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badclienton Opt out of Google using you as an ad

My problem with Google+ is that it's designed to trick people into sharing stuff. It's made me paranoid that anything I watch on YouTube or a story I read via Google News may end up in some stream I dont even know exists.

(OT: I just pitched you a story to your email:)

badclienton Opt out of Google using you as an ad

Even then, I bet Google Reader had a higher happy user to pissed user ratio than Google+.

badclienton Opt out of Google using you as an ad

If a such a highly publicized Google product is only used by "several friends" years after launch, it should be killed--not spammed more into the faces of users that do not want it.

badclienton Opt out of Google using you as an ad

When we look back a few years from now to see where google went wrong, it'll begin and end with Google+. It is the worst product execution and strategy in recent times.

badclienton T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

My brother manages our family account with AT&T with 7 lines. I casually read the title of this post. His response? "We're switching."

badclienton Startups: stop using generic form letters when you tell a candidate 'no'

Because my experience says that when you do the above, a good percentage of the candidates will disagree and debate with you about your assessment of them. Then when you just ignore them, you just look like a douche, not to mention there are candidates who will never give up and go to any lengths to express their disagreement with you. If you were only hiring one position for the year, you could may be do this. But when you are constantly hiring, this does not scale and can easily bog down down recruitment.

I also feel that I am not in a position to give advice or feedback to someone I've barely known. Just because I didn't hire the guy does not mean that I was correct in not hiring him. At some level, we'll never know. So it's pretty hard to even have feedback that I can be 100% confident about.

badclienton Cash Flow and Destiny

What does this post mean for His portfolio companies? That VCs are sharks and you should find a way to not need them asap?

A part of me really liked this post; another chuckles at the irony that his own firm is famous for making some of the largest bets with the least proven companies(ie. lyft).

badclienton The separation of advice and money

Do we know campaigns that invested 10-100K seed capital and failed?

badclienton Airbnb makes small admission on tax issue, saying its hosts should pay

Craigslist does not collect payment to facilitate the stay.

They do not offer insurance and serve as mediator during disputes.

They do not operate concierge services.

They operate significantly less like a hotel than airbnb.

badclienton ADHD Pill Faces High Hurdle in Europe as Stigma Persists

And I'd recommend you visit the overflowing offices of a few shrinks scamming patients by charging $100-$150 for five minute appointments to provide the monthly refill for adderall.

badclienton Cloud-based User Management for Web Apps

Looks intriguing and I can tell you guys have spent a lot of time on the feature-set. But the biggest thing that will hold me back(and may be others) is a lack of clarity about security and my data(what happens in the event that you are down? in the event that you close shop?)

badclienton Cue Acquired For Over $40M, Likely By Apple To Compete With Google Now

I can assure you any company anyone acquires will look very different 5 years from acquisition if its still alive.

badclienton Cue Acquired For Over $40M, Likely By Apple To Compete With Google Now

Acquisition amount makes little sense. If I'd to venture a guess I'd say the actual amount is closer to 2x money raised with the rest in performance based incentives that no one expects to meet.

badclienton Show HN: We built manual user acquisition as a service

What does lead research entail? Will they cold call for 40 hours?

badclienton FBI raids alleged online drug market Silk Road, arrests owner

These underground market places are known for big talk, not calculated talk.

badclienton FBI raids alleged online drug market Silk Road, arrests owner

I'd venture a wild guess that DPR knew the two were the same :) He paid off friendlychemist "indirectly" but also communicated that he wouldn't mind extreme measures to make him disappear shall this occur again.

badclienton FBI raids alleged online drug market Silk Road, arrests owner

Or may be it makes a lot of sense? May be...

* DPR was ready to pay friendlychemist upto $150K

* BUT DPR was also afraid it'd lead to more extortion

* DPR knew redandwhite was same as friendlychemist or an associate of his

Based on these assumptions, DPR's move to pay redandwhite was really DPR paying friendlychemist while also communicating the length to which he is willing to go to deal with extortionists. So by going the path he went, he paid off friendlychemist and scared him at the same time.

badclienton Show HN: Hiro – Fast and responsive notetaking meets semantic search

Good idea!

