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jsutton

284 karma · joined March 20, 2014

Engineer and founder. Applying blockchain technology to improve inefficiencies one of the largest and oldest industries in the world.
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jsutton··on Homeschooling hits record numbers
Take a second to think through why it might be bad for a 2nd grader to seek high schoolers as social peers.
jsutton··on White House ballroom construction to continue through shutdown, official says
If you actually believe that, I have a bridge to sell to you.
jsutton··on DOGE has 'god mode' access to government data
They aren't auditing anything. Programmers/engineers don't audit budget and spending. If they were doing an audit, they would have accountants on their team, which they don't. If you bring coders/engineers into a system, it's for accessing/manipulating data/code/infrastructure. This is an enormous and unprecedented overreach.
jsutton··on Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate
Do British citizens get to vote on who each parliament party puts forward as their leader?
jsutton··on Yet another project management SaaS
No one takes .so seriously even after notion.so. Hell, I'm sure countless people still try .com before giving up and Googling "notion" (or maybe that's just me, but I doubt it).
jsutton··on Biden signs TikTok bill into law, starting clock for ByteDance to divest
Terrible take. You want the USA to follow the same policy on speech that Communist China follows?
jsutton··on YC: Requests for Startups
We get it, you don't like crypto. You would be better off leaving the snark and sarcasm at home if you want to get your points across without sounding bitter. Your last line completely contradicts the previous point you were trying to make-- it's clear to anyone that's paying attention that crypto economy has objectively grown beyond speculative trading and scams.
jsutton··on President Biden Announces Billions to Deliver World-Class High-Speed Rail
Key point: on weekends. Northeast corridor is high demand all week long. And much more of the national economy flows through that region. LA <> Vegas is mostly leisure.
jsutton··on Real estate markets scramble following cyberattack on listings provider
The first paper on AI and Neural Nets was published in 1945. What's your point? 15 years is not a very long time for deep tech.
jsutton··on Real estate markets scramble following cyberattack on listings provider
A normal database isn't able to be easily disseminated by the people who need access to this data, which is enormous. Then who gets to host it? Real Estate associations are too many, too fragmented, too entrenched to agree on one or even a handful of companies with the privilege to host this information.

A blockchain (assuming you can get buy-in/critical mass from the agencies) has the ability to align some financial incentives of all interested parties to open up access to real estate listings while still holding ownership and profiting from that access.

Instead of real estate companies protecting their listing data, they could offer access to their listing data in exchange for a fee or revenue share. Instead of out-of-date listings parading as up-to-date, there's a public temporal record of updates. Instead of buyers getting restricted or partial information, they can obtain access to the listing data via alternate sources.

jsutton··on Real estate markets scramble following cyberattack on listings provider
Everyone said the same thing about ML/AI 5+ years ago. Hard things take time.
jsutton··on Real estate markets scramble following cyberattack on listings provider
Agreed, this is the kind of use case blockchain excels at. I worked on a project that attempted to do something like a distributed MLS, and we had major industry leaders on board indicating a large degree of belief that blockchain could revolutionize the industry. MLS is, after all, just a legacy federated system running on inertia.

Unfortunately, it's so difficult to get a critical mass of inventory to succeed; it requires either a massive upfront investment, or partnering with RE developers from the beginning.

jsutton··on Former US SEC attorney: 'Get out of crypto platforms now'
> it merely aims to be a new mechanism by which value is transferred, which by most objective measures it's very bad at doing.

What objective measures are you using? Over $3 Billion in value is transferred over the Bitcoin network every day. There has never been any downtime, nor has it ever been hacked, and fees are flat and transparent (just a few bucks to transfer unlimited value across the world).

jsutton··on Not Forgotten: ChatGPT isn’t the only important trend in technology
There's been a few examples of use cases said by others in this thread, and your financial settlement use case is a great one. Any time you need to move money around multiple parties based on a clear set of rules or criteria, blockchain could be useful. Insurance claims, international remittances, lending, to name a few. Anywhere a valuable process is still dominated by paper (and there are surprisingly many).

