federal support.

johnrobon My account is sending spam emails

My guess is the sent folder is just a label where from-address matches one of your emails. Spoofing the inbox in the manner mentioned here will naturally also fool the sent folder.

johnrobon Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

The best thing an employer can do for an employee is assign explicit value to that employee’s work. Otherwise, the burden lies on the employee regardless of the fact that a manager may declare solid performance. If the value of your work isn’t clear, you will suffer in the long run via missed promotions and potential layoffs.

Sadly, if your project’s value is not well understood, you need to get off of it.

johnrobon A short tale of a read overflow

While often convenient, adding “extra credit” to an otherwise focused commit can create a lot of confusion later on. It also makes the commit harder to understand (what does that line have to do with this fix?).

johnrobon Amazon, Berkshire, JPMorgan to Create Healthcare Company

Not always - the other way to mitigate billing inflation is to increase premiums (which would explain the last 20 years).

johnrobon How to Interview Entry Level Software Engineers

Anecdotally, most if not all of the times I’ve been burned has been when I ignored my gut feeling.

johnrobon Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

http://www.replayray.com/

A fun way to follow sports on your phone, when you can't watch the actual game. The game tracker always starts at the beginning and never 'spoils' the result.

I've put more work into NFL lately, but I'll likely improve NBA basketball next. There are a slew of other sports too - soccer, MLB, NHL - although the degree of upkeep has been varied.

johnrobon Brittleness comes from “One Thing”

It's rare in nature when the optimal placement of a 'dial' is at an endpoint (0 or 100). In everyday life, when I see people making such a choice, it's usually because they focused on a single attribute at the expense of all other considerations (e.g. "cheapest" or "best battery life"). While there's value in doing less work, ignoring the other criteria means the choice is not the best.

After almost two decades of professional experience (including a few years of consulting), I'm becoming more convinced that employees often make a similar 'lazy' decision when they choose full time employment. That decision is only optimal for under performers (and only for as long as they can hold on to the gig).

Selling labor in units of time offers no possibility for economic profit. The value of any productivity gains are realized by the employer. This is not the case for a business (or a consultant), where productivity gains yield profit.

EDIT: Consultants sell time too, but are free to adjust their rates as they see fit. Employees have significant barriers to changing their 'price'; infact it often involves a job change. Another challenge for the employee is demonstrating their value created due to the extremely complex structuring of most companies (this makes it hard to objectively justify a raise).

johnrobon YC’s Essential Startup Advice

I found a typo: "copy written" should be "copyrighted".

johnrobon Show HN: Fantasymath.com – math based, matchup specific fantasy football advice

Very cool! You should add some sort of 'loading...' message when you submit the demo - I initially thought I was back on the home page.

Also - it's probably a bit more work and/or more processing intensive, but it would be very helpful to see the probability outcome in real time (as I move players in/out).

johnrobon Split user stories ruthlessly and get value earlier

Small batches. What can I do today, that will demonstrably put us in a better position at the start of tomorrow. Ideally should result in deployed code to production, but not always (e.g. research).

Ironically, you could argue this is agile with one day sprints - I wouldn't disagree much.

johnrobon Ask HN: Why shouldn't I leave Google?

You should have a specific idea and not just the desire to start a company. I'd recommend waiting until you have that idea.

johnrobon TLDR Stock Options

Would knowing the fair market price be a proxy for percent ownership (assuming you know the current valuation of the company)?

johnrobon Affordable Housing Program Costs More, Shelters Less

Build more inventory. None of these tricks will solve the problem of fitting X families into Y homes, where X > Y.

The unspoken constraint in every housing debate is to avoid adding new supply and risk devaluing the existing investments made by constituents.

johnrobon Google: My interview experience

I'm curious if the people giving the interviews have an incentive to be conservative with scoring. Maybe it looks bad when your score is the highest? As if you're lowering the bar? If true, I could see that contributing to how these interview stories play out (candidates thinking they did better than their no-hire outcome).

johnrobon Canada seeks to end Uber's tax advantage over taxi companies

Yes. In the ride business, speed = money. Bad incentive.

johnrobon YC AI

At some point, making food/housing/healthcare cheaper seems like a more achievable goal than finding work for people (who are in theory competing with AI).

johnrobon Snap Jumps in Debut After App Maker Raises $3.4B in IPO

If they priced the stock accurately, there would be a 50% chance the stock would go down on the first day. They want it to go up and thus under price it.

johnrobon How Do You Measure Leadership?

The value of the labor managed by those leaders was over 100X greater than $415 million. Unprofitable is not the right term here (something ethical instead?).

johnrobon State of Startups

If you want to create a big company, there are only two options: 1) grow fast, 2) grow slowly for multiple decades. The latter is riskier because of constant landscape changes and the fact that you only have a 100 years (optimistic) of life.

johnrobon How to Accept Over-Engineering for What It Really Is

The real downside of over-engineering is that time expenditure is non-refundable. If you build a lightweight v1, you still have the option to invest additional time into something more "robust". If you choose the opposite, you don't have the option to get your time back by making the product less engineered.

Even worse, if your under engineered product is causing problems, you'll almost certainly notice it (rather quickly too). If you over engineer, you may never realize it.

johnrobon TCP Puzzlers

I used to mimimc the power off scenario using a wired connection and a router. The client machine ethernet connects to an up-linked router, and to mimic the server's poweroff, we just pull the uplink cable out from the router. As far as the client can tell, the network interface is still up (because the router is still alive). If you pull the client side cable from the router, the client's network stack detects the lost network interface and the socket closes immediately.

johnrobon Ask HN: Is it possible to run your own mail server for personal use?

Yes. Double yes. Came here to leave that exact comment. Here is a pretty bad war story: https://medium.com/@N/how-i-lost-my-50-000-twitter-username-...

johnrobon Massachusetts Bans Employers from Asking Applicants About Previous Pay

If you're currently paid well (relative to other companies), it's good idea to disclose your salary.

johnrobon Senator Elizabeth Warren joins call for Airbnb probe

I think we're all taking this too far:

> Boston is one of the most expensive cities in the US to live in right now

That's the real problem, and should be the focus. Short term renting is just a detail. Inventory is the solution.

johnrobon The Brexit Possibility

In the 'new system', the government gives basic income to labor, which pays taxes back to the government. It's probably likely that more goes out via basic income than comes in via income taxes, so one has to wonder: do income taxes really make sense in this model?

johnrobon Code reviews aren’t just for catching bugs

Depending on the org structure, pair programming can sometimes be a clearly superior version of a code review policy. Particularly when the review latency is high and, as a consequence, developers work on several branches in parallel.

johnrobon What life is like after police ransack your house, then the charges are dropped

As far as I can tell, law enforcement is not penalized for executing a search warrant that doesn't pan out. Same goes for the courts that approve them, often ignoring a lack of true probable cause and/or being misled by the agents who write these warrants. This is a very bad incentive for all involved that creates innocent victims and hoards of wasted time.

johnrobon SeedRamp

I think you mean "in an hour?", which is how long the meeting lasts.