Hacker News Reader

archemike_on Obama Commutes Bulk of Chelsea Manning’s Sentence

Actually, Chelsea may indeed have considered herself a he during the epoch of Bradley(we don't know and shouldn't proclaim) so by you in proclaiming that you can't use he for referring to bradley, may in fact be misgendering in of itself as you're proclaiming bradley should be referred to as "she" when for all we know Chelsea could rightfully so refer to Bradley epoch as "he". This would be misgendering.

archemike_on How We Lost User Engagement After a Redesign

http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/

archemike_on Firing People

Well I'll take a reasonable attempt. Have done a firing like this in the real world as well.

Fire fast when a few things happen, such as when energy belief and overall personality inertia has lowered of an employee where their fire has diminished for one reason or another then you should get them fired and replaced as soon as possible to not allow that to affect others on the team. This can be for a number of reasons and the signs will be clear and instead of saying "oh gee he'll turn around" just fire fast stoicly and move on. The fire fast is a very unemotional philosophy where as a leader you view the team as a chain and weakest links must be cut out and a new one placed.

Fire fast is not at all indicative of what the term entails and you can't really deduce anything from that as the right deduction is what you said, fire right after hiring! But what I think the rational interpretation is; is to fire as soon as there are negative connotations being exhibited by a team member and instead of wondering if it'll change execute an order to fix it asap. I would also say fast can mean set guidelines and expecations and transparent ways to reinstill vigor into an individual. I think fire fast has an unquantified blowback where someone who could be good( even "10X" ) is fired prematurely and they could have been someone worth multiples of their salary in output for a company but were fired for internal reasons (Your policies and docs suck).

archemike_on Amazon Free Shipping minimum is now $49

what's going on is an item that's FBA(fulfilled by amazon sitting at an amazon facility) is at a facility that's not near you, so it's physically further and although it says prime they won't expedite in a day since it's maybe east coast placed and you're in California so they don't do same day because of this unless the item standalone is over 35. This is sort of against the spend 35 and get free shipping but seems to be the apparent modus operandi as of somewhat recent.

e.g. 25 dollar item and 15 dollar item might both be two days and would have to pay for one or same day even though total is 40 since one is FBA'd from a further location, so the same day can be misleading happens to be sitting at a facility that the seller shipped to, what happens after shipping into fba and how they disperse inventory if at all for lower latency in shipping I don't know but I am seeing more and more where they split orders to not pay same day even if total is over the same day rate. Hope this sheds a bit of light.

archemike_on Yahoo ex-employee sues, alleging performance review manipulation, gender bias

Even if it's algorithmic someone manually wrote it and would have set a preference to the female gender.

archemike_on Of kimono and cultural appropriation

http://nakedandfamousdenim.com/type/kimono-shirt/

kimonos are fashionable. I'm sure denim heads here will agree I have a few from Quebec :)

archemike_on Show HN: RentEver – Social Rental Marketplace – Rent Anything from Anyone Nearby

My good luck to you comes in the form of this statement:

Scale supply.

archemike_on New Hacker News Guideline: Avoid Gratuitous Negativity

Sadly it's spawned by the rampant ignorance most intellectual people face on a daily basis. This creates a cynicism and impulsive reaction to "check off" that perspective without vetting it further. This will be a good case study in guidelines that defy human behavior. It is tendency for many to go against this policy, which is why it was begat. Interesting how Y Combinator is wanting to thwart group think I welcome the spike.

archemike_on Mockups for a free, ad-supported Uber service

It's called banner blindness. "Engagement" of ads is dropping like an anchor yet prevalence of ads is skyrocketing. So you could say the mean effectiveness is really dropping because of this.

archemike_on Ask HN: Do you take nootropics?

for someone who likes melatonin but wants something stronger to aid sleep that's not medication/pills I recommend valerian root, it'll put your right to sleep reset your stress, like clearing your bodies ram.

archemike_on Philz Coffee Raises $15M to Expand Nationwide

I was scoffed at during my first Philz trip for mentioning espresso. Then the followup to the scoffing was how it was abuse to the beans and that "fake coffee crap" of buring beans into liquid was vile. I'll just summarize this anecdote and say that these highly opinionated business models are how Apples type brand loyalties are created and enforced, as awkward as it can feel.

archemike_on Philz Coffee Raises $15M to Expand Nationwide

There is no need to sell the milky, creamy, calorie shotgun of a drink, the majority of demand is for these. In fact Starbucks built an empire off of it(well validated) and whoever competes with Starbucks should have a comparable product.