Nitpick: The Read More section on the right seems a bit of a misfit for a product that seems to take away distraction. I found it irrelevant and distracting.

badclienton Students Find Ways To Hack School-Issued iPads Within A Week

I dated a Chinese girl in college who knew all about proxies, tor and vpns all because of the censoring. I was pretty surprised given most kids in college don't know about that stuff but to people who grow up there it seems second nature.

badclienton JustFab’s Checkout Tactics Are JustShady

Edit: we are still unsure if the cost of membership is in addition to the cost of the shoes? Would love if someone could clarify. --

Funny enough my sister informed me that she ordered a pair of boots last night. I immediately think of this and ask her if she's heard of JustFab to which she says "how did you know?".

For what it matters, she is a law student and actually took the time to read the TOS(yeah!). She has it all planned and will cancel her subscription Monday.

Also learned from her that if you just make an account and wait for a few days, apparently they let you in for the first month for $20.

My sister felt a bit shitty after I showed her HN's view but at least for her she's getting a good deal. Too bad almost every other customer isn't likely to have the same luck.

badclienton Taking PHP Seriously [pdf]

Exactly. He's comparing php to a framework. PHP isn't a framework. If he tried to write code in python or ruby without a framework or template engine, he'd have the same complaint. If he tried php with a framework or template system, he'd realize its not all that different. I just rewrote a Django app in php with very tiny modifications to the templates thanks to codeigniter and smarty.

badclienton Taking PHP Seriously [pdf]

Most of the criticism of php seems to contrast it with a language plus a framework. If you really want to compare, compare php with ruby or python, not Django or RoR.

As for php encouraging shitty programming, a good bit of that is that so many more people program in php because its easier to get started with. This does not mean that just because php attracts shitty programmers that it doesn't have more or many awesome programmers than languages such as python.

badclienton Taking PHP Seriously [pdf]

You say MVC is a bad idea and yet you complain that php encourages mixing of things? I follow MVC and just ported a fairly large django app to php. Using smarty, I barely had to touch the Django templates. They worked almost out of the box. So if you think Django templates and structure is fine, let me tell you you can get a very similar set up using codeigniter and php.

badclienton Huge victory in New York for Nigel Warren and our host community

Are you okay if 50% of the units in your apartment and apartments across the city were used for this purpose? Are you fine with the rent increase you will incur because of the demand for units from folks who want to make a profit and can afford to pay much higher rent than someone like you?

badclienton How to build great products

Gamechanger is also where bulk of the risk lies. What most start ups build as gamechangers often end up being features their market doesn't care about. This is why if you build a me-too product in a great market you can get quicker initial adoption than building supposed gamechangers in an unestablished market.

badclienton How to build great products

Understanding markets is an order of magnitude harder than understanding products (at least to me), and is probably more important.

I think this point gets lost all too often. It is a subtle but critical difference: a product guy can only do so much if you've picked the wrong sub-market.

Then there is the whole thing about what even constitutes a market. People refer to healthcare as a market. But healthcare has a few death trap sub-markets where you are just spinning your wheels and not likely to succeed. And then there are submarkets where you can building a half-assed product and still get traction.

Honestly, this has been the biggest learning lesson for me: that markets operate at a very micro level for startups. Too bad it isn't emphasized enough by folks preaching the whole pick-the-right-market idea.

badclienton How to build great products

Wow. One of the best articles I've ever read on HN. I wish you'd also do one titled "How to find great markets":)

badclienton PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

If you're suggesting that Ally is an alternative to PP, that's nuts. I can see why businesses might be attracted to Ally over PP because of better customer service, but better customer service won't matter if you're not getting the volume of business that may be driven by PayPal.

badclienton PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

Very fair point.

badclienton PayPal Acquires Braintree for $800M

Ally Bank also makes your account next to useless until you go through a very tedious verification process from the get go. In my case, they mailed me some documents that unsurprisingly I never ended up bothering with.

On the other hand you can sign up and begin using paypal in minutes.