larrys

You are getting downvoted for what you said (as of now anyway) however I have gotten press in the WSJ by sending them clippings that appeared in the local paper. This was after they had no interest in the story initially. In other words seeing that even a lowly local paper (ok was a big city paper actually) did a full page article was enough to get them to run a blurb about what we were doing. (On the front page no less).

So in other words to your point about Techcrunch it can be thought of as it as a filter of legitimacy that you can use to your advantage.

"and was recently ported over to Medium"

Wouldn't it have made sense to update it prior to porting to Medium then?

"Your first message to a reporter shouldn't be about you. It should be about them. People approach PR way to late in the game, when they have a launch they need coverage for. If you're smart, you'll start much earlier, when you don't need press, and you can simply offer someone help. Read their stories, figure out if you have information, insights or introductions you can make to help them do their job and look smart, and give them that."

Oh is this ever 100% true from my experience and it's exactly what I did in the past. I would write and offer praise for an article written and then offer some added information. After a bit of that I finally ended up being quoted or asked about events and was considered a source. (NY Times, Dow Jones as two examples).

That said most people will not want to put in the effort to lay the groundwork like this. But it is for sure a good idea.

It would seem that if this becomes a trend that delivery companies would need and be in their right to assess a charge to any packages destined for certain residential addresses (they already do charge more at least at retail for residential deliveries) in order to compensate the buildings for the added labor needed to handle the packages. While it's reasonable to expect some package deliveries, it's not reasonable for a building to have to handle the volume that this article claims are currently delivered.

Likewise the person placing the order shouldn't balk to much at having to pay a $1 to $2 charge for having their packages handled (per package) despite what rent they are paying except in the cases of true luxury buildings.

The more important reason why Carney is being used is that he is trusted by journalists and/or has had an important job and reputation that preceded him. As such he will be given certain leeway and the benefit of the doubt that won't extend to others (with less of a pedigree). This isn't about what the tech press thinks (or what even an Amazon customer thinks) it's about what other important decision makers (who follow the journalists that are impressed by Carney think). Separately, when does any PR hack speak the truth (if you want to call it that).

"If a former Apple executive who works down the road from Theranos can't get a reasonable response, makes me wonder if Theranos ever addressed customer/client concerns?"

A few possibilities (in all fairness to Theranos)

1) Elizabeth Holmes doesn't know who Jean-Louis Gassée is..(noting her age).

2) She gets a ton of email and didn't see who wrote the email. So it could have been from anyone and unless for some reason she had noted the name in the reply address (and it was more than "jlg@") she would have just passed on it.

3) She forwarded it for someone to handle (given 1&2 above) and they haven't acted on it yet.

Noting JLG says "You can guess what happened: Nothing, no response." but doesn't specify if he waited 1 day or 4 weeks.

Edit: They said they checked the spam lists but the ones that I've listed below may be helpful to others.

OP might have had an IP previously used by spammers or in a spam block. (See edit).

Important to check the IP before using it if it's been given to you by, say, the VPS Provider or the upstream. To see what, if any, reputation it has.

Here are two tools to use:

http://multirbl.valli.org/

http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx

And there are a bunch of similar tools.

These comments I've reproduced below make me wonder again at what point will YC have their hands in to many pots and risk straying from the original formula which has worked so well. There is of course a need to evolve, change and add products. However in a small organization you also have to be able to manage all of that without having existing or new employees (or management) choke on the added complexity. Sama only has so many hours in a day. Even if there are more partners there is still glue that holds everything together. People at the top.

sama: "In the same way YC was able to make the early-stage ecosystem better for founders, we think we can do the same for the late-stage ecosystem."

rdl: "Curious if in 5 years YC figures out a way to OpenIPO YC companies, solving the private/public market impedance mismatch which seems to be happening now."

dshankar: "Instead, I wonder if YC can formalize & self-regulate a secondary market as an intermediate step before IPOs. "

rdl: "I wonder how long until YC goes upstream of fellowship/startup school: consolidated remote/mini internships for high school students, or some other "get involved with YC companies early" kind of thing."

Many things going on. No way of knowing all of this could work out fine. Just to me, from my observation of business over many years (not specific to startups) I say "DWR" [1]

[1] Danger Will Robinson.

Obviously building a subway is not just having the money to build the subway. Anywhere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway

"Four-year-old DigitalOcean now has more host computers in its cloud (almost 200,000) than any other company but Amazon (which has about twice that), says researcher Netcraft."

I am not seeing how netcraft can distinguish between a VPS and a host computer by the way they crawl the web.

Exactly. The title "How to Download a List of All Registered Domain Names" is not correct.

