tomhoward

No. It wouldn't fly in the present climate.

It's not even just about the opinions of the Australian population. Other tennis players have a right to ask why he can get around the rules that even other top players (Nadal, Federer etc) can't avoid. The ATP itself came out saying that players should all be vaccinated, and the only complaint it raised on behalf of Djokovic was over the circumstances that led to him ending up in immigration detention. But with the new details about his activities that have emerged since then, I'd be surprised if they are very combative on his behalf now, given they represent all the male players, not just him.

> "ending religion"

Can't think of any ways that would be difficult or risky?

I first came across him in the "four horsemen" days of around 2008, when I was at the peak of my Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins stage.

Since then he seems to have built and sustained a career saying the same kinds of things as he was saying back then, focusing on anti-religion, reductionist materialism and genetic determinism. And yes he also espouses the benefits of meditation and psychedelics, and makes a solid income selling his meditation app, but he still dismisses the experiences and benefits of these practices as ultimately materialist phenomena.

I understand this worldview very well and have spent much of my life embracing it.

But whereas Harris has found the answers provided by this worldview to be satisfactory in answering his own questions (and sustaining his career), I've had cause to explore much further, and have found many other fascinating ideas and practices, many of which are more interesting and explanatory to me these days.

My suggestion is that if you're interested in Sam Harris's ideas but are also interested to explore other ideas around the similar topics, look up such people as Iain McGilchrist, Bernardo Kastrup, Rupert Sheldrake, John Vervaeke, Terrence McKenna and others linked to them.

We don’t live in a world where success is measured by money. No decent people think that way, and even most Silicon Valley people you’d consider “indecent” don’t think that way. Most people look at money-obsession and conspicuous displays of wealth as crass and lame, which is entirely appropriate.

That said, money is a focus for companies as it is a measure of resources and scale. Without money, a company can’t survive or grow, and with it, it can do more of its “solving problems” work for more people.

I really don’t see any truly successful people or companies focusing on money beyond that.

Airbnb was basically dead before they got into YC. They very likely would have quit, as they were heavily in personal debt and couldn’t find anyone to invest in them.

Reddit was pretty much PG’s idea, or at least an idea he helped Steve and Alexis come up with.

Stripe is hard to imagine getting started if PC hadn’t already had an exit with an earlier YC-funded startup.

I could go on and on, but the point is clearly false.

I’be been using this subconscious healing approach:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29701855

I’ve used it almost every day at times, but need it much less these days, having processed resolved so much of what used to affect me.

I find it’s effective because it’s systematic; the feelings you have in your body when you think of the issue points you to the subconscious charge that needs to be identified and processed. And as long as those feelings are there, there is more work that can be done.

It can take a long time to work through everything (I’m still working on things after nearly 10 years - i.e. early life family stuff), but it’s so so worth the effort and patience.

There’s a strong theme here of assuming the worst possible motivations in people and responding to the worst interpretations of people’s words and actions; first in the case of the company’s founders, which is my main point of contention with your position, but then also in response to my comments, which is not just bad-faith debating but a breach of the HN guidelines.

I note that twice in the above comment, you’ve put statements in quotes as if they were things I wrote when I clearly wrote nothing of the sort. If you can’t engage in a discussion by simply addressing things that were actually written, it’s time to stop commenting.

My comment about it being Christmas Eve was a way of noting the fact that it’s a time when most of us who are in parts of the world that celebrate Christmas probably have better and kinder things to do than perpetuate arguments like this.

As for your apparently-continuing claim that Occam’s razor supports your argument: your central claim seems to rely on the assumption that most company founders are dishonest in their stated intentions to do right by customers, and that we should assume that founders are lying when they claim that.

If I’m wrong that that’s your position, you’re welcome to clarify, but please do so without further ad hominem attacks. If it is your position, OK, but I profoundly disagree, and I point out that that it’s not the kind of uncontroversial, accepted fact that puts your argument on solid ground. But sure, you’re welcome to believe it.