Generally, being able to program the management of money (i.e. if personA meets a certain criteria, send $X to personA) in a transparent system can be incredibly powerful.

jsutton··on Not Forgotten: ChatGPT isn’t the only important trend in technology
On the contrary, there is a there there, it just takes a tremendous effort and coordination to get to a point where it's actually useful.
jsutton··on We asked the SEC for reasonable crypto rules for Americans
There's nothing absurd about a company seeking to legitimize a component of their business.

The crypto industry is not built around avoiding government rules, that's a myth propagated by its many detractors. It was born to address a failure of the banking system that hurt regular people the most.

jsutton··on Anyone else witnessing a panic inside NLP orgs of big tech companies?
Without the sarcasm, yes :)
jsutton··on Joint statement by the Department of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC
The same place that took trillions of dollars in exchange for low-yielding treasury bonds. The same place that effectively devalued said treasury bonds when they decided to rapidly raise interest rates.
jsutton··on Bill Ackman: The gov't has about 48h to fix a-soon-to-be-irreversible mistake
We're not talking about poverty. We're simply talking about restoring the bank deposits of early stage companies.
jsutton··on Bill Ackman: The gov't has about 48h to fix a-soon-to-be-irreversible mistake
We're not, we're bailing out startup companies. You know, the main audience of this social media platform we're on?
jsutton··on Bill Ackman: The gov't has about 48h to fix a-soon-to-be-irreversible mistake
Companies shouldn't fail just because their bank lost their money. That's ridiculous and not at all the principle of a free market.
jsutton··on Bill Ackman: The gov't has about 48h to fix a-soon-to-be-irreversible mistake
Socializing losses is what enables high risk high reward businesses. Without it, the US wouldn't be half the innovative country it is now.
jsutton··on Binance Is Bleeding Assets, $12B Gone in Less Than 60 Days
What about social media, is that a net negative? Gig economies? Every societal shift enabled by technology comes with significant negatives, but you won't know if it is a true net negative on society until it plays out to maturity.
jsutton··on Binance Is Bleeding Assets, $12B Gone in Less Than 60 Days
You can't wait to see millions of people lose money and in some cases their livelihoods? Maybe you should stop blaming cancel culture for your declining karma and do a little bit of self-reflection.
jsutton··on What’s in a PR statement: LastPass breach explained
Cirtrix hasn't ever been the parent company to LastPass. LogMeIn bought Citrix's GoTo product division, and also bought LastPass, so that's the extent of their relationship.

LogMeIn and subsequently LastPass is has been owned by the private equity firm Francisco Partners since 2020. Ire can be focused on Francisco Partners as they completely gutted LastPass and other LogMeIn products shortly after acquisition.

jsutton··on A software change allowed FTX to use client money
Be honest with yourself, do you really believe every single crypto company acts without integrity and ethics? If so, it's clear you haven't familiarized yourself with the whole industry. Plenty of crypto companies have strong controls around security, consumer protection, compliance, etc.
jsutton··on Why we still don’t have the JFK assassination files
The problem is that anything which is declassified for the US public is also declassified for the world. There are plenty of things we wouldn't want our adversaries knowing.

This is why most democracies are Representative instead of Direct -- it's impossible to give everyone all the information they need to make informed decisions while keeping sensitive information secure.

So, elect people of good character and competency to the offices that are privy to this kind of information. Educate the public on why this is important.

jsutton··on Ask HN: Learning about fundraising as first-time tech founders
2nd this, a top tier accelerator will do a lot to get you prepared for launching your product or raising money.
jsutton··on Ask HN: Learning about fundraising as first-time tech founders
While connecting with 1 good founder for advice can be as beneficial without the time commitment, good accelerators not only provide the education on fundraising but also the network and infrastructure to actually fundraise. Accelerators often have groups of VCs and angels that will both participate in mentorship and allocate funds to invest in each cohort.
jsutton··on Blockchain.com cuts 25% workforce amid crypto bear market
Bingo! Found the reliable Beanie Babies comment in a HN article about crypto :)
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