For example in .com .net if a registrar puts a domain "on hold" that pulls it from the zone file. As such it will not appear in any zone file download. This is in fact a way for a company to keep a domain under wraps. As such:

register domain name (in .com )

pull the name servers

The name won't be in any zone file. And will be off the radar until it has nameservers or until someone guesses to see if it's been registered.

(Note other registries work differently (or the same) the above is specific to .com and .net)

Do you mean "badge of honor" or do you really mean "creates some kind of halo and make you seem to be 'a player'"?.

I think (and I don't live in the valley although I did work there for a short time) there is truth to what you are thinking. In the end of course the work that you do and who you are matters. But I do buy into the idea that it shows how serious you are in the same way that people in finance flock to NYC or people in entertainment go to Hollywood to seek fame or fortune. Of course you need to be somewhere that you will be happy and can live as well. So not a good idea to push yourself to somewhere that isn't right for you.

1)I made a comment elsewhere that I felt that YC (and you in particular) had it's hands in to many pots and appeared to be doing to many things. With all of the things that you are doing (yc research just added for example) how do you feel that you will be able to keep up the high quality base purpose of YC?

2) You just gave 10m to fund YC Research. Was that because no other partners wanted to get involved in the project and in order to get their agreement (and show how important you felt it was) you decided to put your own money where your mouth was? It just seemed odd to me that it is a YC project yet you put your personal money in it (is the reason for the question).

I guess that doesn't make sense to me. I thought one of the bedrock principles of these types of services was a situation where you knew a bit about the person (reputation) that you were transporting.

Additionaly, nothing is to prevent a driver from keeping a small amount of cash on their person and then stashing the rest periodically in a hidden safe. So yes they might lose $50 or $100 vs. not getting tips. Even if they don't get tips a person could assume they had some cash on them.

The point of the small amount of cash is twofold. One it's a small amount so if you lose it not that big of a deal. But it's also enough that if you got robbed you could give something to the robber. So they don't harm you or beat you thinking there is more somewhere. [1] This is similar to the old rule of leaving a small amount of cash in your cash register at a store and leaving the register open. That way someone comes in, takes the cash, and in theory has less of a reason to trash your store.

[1] Of course you could store more of the money where you can find it to satisfy them if the $100 wasn't enough and if you felt your life depended on it. Kind of a honey pot in a way.

Is there anything in particular that makes handicap laws any different than, say, speeding or breaking any other law that won't land you in jail? People break speeding laws every day because a) they can and b) they feel they have a reason to and c) they don't feel the speed limit is just.

Have you noticed how many "not really handicapped" people use handicap spaces after getting a note from their Doctor? You seem to be indicating that there is something rare and special about handicapped spaces and that the entire idea of allocating them is fair to begin with. You know that's not the case, right? Also why the need to call Jobs "a rich asshole"?

What would prevent you from just giving him some cash out of your physical wallet?

In general you are getting a ride from someone. Other than the fact that with legacy taxis you tip, (just like at a restaurant) where it doesn't really relate to quality of service, I don't see how much extra someone can do that would make a ride tipworthy.

Well the parent comment doesn't say how many handicap spots were open. Giving Jobs the benefit of the doubt, he may have seen a pattern where there were always multiple spots available. And the spot locations don't come down from God either. They are decided (at least in the state where I live and have worked on this subject (a work parking lot)) in an arbitrary fashion in order to meet certain requirements. It's (once again where I am) a loose specification for placement. And you can always exceed the number required. For all we know Apple could have put in more spaces than required and Steve was simply taking advantage of that knowing that nothing would happen. And that he further didn't care about any fine he received assuming the Police even had normal access to that part of the parking lot when they were on patrol.

Edit: Further to my point it's easy to assume "arrogant big shot rich guy" just hearing a story like this.

What's interesting is that they don't mention this on the marketing page for snowball. As in "also if you want you can mail your own harddrive, see this page for details". While most would think "why rain on the parade of this new service by mentioning the old service" with Amazon it's more than that. It's this entire idea of weaning people off of legacy ways of doing things (with new names and new processes) so it's harder for any competitor to offer the same type of service, unique way of doing things or handholding. After all anyone can accept (in theory) a mailed in hard drive. Much harder to offer a solution like this with hardware and so on. So to me this is obviously deliberate and consistent with Amazon wanting to raise an entire generation on a new paradigm of getting things done.

Edit: And yes this way it's easier for them as well and removes "missing power supplies" (big deal actually by I get the point..)

In a similar way, Starbucks. Can't think of a time when I am in Starbucks and mom or dad is there with kids in tow. All future customers. Ditto for McDonalds obviously. SB is more significant to me only because McDonalds is a place you take kids to, Starbucks is a place you go to and bring your kids with.

What is interesting is that in the US you have freedom of speech but that doesn't mean you can yell "fire" in a movie theater (as the example often goes).