For what it’s worth, my own position comes from a belief, and at least 10 years of looking very closely at the phenomenon, that most people are essentially good and well-intentioned, and when they do wrong it’s not just that they’re inherently dishonest or evil, it’s due to reasons that are important to understand, if nothing else so we can avoid getting into situations where we’d end up doing those kinds of wrong thing ourselves.

This is why I push back against scapegoating rage fests when I see them on HN; only if we’re willing understand and dispassionately reflect on how and why people do wrong can we expect people, including ourselves to do good.

That first sentence is mind-reading. It demonstrates nothing but your own ideology and imagination.

So, nobody in the subthread has demonstrated that the LendUp founders or YC were guilty of any wrongdoing or malicious intent in 2011-12. All we have is conjecture based on people’s previously held feelings on YC and Silicon Valley.

Now, where I am it’s Christmas Eve, which I’m off to enjoy. Best wishes to you.

Ok, so you now seem to be conceding they likely didn’t lie or have intent to defraud people at the beginning, in which case we now have no major disagreement about this topic.

The rest of the comment is commentary about the nature of contemporary startups and VC, including some mind-reading into the true motives of everyone who starts a company, not just LendUp. Obviously you’re entitled to your views on this but it’s all rather nebulous narrative that can be invoked any time to try and win a debate when there’s no clear evidence relevant to the specific topic of discussion.

I think I’ve learned all the can be learned here. Thanks for the discussion.

Without evidence that they lied in 2011-12, it requires an explanation as to why they would lie, and for us to believe that a strategy to lie to investors then defraud customers and get shut down by regulators is more plausible than to have set out with high-minded ambitions that later turned out to be fanciful.

This attack is full of inventions. “Wilfully ignoring” the legal issues, and didn’t read the article. False. “Claiming LendUp did nothing wrong”. Seriously, where? “Perpetuating and defending the idea that YC can do no wrong”. Again, where, aside from pointing out that nobody has been able to provide any evidence that YC did wrong in this case?

The claim I’m disputing is that the original founders, when founding the company ten years ago, set out with malicious intentions to defraud people, and that YC and other investors knew and supported this.

(Others have later claimed that this wasn’t the allegation, and it was rather that YC made a mistake to invest in this company, in which case, fine, I have no major quarrel with that - most of YC’s investments turn out to be mistakes, that’s how their model works.)

But for those who insist that the original founders’ intentions from the start were nefarious and that YC was aware and complicit, this needs to be pushed back on, hard, as there’s no evidence for it and it makes no sense as you can’t build a successful business that way.

That the founders had high-minded ambitions that later turned out to be unachievable is the simplest explanation. Legal issues several years later, or examples of different companies doing different things to what the founders set out to do are not proof of malice on the part of the founders or YC, or of my dishonesty, and further wordy and aggressive replies from you won’t change that.

Seriously, the legal process has worked and the company has been shut down. Put away the pitchforks and torches.

By definition, Occam's razor requires us to believe that founders sincerely intended to do what they said they planned to do, unless there is evidence to the contrary.

You've written a whole lot of words that bypass my point and double down on the accusation that I was dishonest.

You've only cited companies/orgs that are operating legally, not ones that are demonstrated to be highly ethical and substantially better for borrowers to deal with than the payday lending companies that existed when LendUp was conceived around 10 years ago.

Clearly, LendUp was talking about trying to build something much better for borrowers than what existed then, and that's what was compelling to YC (as I said in an earlier comment, I vaguely remember discussions about this being had at the time, and thinking it would be interesting to see how their plans would play out).

Exactly what went wrong along the way, I don't know, and I haven't seen any comments here explaining it - only indignant comments leaping to the conclusion that everyone involved must have had malicious intentions from the start but not offering any evidence for this.

OK then. You weren't the root commenter, but it's pretty clear the root comment and the reply to dang were attempting to pin an accusation of unethical conduct on YC. But never mind.

There of course is another possibility: the founding team in 2011 was proposing a concept that seemed ethical and an improvement over payday lending options that existed at the time, but over time the company's idea or execution changed for some reason, in which case, there was neither poor ethics nor poor judgement on YC's part.

