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ryanmercer

2,651 karma · joined May 29, 2017

Just a guy, find me at https://www.ryanmercer.com/
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ryanmercer··on Kevin Mitnick has died
That's sad. I imagine Crunch will be next.
ryanmercer··on Workers might have to ditch the 9-5 for the 6-2 because of climate change
I'm up at 5:25 anyway (even when not working), works for me! I've never had a job that worked from 9am-5pm anyway. Instead of I've worked 6am-2pm, 7am-3:30pm, 7:30amm-4:00pm, 7pm-4am, and then all the random retail hours.
ryanmercer··on 85% of AI Startups Will Be Out of Business in 3 Years, Major Investor Says
But how many startups receive any appreciable amount of VC money? How many are operating on the savings of the founder(s) and/or money from family and friends rounds? How many founders are going into personal debt to fund their startup?

And how many of them that do raise funds go crazy on a hiring spree once they get any remotely reasonable funding, while not having a functional product or a remotely sustainable user base?

According to Crunchbase only 1 in 3 startups even make it to Series A (between 2011 and 2018, the % was fairly consistent each year)

https://news.crunchbase.com/liquidity/seed-funding-series-a-....

Looking at "funding data from around 15,600 U.S.-based technology companies founded between 2003 and 2013" TechCrunch comes to the conclusion that only about 40% that close a Pre-Series A round make it to a Series A.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/17/heres-how-likely-your-star...

ryanmercer··on Ask HN: Whatever happened to the “coming wave” of delivery drones?
I don't know if it has been shared in this thread but Mark Rober did a video earlier this year about drones actively doing medical deliveries in Africa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOWDNBu9DkU
ryanmercer··on What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
That you don't want people with suicidal ideations flying planes.

There are plenty of medicines that warn against operating motor vehicles or heavy machinery, off the top of my head some blood pressure meds like Losartan and HCTZ because they can make you dizzy/prone to blacking out. I imagine there's similar logic here for pilots.

ryanmercer··on 85% of AI Startups Will Be Out of Business in 3 Years, Major Investor Says
But, won't most anything startups be out of business in 3 years?

Data from the BLS shows that:

"approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more."

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1010/top-6-reaso....

Purely guessing that startups fail even faster. This Hubspot article states:

"All these reasons bring up one question: How many startups fail? The reality is that 90% of startups fail."

https://blog.hubspot.com/the-hustle/how-many-startups-fail#:....

ryanmercer··on What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?
I'm guessing because a Google search of "Adderall side effects" immediately returned this:

"Rare but severe side effects of Adderall can include emotional instability, psychiatric disorders and cardiovascular events. Adderall misuse can lead to seizures and death."

ryanmercer··on FedEx Accused of Largest Odometer Rollback Fraud in History with Used Vans
Doesn't surprise me, they didn't give me a cost of living increase for over a decade and new hires were making almost as much as I was when I quit after 15 and a half years (office job), along with about half the office quitting within a year.
ryanmercer··on McDonald's just dropped a brand new Game Boy game
>You can get brand new Atari 2600 cartridges in boxes and everything.

Yup, new titles still being made. There's even Halo for the 2600.

Tons of titles currently being manufactured for a lot of vintage consoles/computers: https://atariage.com/store/

ryanmercer··on McDonald's just dropped a brand new Game Boy game
I love it!
ryanmercer··on McDonald's just dropped a brand new Game Boy game
Neat!
ryanmercer··on Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
>Wow! Reddit as a business does a disservice to mods by not compensating them for the effort they put in to keep these communities safe and functional.

No one is forcing us to mod. We mod because we value the communities we mod and like being active parts of them. I don't want Reddit to pay me, it isn't a job, it's a passion and a hobby.

ryanmercer··on Did Reddit just destroy mobile browser access?
>The thing is that there's a lot of valuable information that I don't think we should just delete like that.

Agreed. In the past 2 days I've been overly annoyed as both days I've had multiple google queries dump me to seemingly useful threads that I can not see because of this foolish nonsense of shuttering communities in "protest".

ryanmercer··on Those of you months into a layoff, how are you surviving?
>What is your stack?

I'm not an SE. Remote, I live rurally.

ryanmercer··on Those of you months into a layoff, how are you surviving?
Not a bad idea!
ryanmercer··on More startups throw in the towel, unable to raise money for their ideas
"Hello moneybags, I have this idea for an app, it's super niche and wastes almost as much time as doing the task without the app except we get to charge them for it! Our costs are really cheap because we mostly pay in equity and we're exploiting the generosity of other startups to keep our 3rd party service costs down!" <- feels like 70%~ of ideas.
ryanmercer··on Army tested 'germ warfare' on NYC subway (2015)
Well, they couldn't exactly run realistic and viable computer models in the years of 1949-1969... so they took a harmless, commonly used model organism, and conducted tests.

