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danielamitay

979 karma · joined November 24, 2010

github: danielamitay web: danielamitay.com
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danielamitay··on Trending tabs are being deprecated due to low usage
The main issue is the conflating of usage and value. The persona/user group that consumes the Trending pages are likely users who themselves contribute to open source, and thus are part of a flywheel that drives more code contribution overall. (e.g. how 1% of users post on reddit vs 99% consume) Not all usage is made equally.

This scenario reminds me of a funny story posted on HN a while ago: https://memex.marginalia.nu/log/48-i-have-no-capslock.gmi (TL;DR; if you take this "usage based" feature removal logic to it's conclusion, a lot of important keys would be removed from computers/keyboards).

danielamitay··on Cocktail party ideas
One of my favorites! Source: "How to Be Polite", https://medium.com/s/story/how-to-be-polite-9bf1e69e888c
danielamitay··on South Africa's lottery probed as 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 drawn
Dilbert comic strip: https://dilbert.com/strip/2001-10-25

  "Over here we have our random number generator."
  "Nine nine nine nine nine nine"
  "Are you sure that's random?"
  "Thats the problem with randomness: you can never be sure."
danielamitay··on Liquid water 'lake' revealed on Mars
A letter from an associate director of science at NASA in 1970 answering this question: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html
danielamitay··on Launch HN: HealthWiz (YC S17) – Navigating health benefits to lower costs
I haven't started a company that needs to provide employee healthcare--does this have a short-term improvement to insurance rates? What incentivizes a company to employ HealthWiz--are there insurance providers that reduce rates as a result?

How do you convince employers that this service is in their best interest?

danielamitay··on The cost of using different sites on mobile networks around the world
The site and data normalization are great. The problem is that applying the phrase "best case scenario" is simply false, and it is just a distraction that was not necessary on the site.

Amortizing my entire data usage over my entire cell plan (which includes talk & text), costs me literally $0.001/MB.

You should not present $0.24/MB (US|Prepaid) as the "Best case scenario" when someone on a standard AT&T plan pays 240x less.

danielamitay··on 76% of high-performance employees say trade mastery, not money, most important
In a simplistic sense, the "esteem" and "self-actualization" levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
danielamitay··on How to ace a YC interview
Hey nxzero,

I saw PG say this once in a short interview I saw on Youtube. I'm looking for it now. Will update when I can

[Edit] Found it: https://youtu.be/JK3sVFs6_rs?t=175

danielamitay··on How to ace a YC interview
> "Make sure everyone speaks"

From personal experience in a YC interview: My cofounders and I decided we would speak and answer in turns. The problem we ultimately ran into after a few minutes was that one of our interviewers asked, "so who is the CEO?" Inside, we knew that was a bad sign (I believe I've heard PG say that it's a very bad sign).

It probably wasn't the only reason we were ultimately rejected, but it certainly didn't help. Looking back on that experience, one of the things I would have changed would be the author's next bit of advice:

> "Generally speaking, there will be one person that answers most of the time"

[Edit] People have asked why I felt that being asked "so who is the CEO?" was a bad sign: https://youtu.be/JK3sVFs6_rs?t=175

> "It's really bad if we're talking to a bunch of founders and we can't figure out who the leader is..."

Again... This was one YC interview a number of years ago, and I of course have no real insight into the final impression we left on our interviewers. Just something that I remember not feeling great about in hindsight.

danielamitay··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2015)
Airtime | New York City, NY | Mobile Engineer (iOS)

We are building really cool things in the real-time video space, and have been quietly experimenting and iterating on a number of projects and technology. We all know that video chat is powerful, but has not been done quite right… yet. This will not be your average iOS app—we are building something beautiful with very powerful video chat and online connectivity under the hood.

We are looking for another iOS developer to help us build the next big thing and change the way people interact with each other. You would sit next to and work with me personally, and I can promise that you will be proud of what you are building.

If this sounds interesting, feel free to email me at: dan@airtime.com

danielamitay··on Should App.net Accept Bitcoin?
Let us suppose that there is an organized group of Bitcoin enthusiasts with a combined amount of Bitcoin holdings of around 100,000BTC. Would an article "App.net begins accepting Bitcoin" increase the BTC/USD exchange rate by more than 0.01%?

To me it seems that a continued stream of press is good for Bitcoin, and I am genuinely curious is there is such a group of enthusiasts that strategically spend Bitcoins for PR.

danielamitay··on Amazon Wants to Ship Your Package Before You Buy It
Those are examples of predicting demand changes on a macro scale.

Amazon wants to do this on a more micro, person-by-person level. For example, you visit a product page for some specialty shampoo. Amazon might decide to ship that product before you even add it to your cart.

danielamitay··on Billionaires’ Row and Welfare Lines
Without addressing the issue of tax loopholes in general, there is a logical rationale for lower taxes on capital gains (for Schwarzman, Buffett & co):

- It's a double tax, as money that was invested had already been previously taxed.

- It does not account for inflation. If an investment grows only with inflation, capital gains taxes still need to be paid on that growth.

danielamitay··on This $200 3D printed bot can crack your phone's PIN in 20 hours
As far as I know, they incorporated information from a similar dataset I created back in mid-2011 [1].

[1] http://danielamitay.com/blog/2011/6/13/most-common-iphone-pa...

danielamitay··on The Fall jams your gun on jailbroken iOS devices
The software simply attempts to read the device's root folder. Success == Jailbroken.

