brentm

When considering 2018 you really need to ignore the 4.9B in other income. The vast majority of that was a one time event, and then the next largest line item is unrealized gains. Not sure what the gains were on but likely something not very liquid and volatile, e.g. a start up.

It's basically a 4B loss for 2018. The numbers all around are just unreal.

Rails with Webpacker is the best of both worlds IMO. Ruby is a pleasure to write and Rails saves a ton of time. There are just so many things that Rails does that you forget about until you start putting together a Node app.

And it hasn't really changed since 2016 so that is still mostly spot on.

I think the real problem though is that people aren't good at remembering voice commands, either how to invoke the command or that the command even exists. Without visual cues it's easy to forget everything.

You're not going to have a runaway hit when it's predicated on everyone remembering that special thing to say. It's like trying to have a runaway hit that had to be based on a keyboard shortcut.

All of those services are great for the basics, e.g. How's the weather / set a timer / remind me in N minutes / order toilet paper ... Everything else is a bit tougher in my opinion.

The FB media onslaught is getting a bit overdone at this point. They aren't the worst company in the world. They probably have figured out that connecting everyone doesn't necessarily make the world a better place immediately but I applaud the effort and I think long term it will make a difference. So they make money selling ads which they display by algorithmically sifting through metadata. Around here I know it's not a popular practice but for the vast majority of FB's 1.5B DAUs I think it matters a lot less than the media would like it to. All ads are annoying but I personally prefer the targeted ads of today to the random banners ads of the late 90s early 2000s. I know they aren't a perfect company but who is? I think the media just smells easy traffic here.

Privacy hawks are always looking for a reason to complain about Facebook and scream I told you so.

They are reportedly working on two new versions: https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/12/snap-is-developing-a-secon...

At this point believing or not believing in climate change is analogous to religion. I have trouble believing any facts or data would swing a significant portion of either side of the debate. Denying climate change is easy. We're not going to see places like New York City move swiftly underwater and the problem is so abstract it's easy to call BS. Short of Trump changing his mind and using his super power of convincing conservatives to go along with things they otherwise never would have gone along with we will continue in this pattern for probably our life time.

This is one explanation: https://medium.com/hacking-and-gonzo/how-hacker-news-ranking...

I couldn't point to anything specific besides general human nature and in my opinion that suggests that if it can be done for a profit it will be done.

So to me it seems highly unlikely that there isn't some flavor of manipulation going on. There are random alt coins with multi-billion dollar market caps. There are fortunes being minted, people are surely manipulating something.

I think the interesting question though is will the world long term become the new manipulated view or will it eventually all just fall part.

I would learn React if I was you. Check out create-react-app on Github. It will set you up with a working app to play with in a matter of seconds. If you're expecting to use React Native it looks like they have a create-react-native-app also.

> Really PRO is just a marketing term

This seems to be what everyone forgets when airing their grievances towards Apple's "Pro" line.

It's unfortunate but the number of people that may dislike this because of a lack of upgradability, etc is probably smaller than the number of people that just want a cool looking "pro" computer and have money to burn.

Well one thing is Litecoin has a much larger supply (3.24x according to Coincap). In terms of market cap & supply as of today a $15k Litecoin is equivalent to ~$50k Bitcoin. The market cap of Litecoin alone would be 0.84 Trillion. It's possible I suppose but I think you'd need some pretty serious institutional buying (or gaming of the system which only lasts so long).

Sure I understand that. For BTC at least I am not sure I agree the rally will last as long as the stock market rally. I think we'll probably see a decent amount of selling in January when the gains are moved forward to the new tax year.

Litecoin is another animal. I think we'll continue to see a lot of what we're seeing now. People seeing a low price (compared to btc), sad they missed out on cheap BTC and dreaming this one is going to $15k.

It is as rational as playing roulette. Most of people buying at this point probably can't articulate what they are buying, just that it's probably going to be be worth more money soon. I had to sell my BTC on Sunday, I am waiting to get back in when the exuberance flips around and everyone says it's dead.

