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alessandroetc

32 karma · joined March 20, 2020

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alessandroetc··on Ask HN: Why do tools like customer.io abandon self-serve after their Series A?
yeah, i guess the treadmill of growth expectations just climbs so much that it doesn't even make sense to think about the small fish coming in from freemium.

it's just odd to me because it should take 0 effort to manage a freemium pipeline as there's no human in the loop. but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

alessandroetc··on Iran's nuke confession blows reasons for America's war wide open
If you've been following what Iranian leaders have been saying for the past 2 decades this shouldn't come as a surprise.

I mean they made a popular comedy around the absurdity of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQxX1M2fSOs

alessandroetc··on Meta acquires Moltbook
you miss out on openclaw so you spend the money on the next best thing. bold strategy cotton, lets see how it plays out for them
alessandroetc··on Show HN: KudoSnap – Anonymous positive polls that turn Slack into a kudos loop
Hey HN! here's something I couldn't stop thinking about:

your coworkers probably think good things about you that they'll never say. Not because they don't mean it, but because there's no moment in the workday where it's natural to say "you're really good at keeping things calm when everything's on fire."

Most recognition tools try to solve this by asking people to write compliments. That doesn't work. It's awkward, it's performative, and it ends up in a public channel where "Great job Sarah! " means nothing. The insight I kept coming back to is: what if you reframe the compliment as a poll answer? You're not choosing to compliment someone. You're just answering a question. That removes the awkwardness entirely.

So I built KudoSnap. It's a Slack bot. Here's how it works:

1. One person installs it — no admin approval needed. The Slack scopes are intentionally minimal (channels:read, users:read, chat:write). No message access. 2. It builds a social graph from channel co-membership to figure out who actually works together. 3. A couple times a week it sends you a 3-second anonymous poll: "Who explains complex things the clearest?" with 4 names from your actual coworkers. 4. Your vote becomes a private DM to that person: "A coworker said you explain complex things clearly." They answer a poll to see who said it — and now they've also voted for someone. The loop spreads itself.

The whole thing runs on Vercel + Supabase ($0/month at beta scale). pg_cron triggers poll delivery via HTTP calls to serverless endpoints.

It's Employee Appreciation Day, which felt like the right moment to share, but the reason I built this is that appreciation shouldn't need a holiday.

Free beta, open to any Slack workspace. I'd love feedback, especially: what would make you skeptical about installing this?

alessandroetc··on NASA is looking for people who want to spend a year simulating a mission on Mars
Seeking to extend the isolation of COVID life? Well, you're in luck. Apply now!
alessandroetc··on I am often asked if I will “return to cryptocurrency”
now tell us what you really think...
alessandroetc··on Biden launches action on "Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Ag" – can it be real?
It's not actually real. The lobbying firm behind most of the fact sheet is made up of people on the boards of different tech firms.
alessandroetc··on Why do roads, rail, and infrastructure cost so much to build in the US?
Is it just me or does the author never actually answer the question in the title?

Also, does anyone know if the pricing graph accounts for inflation?

alessandroetc··on YT demonetizes Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying channel
I don't understand why businesses insist on betraying the very values they were built on in the first place. YouTube has always been about helping people feel heard and giving them a voice through their platform. Decisions like this one simply prove that in a few years they'll likely be defined as a publisher and not a platform.
alessandroetc··on Practical Reed-Solomon for Programmers
what are your thoughts on storj.io? they utilize R-S for all their entire storage platform.
alessandroetc··on El Salvador makes Bitcoin legal tender
Huge news!
alessandroetc··on The cost of cloud, a trillion dollar paradox
I see services like Storj the perfect hybrid model here. Companies get the security and optimizations of the cloud, while being able to simultaneously run their own storage nodes to get cost savings.

Exciting times for decentralized storage!

alessandroetc··on Amy Klobuchar Is Coming for the App Store Tax
+1
alessandroetc··on Why I distrust Google Cloud more than than AWS or Azure
Storj.io for the win. Move over Google!
alessandroetc··on Decentralized data storage has finally landed
Costs shouldn't rise or fall based on the price of the coin. You can pay directly in USD for the storage so that you don't have to worry about the pricing shifts.
alessandroetc··on Decentralized data storage has finally landed
Storj is going to be a lot more tried and battle tested than TahoLAFS. If you need to reliable store files under a strong encryption, I'd use storj.
alessandroetc··on Decentralized data storage has finally landed
If you want something that you can just plug into and leave alone, I'd just use Storj. It's priced the cheapest and their tech is the best thus far. I will say that it's built for developers so expect needing to spend some time to set everything up.
alessandroetc··on Quitting Twitter
Agree with a lot of these points, but not quite sure how you solve them with a better solution.
alessandroetc··on The YouTube ban is un-American, wrong, and will backfire
If youtube wants to remove stuff they can, but they should start with removing the values they state on their about page. You can't say you give everyone a voice and then start blanket silencing people.
alessandroetc··on I quit my job to do a startup and then quit 2 months later
Marketplaces like this are hard to evaluate in a few months. It can take 6-7 months before you start to see pull, especially if the supply side has work they need to do to list their service.
alessandroetc··on Ask HN: How to Get Traction for Startup?
No silver bullet solution. You've gotta hit all channels and see which ones get you the best traffic. Which channels work best really depends on the type of business you're building. Just toss spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks. Then, when it does, throw more!
alessandroetc··on Marketplace for group therapy and support groups
Group work can be an extremely therapeutic way to connect with others on common challenges and improve social skills.