Piracy detection involves checking the app executable's compile time, permissions and similar.

The methods change from time to time, but that is basically the gist.

danielamitay··on Tilt-Controlled Slider
I've found two apps using it so far.

That's the thing: I wish more people would notify you when they use your open source stuff. Attribution means less to me than simply knowing that it's being used.

danielamitay··on Tilt-Controlled Slider
Here's my implementation from June 2012: https://github.com/danielamitay/DAAnisotropicImage

I like how you're only re-drawing if the motion change passes a threshold.

danielamitay··on Cooper Union Ends a Longtime Custom: The Free Degree
Basically, I derive a significant amount of esteem and happiness from making things that people use. It was this that lead myself and those around me to believe I should pursue Engineering. Unfortunately, I derived very little to no esteem from what I felt was merely "book learning" at Cooper. The school system I grew up in was extremely liberal and forward-thinking, so Cooper Union felt extremely rigid to me (although I acknowledge the possibility that all Engineering programs are like this). I simply couldn't survive four years like that.

Ultimately, I studied Economics at NYU, so I moved away from Engineering to allow myself to pursue development on my own. There are other reasons why I moved to Economics, but thats the gist of it.

danielamitay··on Cooper Union Ends a Longtime Custom: The Free Degree
I understand the financial mistakes (underperforming investments). I understand the building mistakes (extravagance, over-spending). What I don't understand is this policy that will (in my opinion) destroy The Cooper Union's core asset: the student body. Having attended, I whole-heartedly believe that nearly all of Cooper Union's value-add is in being surrounded by incredibly intelligent peers. Peers who are now less likely to apply or attend.

Me: Spent two years at Cooper, currently graduating from NYU.

danielamitay··on How to solve the problem that the topmost comments get all upvotes
Instead of ranking by net points, or points over time, the comments could be ranked by points per view. This essentially gives a close approximation to "What percentage of people who viewed this comment found it worthwhile?"
danielamitay··on OXO, Crooks and Robbers?
Aside from the "Some important lessons" section (which seemed very patronizing, although OXO seems to be in the right here considering the expired patent aspect), it seems that OXO handled themselves pretty well. It pointed out Quirky's side of things, and then presented their own side. With quite a bit of citation where appropriate.

Quirky[1] went straight for the "justice" aspect in their post without presenting much info or even a cursory discussion of related patents.

[1] http://www.quirky.com/blog/post/2013/01/rise-up-quirky-seeks...

danielamitay··on GitHub now supports Twitter Cards
Interestingly enough, my participation on Twitter was spurred and continually maintained via OSS and GitHub. So this is really welcome on my end (although I wouldn't mind extra info such as watchers and forks).

It is a bit weird though: the displayed image is the project owner's profile image, which doesn't seem directly relevant, and seems a bit out of place.

danielamitay··on Show HN: Social Bar - A branded bar that follows links you share on social media
Probably minor to most visitors, but stuck out to me: The screenshot is being taken of a localhost instance. Easy fix.

EDIT: Also, BrianPetro's example broke heavily for me on Mobile Safari when zooming in.

danielamitay··on Uber Increases Fares 2x in NYC
If that bread is being imported from outside the city, then yes. What a good grocery store.

Per Uber (and even PandoDaily), the available driver supply has indeed risen due to prices. Without the price increase, some drivers wouldn't consider it worth the painful traffic.

And lets not forget: It's not like the folks at Uber flipped a switch and doubled the rates. Their system responds to demand automatically--it doesn't know when there is a disaster.

danielamitay··on Uber Increases Fares 2x in NYC
As an East Village resident who fled yesterday (post-Sandy) due to loss of power and even cell service, I'm siding with Uber on this one.

When I needed to go 60+ blocks uptown, I didn't manage to hail a cab because every single one was taken, and only because of a private car (who separately charged three individuals for a concurrent ride, literally a 3X fare) did I manage to get to my destination without carrying my heavy duffel + gear for an hour or more in the drizzle.

In this situation, price is not the problem, it's supply.

Edit: From what I can tell, Uber now locked rates at 2X, and is eating half of the fare. That's pretty darn generous.

danielamitay··on Fizzbuzz isn't a coding test
> "Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and for the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”

Aside from explicitly stating "Hey, encapsulate IF/ELIF/ELSE statements in a FOR loop", FizzBuzz doesn't seem too analytical--am I wrong?

danielamitay··on Hipmob now live for iPhone. Live support chat for your iPhone app users.
I'm confused by the 30-day free trial. Does that mean I have 30-days of unlimited agents?

If I create an account and only plan on having one agent for the foreseeable future, what happens at the end of those 30 days?

danielamitay··on Show HN: Hipmob is Olark for mobile apps. (Live support chat, now on Android)
I was disappointed by the fact that there is no iOS library. Went to the website, see a big iPhone on the homepage. Read through, see references to "...in your iPhone app."\

EDIT: (Disappointed as in, I was about to sign up and integrate it)

danielamitay··on Show HN: Create a portfolio of the mobile apps you've built
They're just querying the app store search API: http://itunes.apple.com/search?entity=software&term=$APP...

This is the same search API that Apple uses for the App Store, and returns the same order and results as Kickfolio. The first result is usually correct, but you could always double check with the developer.

Example: http://itunes.apple.com/search?entity=software&term=Shar...

danielamitay··on Ask HN: How much do employers value an online portfolio/blog?
Source: http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surf...
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