Occam's razor would require us to accept this explanation unless there was substantive evidence for another scenario.

The last part of that comment is quite obtuse. Can you state simply and clearly, what, if anything, YC did that was unethical?

The claim we’re addressing in this subthread is that in 2012 YC knowingly invested in a company that intended to be predatory towards military personnel, such that it would end up being shut down by regulators, implying that YC was both deeply unethical and deeply stupid. Are we really to believe that YC was being as unethical and stupid as this claim requires us to?

I edited my comment to tone down the implication that it's only loan sharks.

That said, the "traditional" payday lenders all turn out to be quite predatory, don't they? (I understand that's what the original founding premise of LendUp was intended to address, even if they couldn't make it work.)

But aside from that, will the traditional payday lenders lend to everyone and anyone, no matter their circumstances? If not, what are the options for people who they won't deal with?

You could have added your perspective without describing my response as "disingenuous", i.e., dishonest.

I said very clearly I have no specific knowledge on LendUp. I also know little about the space (apart from that it's a nightmare). The only specific insight I have here is on YC's history and ethical track record.

That said, can you educate me and other readers by linking to examples of companies that are doing well in this space (specifically, offering a better lending option than payday loans in the U.S.)?

Dang doesn't represent YC's accelerator/investments arm (i.e., he's an employee engaged to run HN, not a YC partner who makes investment decisions or official YC announcements).

But here's an article from 2016 about what LendUp was trying to do back then: https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/22/the-loan-dolphin/#.4sfbucn...

I don't know much about LendUp at all, but I do remember the surprise - and feeling it myself - when it was announced that YC was funding a payday lending company. Then I remember the thinking behind it being explained (perhaps on HN, perhaps elsewhere) and seeing that the founders seemed to be making a sincere effort to offer something that was at least just less-terrible than the existing payday lending options around (many of which involve dealing with crime gangs), which made me think "OK, I guess it's worth a try". I presume YC thought the same thing when they invested almost ten years ago.

If it turns out that there's no possible way of making a sustainable business in this space that's less-terrible than that was there before, I still don't think it's reprehensible that YC thought it was worth backing founders that seemed to be making a sincere effort to try.

From reading the linked paper on the study that was conducted by the Stanford School of Medicine, what aspects of the study did you deem to be unscientific?

Basic Microprocessors and the 6800 (1981):

https://www.amazon.com.au/Basic-Microprocessors-and-the-6800...

The point is that ranting about it here can't directly fix the problem. Sure, it can keep the topic of accessible/usable web development in people's minds, but it likely already is for most web developers using this site. Where a specific page/site is concerned, the person to complain to is the operator of the site hosting the relevant content - i.e., the person/group who can actually do something about it.

Others have replied well but I’ll add my own answer...

In order for your flight search product to be useful, you need a database containing effectively every flight in the world - all the airlines, all the destinations - and you need to update it every time a fare or seat availability changes. Then you need optimized routing algorithms to find routes that accommodate a vast array of consumer preferences. So, there are giant costs just to get access to all the data in the first place, then write the code and run all the servers.

ITA Software offered this as a service via an API, but since a couple of years after Google acquired them they stopped offering access to outsiders.

Now the GDS companies (Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport) offer API products, but they are still very costly, so big transaction volumes are needed to justify it.

There is now one way small/niche businesses can offer flight search and transactions fulfillment; a YC company called Duffel. They still only offer a narrow selection of airlines, but it’s growing.

Some other companies like Skyscanner offer access to their API, but only if it’s in their interests (ie, if you generate sales for them; you can’t make much revenue for yourself that way).

For those unfamiliar with ITA Matrix, it was for a long time the go-to flight search tool for the most dedicated flight hackers, points hackers, etc.

It was built by ITA Software [1][2] in the early-mid 2000s (the earliest mention I can find of it is in 2004 [3]) to test and showcase the capabilities of their flight search platform. I once heard that ITA and other consumer-facing flight search companies had tested that kind of UI with ordinary users, but found that not enough people understood or liked it enough for them to justify making it a mainstream interface.

