Hacker News Reader

chermanowiczon Stop Buying Real Estate in SF

Spoken like a true economist (not that this is a bad thing). I agree with your first point, but I think you're wrong about the put option. It is not easy to "break even or minimize your losses" at all. Only if you're putting no money down would this be even close. Real estate is illiquid by definition and post 2008 nearly every foreclosure lost 100% of the equity built (and a major impact on your credit score).

chermanowiczon The $24B Data Business That Telcos Don't Want to Talk About

What other companies are utilizing this data? Any beyond SAP, Airsage, etc... I'm trying to do some research in this area

chermanowiczon Airbnb and San Francisco

Your (and many) arguments about AirBnB revolve around housing, economics, etc.

There are other arguments to be made about the quality of service & safety. Read some of the comments from another recent HN story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10291070

My own individual and anecdotal story: as an individual whose neighbor was AirBnB-ing his apt next door to mine, seeing dozens of unfamiliar faces (and, without going into detail, the behavior and antics of some of these occupants) did not make me feel safe. If anything, they should severely restricted under this guise, not "affordable housing". (Though I do agree that more housing would generally improve the situation for all).

chermanowiczon Startups.co to Acquire Zirtual, Service to Resume

I can't say I'm surprised. I watched her speak at a conference once and was alarmed at how incredibly ill-prepared she was to run a business

chermanowiczon How to Hack a Tesla Model S

Better coverage: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/06/429...

Tesla's releasing a patch: http://www.wired.com/2015/08/researchers-hacked-model-s-tesl...

chermanowiczon How I Gave Up Alternating Current

With no friends, no spouse, no girl/boyfriend, no kids, no pets, my life is considerably simpler, lighter and cleaner than before.

chermanowiczon GoFundMe Founders Sell a Majority Stake

I'm happy for these guys but is it just me or is a 5% transaction fee nuts? I know, I know, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, you name are all roughly the same, and yes, there is value in the "platform", publicity, etc. -- but you're basically just sending money from one person to another. Venmo (which is basically free) could roll out a platform like this in no time and charge 1 or 2%.

I just wonder why, in 2015, with all our technological progress and all the "innovation" in the payments space we're still tolerating really high transaction costs. /endrant

chermanowiczon Zenefits (YC W13) Just Raised $500M at a $4.5B Valuation

This! Of course a company that reduces employer costs is going to grow like a weed. Nobody talks about the shift of cost to the employees.. it's an alarming trend with so many businesses these days; the optics are that you're getting a better experience, but the reality is that in many cases, you're paying more.

chermanowiczon Understand contracts before you sign them

I'm curious, at what point in time did you (everyone on HN) learn about contracts? Did your father or teacher sit you down one day and say "here's this piece of paper that is legally binding and here's how to understand it and here's everything you need to know about contract law and your legal obligations, etc.?"

It seems like something that is never taught yet is an ever present part of our lives. It also seems like one would have a hard time accomplishing anything today because there are contracts for everything, many with clauses one would otherwise not want to accept.

chermanowiczon From 0 to $1B – Slack's Founder Shares Their Launch Strategy

All I can say is be weary of HIPAA compliance. It's a pretty big concern because failure to comply can be very costly; I've heard from many in the health/medical field that they can't touch these kinds of tools until they get comfortable with HIPAA. It's not on the roadmap for Slack right now: https://twitter.com/slackhq/status/535281662196977664

chermanowiczon New Uber Funding Round Could Value the Company at $25B

Also, http://whatsthefare.com/

Read their blog, it's pretty interesting. Fred Wilson also discusses the findings here: http://avc.com/2014/10/the-cost-of-loyalty/

chermanowiczon Chef's Adam Jacob on Configuration Management and Company Culture

"What does this mean for infrastructure? All the things we used to do in building our operations, the infrastructure, the IT – what Jeff Bezos called the undifferentiated “muck” – all that moves from being relegated as a seemingly unimportant back-office affair to a critical part at the front of the front office.

It’s obvious this transition won’t happen seamlessly. Inertia is a powerful thing. The core problem is that the massive businesses of today have to fundamentally “re-tool” to survive in this new world. And it’s not a matter of simply re-doing the UI. They have to rethink their internal operations, which in turn really shapes how the whole company functions from the top to the bottom."

