Hacker News Reader

rudigeron How Google's Marissa Mayer Prevents Burnout

If you're working 130 hours a week (18+ hours a day, 7 days a week), there's no way you're sleeping 8 hours a night.

You're probably getting no more than 4-5 hours of sleep a night, if that. And you're probably pulling an all-nighter or two every week.

rudigeron Startup Accelerator Fail: Most Graduates Go Nowhere

What about the founders? They don't have the liberty of hedging their bets, so for them it can be a raw deal.

rudigeron Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)

If you look at all the people making 6 million dollar paydays, is this really how it works? I suspect not, but I don't have the data to back that assertion.

rudigeron Exploiting Silicon Valley For Profit (and Maybe Fun)

Except this isn't how people are making 5+ million dollars in practice.

rudigeron Functioning Apple 1 Sells for $375,000 at Sotheby's Auction

The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 at a price of US$666.66. Given that this was 36 years ago, that implies roughly a 19% rate of return.

Assuming you could invest $666.66 in Apple in 1976 at a generous $10 million valuation, it would be worth many tens of millions now.

rudigeron Functioning Apple 1 Sells for $375,000 at Sotheby's Auction

The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 at a price of US$666.66. Given that this was 36 years ago, that implies roughly a 19% rate of return.

rudigeron Reddit bans The Atlantic, Businessweek, others in major anti-spam move

Interesting. Is this implemented similarly to "hellban"? Which is to say, does it appear that the votes are valid to the voting rings, or are they shown something else entirely?

rudigeron Learn C The Hard Way by Zed Shaw

Is it really surprising that C can get in the spotlight even on Hacker News? It's the quintessential hacker programming language!

rudigeron Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

Here's what Paul Graham has to say in How to Make Wealth: Millions, Not Billions (http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html):

> If $3 million a year seems high to some people, it will seem low to others. Three million? How do I get to be a billionaire, like Bill Gates?

> So let's get Bill Gates out of the way right now. It's not a good idea to use famous rich people as examples, because the press only write about the very richest, and these tend to be outliers. Bill Gates is a smart, determined, and hardworking man, but you need more than that to make as much money as he has. You also need to be very lucky.

> There is a large random factor in the success of any company. So the guys you end up reading about in the papers are the ones who are very smart, totally dedicated, and win the lottery. Certainly Bill is smart and dedicated, but Microsoft also happens to have been the beneficiary of one of the most spectacular blunders in the history of business: the licensing deal for DOS. No doubt Bill did everything he could to steer IBM into making that blunder, and he has done an excellent job of exploiting it, but if there had been one person with a brain on IBM's side, Microsoft's future would have been very different. Microsoft at that stage had little leverage over IBM. They were effectively a component supplier. If IBM had required an exclusive license, as they should have, Microsoft would still have signed the deal. It would still have meant a lot of money for them, and IBM could easily have gotten an operating system elsewhere.

> Instead IBM ended up using all its power in the market to give Microsoft control of the PC standard. From that point, all Microsoft had to do was execute. They never had to bet the company on a bold decision. All they had to do was play hardball with licensees and copy more innovative products reasonably promptly.

> If IBM hadn't made this mistake, Microsoft would still have been a successful company, but it could not have grown so big so fast. Bill Gates would be rich, but he'd be somewhere near the bottom of the Forbes 400 with the other guys his age.

So "luck" largely took Bill Gates from millions to billions, a 100x to 1000x multiplier.

rudigeron Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

Mary Gates, Bill Gates' mother, was on the same board as John Opel, the president, chairman and CEO of I.B.M. They discussed her son's company and Mr. Opel mentioned Mrs. Gates to other I.B.M. executives. A few weeks later, I.B.M. took a chance by hiring Microsoft, then a small software company, to develop an operating system for its first personal computer.

So a discussion Mary Gates had with John Opel while they were both serving on the board of United Way of America resulted in an IBM contract being placed with her son Bill's company Microsoft to create an operating system for IBM's first personal computer.

rudigeron Michael Lewis: Don't Eat Fortune's Cookie

Some businessmen feel obligated to "give back." Who says they've taken anything?

Paul Graham responds, "They've taken something from chance."

rudigeron Oh, the Places You'll Go

My browser is Safari 5.0.2 on the iPad 2 (iOS 4.3.5).

rudigeron Oh, the Places You'll Go

Is the right-hand side of the text cut off on the iPad for anyone else?

rudigeron Things I Should Have Known at 20

Point 20 isn't totally wrong. You shouldn't try to “fix” anyone.

rudigeron A Cautionary Word on the Deferred Life Plan

Every successful person I know has made their 8+ hours of work a part of their Life.

rudigeron The Art Of The iOS Icon

What do these actually look like on the iPhone at icon size?

rudigeron Marc Jacobs vs. The Graffiti Artist, Round 2

In case you're not trying to be facetious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp)

rudigeron Zuckerberg loses 2 Billion

I can't wait until next week, when these daily articles about Facebook's market capitalization and Mr. Zuckerberg's net worth go away.

rudigeron Pinterest Architecture Update - 18M Visitors, 10x Growth, 12 Employees, 410 TB

It's cool that we're seeing companies reach 1 billion USD valuations with 12 employees.

rudigeron The Story Behind Payment Disruptor Stripe.com And Its Founder Patrick Collison

Who's the long-haired dude in that picture?

rudigeron Microsoft launches so.cl

What's wrong with name of Bing?

rudigeron Marc Jacobs vs. The Graffiti Artist, Round 2

He's an artist and a vandal.

rudigeron With Eye On Future, Billionaire Investor Bets On Paul

Money isn't the best way to judge intelligence either.

rudigeron Mark Zuckerberg married

Wouldn't he lose the 50+% majority of voting shares?

rudigeron How Facebook Hacked The NASDAQ Button

On the day of Facebook's IPO, I don't think that anyone was worried about getting press coverage.

rudigeron Avoiding Depression While Not Running a $1B Company

I don't think it's healthy for anyone to want to be a billionaire. You can want to make money, maybe even a lot of it, but why the arbitrary huge value of a billion?

rudigeron Reticent rich: Preferred style in Silicon Valley

Travel can be as expensive as you want it to be, will greatly improve your life, and your friends will only know what you tell/show them.

rudigeron Candy Japan April Income Report

I feel like your landing page is too "corporate".

Candy Japan is about the emotional experience. The design should reflect that!

rudigeron All the oxygen trapped in a bubble

The chance that granny is going to lose her pension fund is much more related to the actions of the banking and financial industries. Granny is already losing her savings with near-zero interest rates.

rudigeron 50 Years Ago: The World in 1962

It's the same story with Lebanon and Iraq. We can take the opportunities of modern society for granted, but so much can be destroyed by war.