I also agree with your trending statement with support from the rise of things like BulletProof Coffee(with grass fed butter) and high end pure coffee options which are growing in popularity versus the espresso + tons of sugar/cream/etc toppings.

archemike_on Brands Are Wasting Money on Facebook and Twitter, Forrester Says

I've been acquiring SaaS users for <$10 for awhile now at around 50 cents a click. I find the ads extremely effective if you know what you're doing and target the right demographics. That being said, the conversion thing makes total sense. There's lots of little tricks that have worked like make a campaign with over $100/day on ads and you get prioritized over the little fish and then lower it right away so you're still prioritized in their display algo but you aren't spending at that amount. If your adspend really is 100 start it higher like 1000. Lots of little tricks you can do that will tweak the system to your advantages. but buy paying for likes or showing ads to people who like candy crush or "insert corporate page" you'll probably burn at over a dollar a click to your site and most of those will bounce hence leaving an ineffective campaign.

The thing is though even if it's slightly working it's probably cheaper then AdWords, so for larger budgets/non personal it's a great way to get the same amount and comparably the same targeted traffic for less capital.

Also if the ads are so horrendous please explain the numerous ad hackers that have done TeeSpring campaigns making 100k by targeting niche at scale. Sorry just some musings on facebook ads from someone who's seen people do it wrong, and has made money on the network for myself and clients.

It's pragmatic, with the right intent, niche, offer, and funnel. Custom audiences greatly increase your chances as well, and massive retargeting with "users that aren't truly retargeted but you have their data" Probably not by throwing generic money at it and expecting magical high value users/sales.

P.S. Agreed! re: StumbleUpon is SO HOT for their ads. I wish their were more native advertising networks. StumbleUpon and Facebook are hot. Twitter seems to only work for certain niches with custom cards for optins but even then it seems it's over a dollar per click and generic web traffic or the plethora. StumbleUpon CPM seems to be some of the best ratios out there, and clicks are really cheap sub $1.

archemike_on Netflix Pulls Plug on Public API

I agree, Netflix serves it's purpose like a champ. A company doesn't need to run their front end like a hackathon in order to be great, in fact, much of their demographic might have had a learning curve just to learn how to watch movies on their ipad, so doing drastic UI redesigns might actually create a churn from subscriptions. Netflix works on basically every platform(even ubuntu now) with basically no issues except for the native install, and gets right to the video after only a few clicks/touches. Remember when they were carousel and now they're a direct slider? Seems they would simplify due to data. Also the argument for no front end work I find to be unfounded as some of THE BEST Javascript, reactive programming seems to be coming out of the netflix shop with amazing event listening management presentations and and other impeccable reactive front end coming out of netflix. I use those videos to study and learn tons on reactive javascript and find their front end to be exactly what it is. On a meta level and simplicity level superbly build and prestine.

archemike_on Google removes authorship from search results

I've seen noticeable CTR on numerous campaigns with authorship as a great picture would grab more attention. Maybe a 3-8% swing which is noticeable on keywords with search volume >1000

archemike_on Show HN: Find longtail keywords with low SEO competition

I like the concept and would use this. The only issue is that the factors for competition are either low in the SEO ratio or the site's factors don't include very important facets of SEO therefore the tool isn't complete so you would be stuck with ok suggestions that require the same manual vetting afterwards.

archemike_on Uber Opens Its API

So the amount of value they provide? The pleasant drivers? The unique value they provide over taxis? The ease of everything? This should all be overlooked because they scaled quick and a few things got out of control?

archemike_on Ask HN: Ideas for a small passive income site

go to blackhatworld.com and In under a week you can build something since you have web skills that hits $10/day passively. Then scale parallel until you've got a salary, then work on your dream.

archemike_on Make Your Copy Longer: An Archive of Research-based Marketing Facts

I think in the sales funnel it also matters on timing. The latency of digesting the landing page or offer at first should be thin and minimal, but once someones in your funnel heavy copy is great as the attention is there and you can only sell them harder...

Another classic site on copy, and direct marketing: http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/

archemike_on IFTTT launches on Android with deeper integration than on iOS

I absolutely love the slideshow introduction leading to a login. It's like a feature funnel I suppose versus a sales funnel, pre-selling me to take the time to create credentials. Kudos +1

archemike_on 4 million songs on Spotify have never been played. Let’s change that

I was going to listen then I saw how the extension was Coldfusion...

archemike_on Ask HN: How do you manage your sales leads?

I've heard of close.io and the event based features make it look really promising..

archemike_on Ask HN: How do you manage your sales leads?

I find regardless of CRM or chickenscratch everyday you're going to have to go through at least 5 minutes of masterminding and maintaining the list. For outgoing I use sendy with SES and you can use variables in the template so your .csv of names can auto load to quickly personalize an email to each lead. If you'd like to mastermind more I'd love to! mike@crawfordandobrien.com