I'm actually really excited about "tech" these days in that there is a lot of thought being put into "tooling" ... whether that's IT infrastructure, customer service & feedback, or communication. We really can make better tools in all areas.

chermanowiczon Intelligent chat that makes your team communication twice as fast

I've only heard of one agency-specific product out there... but the name escapes me. Will try to search for it.

As far as differentiation, there are some services with unique features and some that are offering good products for free, no string attached (restrictions on message history for example). I would check out Kato (kato.im) and if you are more interested in a "Twilio for chat" try Layer.

chermanowiczon Startup CEOs who gave up fortunes to turn employees into millionaires

I agree here to some extent, but there are a lot of ways companies can exit with employees receiving less than their equitable share of the company's acquisition price/value.

Ex. Salary & retention package for founders & certain execs while common stock purchase price is drastically reduced. (just one example)

chermanowiczon What Does It Really Cost to Live in San Francisco?

Where are you going to find a 2 bedroom apt in SF for $1,956 (2014 HUD FMR)????

http://www.huduser.org/portal/datasets/fmr/fmrs/FY2014_code/...

chermanowiczon Kato.im Launches Kato Teams, a Free Chat Platform for Businesses

Also cross-org communication. If you're not into chatting with external parties, then think about how you would otherwise connect teams in a 500+ person company. I've tried a lot of tools but couldn't find anything that works when companies scale in size.

chermanowiczon Uber plays hardball with early shareholders

"there's no reason why equity must be liquid"

There's also no reason why equity must be illiquid -- or skewed to benefit a company more than the employees that built it. There are ways for people who received equity as compensation to take a little out on terms that are fair for everyone. Just because it's always been done a certain way is not a good justification for this position... after all, Uber is breaking the taxi business in a similar fashion.

chermanowiczon HipChat is now free for unlimited users

That's smart. But still, it's crazy that something like multiple organizations would require you to do this on your end. There are better options out there :)

chermanowiczon HipChat is now free for unlimited users

See comments above... there are apps that let you have multiple organizations

chermanowiczon HipChat is now free for unlimited users

http://www.appvita.com/2014/04/29/kato-leverage-group-commun...

http://blog.kato.im/

I guess the website is still getting redesigned ;)

chermanowiczon HipChat is now free for unlimited users

Have you tried http://Kato.im ? They're the only product which supports multiple organizations in the same client -- and it's done in a really powerful way that doesn't force you to switch between orgs. You could have one or four open and still communicate effectively.

chermanowiczon HipChat is now free for unlimited users

They are definitely feeling pressure as users are demanding and expecting more from their communication tools. Slack's done a good job at bringing more to the table, but we're really just at the start of a renaissance in business communication.

If you think about "chat" in generations, you started with IRC, AIM (which is still used in many companies) and then came HipChat. Not much development there for a couple years so Slack put some lipstick on the last generation of chat product. There's a whole new class of communication platforms being developed now that are taking things even further, by enabling true cross-company communication (meaning both internal & external), things like customer support integrated with internal team communication, etc.

chermanowiczon Apache Wave

It really has nothing to do with Wave or a new communication protocol. Plus, there are dozens of tools with the same feature set as Slack.

chermanowiczon Airbnb and Housing

Worse. 2/3rd of listings are or would be violating NY laws:

"Two thirds of the listings that contain user reviews are for the “Entire home/apartment” room type (listings without reviews are slightly less, at 64%). Because of a New York State law regarding short-term housing, it is almost always illegal to rent a full apartment when the host is not present for less than 30 days."

chermanowiczon Making Remote Work Work

Good article, and commentators below have some good suggestions. I'm curious what tools the HN community uses to make their lives easier?

Project Management? Chat/IM? Task & Calendars? etc.

chermanowiczon Stop making me sign up

someone should send this to Quora

chermanowiczon The Data Behind H-1B Visas

this is an ok starting point, but would be far more interesting if you were able to compare against average industry salaries based on the job titles... and average salaries for the employers

chermanowiczon Plug: the brain of your devices

So, can someone from Plug explain what you're really trying to accomplish.

I'm already stuck at "They have one content, but multiple devices. So they spend a lot of time just figuring out where are their documents. And they keep moving their files to-and-from tiny Cloud folders. " It doesn't mean anything.

Is this private cloud storage with auto-syncing across all your devices? That already exists, to the extent that it does just that, if you know what I mean.