Hipmunk, a YC-backed flight search site that launched in 2010, was heavily influenced by the ITA Matrix UI, after co-founder Adam Goldstein had found Matrix to be the best way for him to find flights when travelling around the world for college debating competitions. And while Hipmunk did a good job of being more consumer-friendly and popular than Matrix had been, sadly they didn't gain enough traction to make it as a standalone company, and after being acquired by SAP/Concur, it was shut down last year.

It's an interesting, and perhaps depressing case of a product design concept being far superior to what's available in the mainstream for a certain class of user, but cannot gain enough mainstream acceptance to be a viable business or even a well-supported service for those who love it. And far more than most other product categories, flight search has huge infrastructure costs, so it's very difficult to economically sustain niche products (from grim personal experience of being part of a team trying to build a novel flight search product ourselves).

In this case it's just lucky that Google owns the infrastructure and has enough enthusiasm internally to keep it going to some extent.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITA_Software

[2] https://xconomy.com/boston/2008/12/17/ita-software-the-trave...

[3] https://www.fodors.com/community/europe/customs-question-sea...

YC's stake is 7% (perhaps give or take 1-2% depending on the conditions at the time).

Good early-stage investors, especially YC, are experienced enough to know better than to damage the company's future prospects by screwing the cap table through taking too large a stake in the early stages. And now they have their Continuity fund and other programs to help growing companies, they'll work with the company to ensure that their fundraising strategy is optimal for the long term.

It's worth thinking about this in terms of the snowball metaphor.

What's the smallest/simplest/fastest version of your thing you can build that demonstrates that (a) you can make the thing work, and (b) people will pay for it?

Do that, then find customers who will commit to purchase, or investors who know enough about your space that they'll back you to keep working on it.

For hardware manufacturing in the consumer space, pre-orders (Kickstarter etc) are an ideal way to raise funds and prove demand.

For enterprise, you can get pre-commitments to purchase from customers, contingent on the concept working. E.g., Boom Aero came up with a design, then lined up purchase commitments from major airlines, then were able to use that to fundraise to get them through development. The incentive for the airline to commit to purchase is that they will be the first to have your product when it's ready.

For large-scale energy or telecoms innovation, you could build relationships with utilities companies, government bodies, etc - offer them priority access to your technology in exchange for purchase commitments backed by pre-payments or grants, which can then justify private investment.

I wrote "weeks to start knowing about mortality".

Obviously, more time will bring more complete knowledge.

It's too early to say, but the on-the-ground anecdotal reports suggest it is not particularly severe or lethal, based on observations so far. But it will take weeks to start knowing about mortality and months to see evidence of long illness.

The best case scenario is that the mutations that make it more infectious also make it less virulent/lethal, and the super-early evidence suggests that is at least possibly true of this variant.

A huge factor in what we think are your "social skills" is actually our subconscious programming.

A lot of the time, when we "try to improve our social skills", we are consciously trying and change/control the things we say and do, whereas the things that people are responding to are things we have no conscious control over or even awareness of, such as our eye movements, facial/hand/body tics, posture, breathing, and other very subtle signals in the way we speak and engage with others.

Years ago I spent quite some time trying to consciously improve my social skills - including the kinds of techniques taught in the "pickup" community back in the mid 00s when The Game came out. It got me nowhere, and I hated how manipulative it felt.

Later I discovered some subconscious emotional healing techniques. I've been undertaking them consistently for nearly 10 years, and things just keep getting better steadily. I haven't worried about consciously trying to be better socially, other than just generally being polite and attentive to people, but my relationships have all improved.

(That said, I've also become a better programmer, and better at working in teams, as I've become less anxious and better able to work through challenges and obstacles without getting flustered).

I first had a test in about August 2020, and last had one in about September 2021. The most recent one was far less deep/invasive than the 2020 ones. (I'm in Australia).