If you want to play it safe and not spend a lot of time deciding where to put it, Wealthfront.

See https://www.wsj.com/articles/struggling-teespring-takes-valu...

What kind of events would you recommend for someone trying to get more involved in the NYC community? I've been in Brooklyn for a while but work remotely and more or less exist outside of the tech community but would like to get involved.

The winters in NYC really aren't that bad. Yes occasionally it snows but the storms that dump inches of snow are infrequent enough to be novel. When it's cold it's cold but if you're wearing the right jacket that isn't bad either.

Besides the culture wars and this current (in my opinion) backward looking view on immigration I am not sure I'd agree that the ship is sinking. Overall things are good, there is just a lot of negativity & division that I think that is being driven by profitable propaganda on both sides.

A toxic culture starts from the top. DJT's seeming enjoyment of the driving of division between parties (and even within his own) is part of the problem. He is not the only problem and removing him isn't a cure but a hopeful/forward looking leader (from either party) doing everything he/she can to positive push the people together would be better for the country.

There is a real problem of profitable propaganda that the internet & unlimited media consumption has created. People get very excited over immigration and other hot button political issues and many exploit the people and the issues for personal gain.

Regardless of who the president is profitable propaganda will divide the country. The current administration validates these otherwise fringe views and magnifies the problem. DJT makes no attempt to heal the relationships between liberals & conservatives and instead really seems to enjoy driving division.

There are threats in the world but picking the needle out of the haystack is very difficult and my biggest concern is how data is interpreted. If you were attempting to enter the US, migrating from Turkey and I determined that 3 people within your social graph, one direct connection 2 secondary are known terrorist does that mean you are a terrorist based on no other information? It's really hard without direct evidence and we're playing with peoples lives. The vast majority of people are no threat and will be productive members of society.

I am afraid the guilt until proven innocent mindset in regards to immigrants is increasing in parts of the US. I wish everyone would settle down and relax for a minute but it seems like thing will only continue to increase as we begin to enter a new election year and then start what will be a very heated Presidential campaign.

The majority of people in the US disagree with everything going on right now and we welcome everyone. We will right the ship in the next 2-3 years.

I agree with you. Actual bad actors are not going to attempt to enter the US with sympathetic ISIS (etc) posts on their public Facebook page. What will happen though is many immigrants will end up having entry denied based on an immigration officers interpretation of a post they made on Twitter 3 years ago.

It's hard to see how this will do anything besides generate a ton of false positives.

They won't license their software any time soon. They decided against it in the earliest days and it really wouldn't fit with the Uber brand today. Maybe once they are a public, growth from new markets has slowed and they are chasing profits they sign license deals to open up otherwise closed off markets. I am skeptical that many taxi commissions in major cities would line up to license though. As of now the current system obviously works well enough for them (and that's to say nothing about the little those orgs likely trust Uber). If they have successfully banished Uber (etc) to the point where Uber wants to license software just to join the market I'd expect revenue split terms would be so unfavorable to Uber that they would not be interested.

Agreed. It leads me to believe that $4b is either inaccurate or it's not as simple as clearing $4B from the budget and selecting a couple of contractors.

These are general consumer devices and there are trade offs. The most sophisticated hacker the vast majority of users must defeat is a prying family member or friend.

> If they were stronger, they would have raised proper VC.

I think that is really the most important part. A lot of people sophisticated enough to have their interest peaked by the opportunity probably figure the deals being offered are (more or less) the deals already rejected by traditional and more sophisticated channels. If established but private companies (e.g. Lyft) were doing late stage rounds through this type of a marketplace I think demand would be much greater. The problem is those companies probably don't have a lot to gain by doing it that way.

Now my assumption on quality may be wrong but that sentiment seems like an important hump for these marketplaces to get over.

It's great for breakfast but I could not see myself living off of it only. I think the idea that subsisting only on Soylent is something a lot of people do is overblown. That idea is just a great media angle for Soylent because it seems crazy and it would be crazy for most people.