Otoh you have freedom of the press but there are little restrictions on the press to print anything (obvious exclusions include libel) under the premise that people have a right to know certain things even if that right to know ends up creating more danger. Which is what you mean by "giving these suckers as much airtime". The truth is, why do I need to know that a school in another state in the US had a shooting? Does the information value of that outweigh the obvious effect of having copycat crimes and more damage? To me, it doesn't. And I don't think the issue is really not allowing information like that to be put out. I think the issue is simply playing so long and so hard that it creates the impact that you are referring to. And creates "more suckers".

Ref to HN in this article as a reason for the success:

"The site has been nearly overwhelmed with traffic -- the founders won't disclose how much -- since going live on Friday. To announce their service, St. Sauver and Pollak initially just posted a link on Hacker News, a popular site among techies run by venture capital firm Y Combinator. The news next spread to Reddit, prompting another wave of traffic."

"it's that it's not worth my mental energy to debate whether to spend a nickel."

Related in a way: How people can easily waste "energy" because it takes no "mental energy" to do so. Each time you turn on a light or decide to leave a light on (or even drive to a store) you are not confronted with "going to drugstore, cost 1.23, proceed?". ".10 to turn light on for 1 hour, proceed?" The cost is hidden and given to you in bulk. You just have to decide generally that spending $35 per week for gas is "worth it". (Along with other fixed type expenses).

It's interesting that the opposite of netflix was the video store, even with a monthly plan and no cost per DVD. You would have to get to the store, review the available movies, and then decide which one to rent. All along knowing that if you got home and didn't like the movie, you'd have to trek back to the video store and repeat the process. In that case, and even assuming the cost was $9.99 per month, you are closer to having a "cost" and energy (physical and mental) than you do on netflix.

On netflix the mental energy requirement is there as well but not the same as a video store obviously. You still have to cue up the movie, watch some of it, and then decide when to stop watching (3 minutes in, 20 minutes in etc/) if it doesn't appear to be what you like. This is after spending some thought to what you want to watch in the first place.

Which brings me to my point. One of the things that I have learned in business is to not make people have to think, that is to make it easy for them to make a decision. Instead of giving them 20 choices only give them 3 or 5 choices. People I have found, at least with things that I have sold, like this a great deal.

"Who are these BGP admins?"

Similar to my question. Who are they, how many are there, how do they communicate, is the fact that they have this power in itself some kind of risk?

"disconnected from the Internet completely".

Perhaps a blog post on exactly how that is done. And after what particular time would that happen and is that something that needs to be coordinated or??

"or any other company"

Any other company? You've named three. Truth is enterprise grade companies that serve the business market and don't give their products away for free or participate in a race to the bottom typically don't do this type of thing to the degree that google does. Perhaps the companies that do (including parts of msft) are those that deal with developers or consumers which apparently are more likely to not complain to much (other than to whine online) when they get the shaft. The stereotype, unfortunately, is true. At least that is what I have found.

Also, and this is important, there is the benign neglect phase where they simply keep the product minimally working but don't spend any time to improve it (like google voice).

"so that you don't have to travel."

Or perhaps better actually where your attorneys are located?

Here is one. My Porsche has a display which tells you the MPG. However the car display is consistently between 1 and 2 mpg better than what I calculate after filling the tank and doing the math. And I repeat it's consistently worse than the display which calculates the mgp per tankful which is probably what most people rely on. I've been meaning to bring this up with the dealer but haven't so far. This is in addition to not coming anywhere near to the stated MPG and with conservative driving (non sport mode ..)

"it probably would be a good idea for him to mention there that he is the moderator of the site"

I have mentioned that also in the past as I am sure others have.

Likewise for sama, for pg, for that matter anyone else that is involved in HN or YC. (Some do of course but for the life of me I don't know why sama and pg do not). All not listing info like this does is simply enforce some secret society of HN. Which is funny given how many comments seem to rally against things like that. It's like "let's shun the newbies and put them at a disadvantage vs. established people who know the ropes and the players..". "Isn't it funny when a newbie doesn't know they are speaking to Sam Altman in their reply haha.

Reminds me of a joke that goes something like this. "If you never have sex (or maybe it was "if you cutoff your testicles"?) you will live an extra 10 years. And the punchline is "you call that living?".

Why in the world does it matter at all if you can drive many miles at an unrealistic average speed? You call that driving?

Well if there is editorial independence, will we still see posts for when YC companies are looking to hire people, where you can't leave a comment, I am guessing for fear of creating noise that is not helpful to the hiring process?

And will YC companies still get what appears to be preferential placement ("appears to be") for stories? [1] Some "more equal" than others?

If this is true independence then those benefits would be extended and/or eliminated.

[1] Or do stories about YC companies simple get more upvotes because of the balance in the community here toward people working at YC companies?