Something science teachers do as a simple experiment now (with various substances), something Mark Rober even did on his own channel with 'Glo Germ' powder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5-dI74zxPg

ryanmercer··on Apollo will close down on June 30th
>pushed it into my sub,

*their sub.

ryanmercer··on Apollo will close down on June 30th
>I'm using reddit for ages and never even considered anything besides their website.

Same. I have never used anything other than old.reddit on a proper computer, with the exception being when I need to edit the new.reddit sidebars for subs I moderate, which I still do on a proper computer.

ryanmercer··on Apollo will close down on June 30th
>I bet some subreddits will go permanently private or delete themselves over this.

It's my understanding that Apollo users make up a fraction of a percent of active users. Reddit almost certainly doesn't care. Fact is they've taken in over a billion in funding and aren't really returning a profit, charging for API access starts moving them in the right direction though.

ryanmercer··on Apollo will close down on June 30th
Seems foolish to build your company to be entirely dependent on the generosity of free API access, then rage quit when you have to start paying instead of, you know, charging your customers more.

Also I see no evidence that he was accused of blackmail. A linked comment in the Reddit thread states:

>Apollo threatened us, said they’ll “make it easy” if Reddit gave them $10 million.

The linked comment is from "BuckRowdy", apparently not even an employee of Reddit and that is not "blackmail". To me that's "hey, acquihire me and my company for 10 million and then you don't have to do the work!"

ryanmercer··on Reddit will exempt accessibility-focused apps from unpopular API pricing changes
As a long time user, and moderator, I do everything via old.reddit (and the only additional thing is mod toolbox, which I could live without) on a proper computer. I just can't fathom any meaningful use of Reddit via a phone app. To me that's as insane as trying to read a novel on your phone or watch a movie.

Simply does not compute to me.

ryanmercer··on Get Phones Out of Schools Now
Or just put voip phones in every classroom for emergencies and ban mobile phones for students. 99.99999% of teachers have a cell phone anyway in the event of a proper emergency.
ryanmercer··on Get Phones Out of Schools Now
If my wife and I had children, we would 100% keep their phones at home every morning. They would not go to school with them, period. They're an unnecessary distraction during the school day (and my wife is a high school teacher).
ryanmercer··on Get Phones Out of Schools Now
>, yet I think schools (generally) do a good job of keeping them away from kids during the day.

When I was in high school 99-03 you couldn't go into the bathroom without seeing someone smoking a cigarette or a joint, I even had a teacher that would let you have a restroom pass under the condition he reserved the right to smell you (at a reasonable distance) when you returned to make sure you didn't smoke. Now kids try to sneak vapes in class (my wife is a high school teacher) and at a school she taught at before we got married they had a student OD on fentanyl that someone had laced his vape cartridge with.

When I was in high school you'd have kids on MDMA in class too with some regularity.

A friend that is also a teacher, about 7-8 years ago, had (presumably) a student dose her Starbucks sitting on her desk with a roofie which required her being in the hospital for 2 days. Schools aren't doing a good job of anything in that regard. Even prisons can't keep drugs out and they have strip and cavity searches.

ryanmercer··on Get Phones Out of Schools Now
Yeah, good luck with that.

My wife is a high school teacher, parents get livid if you confiscate their kids phone for even a single period citing "I need to be able to reach him/her!"

ryanmercer··on Bees can learn, remember, think and make decisions
All you have to do is go out to your garden, find stuff that has flowered, and watch a bee work to come to this assumption on your own as one will methodically visit every flower (often of an individual species), sometimes spending less than a second at each to determine if it has pollen or not, collect all it can while showing an impressive mastery of spatial awareness (while flying) and then return home with its payload.
ryanmercer··on US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles
>and not the commercial pilots

Because they don't want to lose their job when their employer thinks they're nuts and shouldn't be flying hundreds of people.

ryanmercer··on US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles
>There are 3 comprehensive possibilities

I'd say there is a 4th comprehensive possibility: these are one or more natural phenomenon we've yet to document and may have no intelligence behind them at all.

ryanmercer··on US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles
> the galaxy is emptier than it should be.

It really isn't. Do the math, I did (scroll about halfway down): https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2014/11/30/this-jus...

Being very generous, in my opinion, and assuming 1 in 2 systems has a planet/moon that is inhabitable by life as we know it, and that 1 in 2 of those has tool-building life at some point, in our galaxy you get something like 1 tool-building civilization per 600,000 square light-years spread out over 12 billion years.

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