dmk23

This could become a textbook case of government power abuse backfiring at the people the politicians claim to be "helping"

There is a better description of what this city did: Theft

I am very thankful to PyPy developers for all the help they provided though as I said it did not address all of our concerns, which is why our PyPy deployment is more limited than what we wish it could be.

We are not Google or Facebook. We cannot invest resources in hacking internals of every low-level component of our stack. We are happy to contribute feedback and test suggested solutions, but we have to stay focused on our own product and business.

We are using PyPy for some of our services (where it is doing about x3 faster than CPython), while for some others (Django UI - at least the way we are using it) we found that PyPy is actually slower, so we are sticking with CPython.

Unfortunately PyPy team has not even made it their priority to test PyPy with Django. It is one thing to have a cookie-cutter test suite that measures simple use cases and it is entirely different matter to test how well it can run the whole stack of apps on top of it.

There is nothing to suggest any wrongdoing by any NSA personnel involved (except for Snowden). No harm of this NSA program to any US individual has ever been demonstrated, let alone proven. No proof of any abuse whatsoever.

What we have here is a publicity-seeker with a sensationalist story blown out of proportion to drive pageviews, at the cost of undermining and compromising the program that has successfully foiled terrorist plots. Manufactured outrage drives modern media. We should be thanking the designers and operators of PRISM.

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/07/Foiled-2009-Pl...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/us/mining-of-data-is-calle...

PS: It is also pretty funny how the people who claim to be standing up for our liberties rush to downvote opinions different from their own

If you are going to make financial players a dependency in your business plan you'll have to jump through similar kind of hoops.

On the other hand Thomas Edison figured out how to bootstrap his enterprises, maintain control and avoid dealing with this kind of nonsense.

If your true IP is obscured by a VPN this is just a red flag for PayPal or any other payment processor. Especially if you happen to share the same IP as someone committing actual fraud - which is very much likely if you are using public proxies. Very few legitimate customers pay over VPN.

Do not use VPNs if you do not want to be flagged or blocked.

EDIT1: In response the comments, no I am not sarcastic at all. The number of legitimate VPN users (among general Internet population, not HN) is miniscule and does not justify the financial risks involved. If you are using VPN you are seen as hiding something and flagging/blocking you from sensitive transactions is an obvious response.

EDIT2: I am talking about public VPNs that can be anonymously abused by anyone - where you'd be likely sharing IPs with criminals. By all indications that's what OP was using if he wanted to hide himself. If you use VPN from work or coffeeshop you'll be identified by some innocuous-looking residential / corporate IPs.

Employees operate within the rules established by their employers - they have a boss and are expected to be a "good solider" to support objectives of their company / business unit... People like Steve Jobs are successful because of their audacity to disregard the rules and make their own.

These are entirely different mindsets and skillsets. Employees are given direction, entrepreneurs set the direction.

What I find a lot more interesting is that quite a few startup founders act like employees rather than leaders - constantly asking (explicitly or implicitly) for approval of others. Look around and see if you can recognize people who care about the opinions of press/investors/advisors/peers more than achieving product/market fit followed by revenue/profitability/growth.

Age is just a number, ego is something that could cause self-destructive behavior and bad decision making.

Yes, we can learn from failure and so on, nobody is disputing this. The problem however is way too many people are taking a way too permissive and lax attitude towards failure instead of trying to figure out how to succeed. Permitting yourself to fail is the easy way out to avoid doing lots of hard and gritty work. The best learning happens before you actually fail at something, when you figure out you are ON THE PATH to failure and make a course correction to avoid it.

The overall capital formation ecosystem is probably to blame for this lax attitude. When the financiers make the most return from a few biggest winners taking crazy risks they do not care about mean failure outcome in their portfolio.

Remember, people who tell you it is OK to fail are not the ones who will have to live with the consequences of you failing.

Every large company develops internal politics with various degrees of harm to itself and its performance. If the business is led by a non-founder, non-technical, non-performing CEO it is a given that he will always feel like an insecure usurper/impostor more concerned about protecting their job from rivals than actually leading.

This is yet another data point in support of Andressen Horowitz's thesis about backing founding CEOs. I might add that's also a strike against promoting a head of sales to CEO.

These days it is pretty rare to see a story where such topics are addressed credibly beyond the standard "we love our investors" line.

If an entrepreneur loves their investors it is not news, but if they are willing to openly discuss problems that usually is.

Yes and I stand by every word of it

You've characterized Arthur Shorin as a 'huckster' which in many places would be considered insulting. This guy spent 27 years at his Grandfather's company and grew its revenues by 5x [1]. That is some pretty serious credibility in the candy business. Not 'huckster'.

In my book anyone who asks for 75% of your business is a huckster. I do not care about his credibility in the family business, the only thing I see here is some guy wants to pick up this lady's assets for nothing. If you read "Burn Rate" you'll see this type of vulture investor documented pretty well. They prey on desperate people who do not know any better. When making this kind of offer they are clearly not treating you with respect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_Rate

Contrast that with going broke. Having your net worth gro 25% is much better than having it shrink 100%.

Contrast that with cutting down your burn and finding other resources to fund your production run. That's what the word "resourceful" means. There is always an alternative to giving up or buying into empty promises.

Then the last lament, which I have heard many many times, is this "The real solution though is to plan things through and not get yourself in the situation of "needing" to raise cash or go bust. There are tons of ways to avoid getting stuck is this situation"

That's how successful businesses are run, including Arthur Shorin's. He did not become successful by turning over control to the first guy who asked. But of course if you have unrealistic business plan that requires a lighting to strike and you have no Plan B, the most likely scenario is a shutdown or this type of vulture deal.

If you give up control the new guy in charge will always be able to get rid of you. You are basically signing up for an employee type of deal, but with a fundamentally broken employment relationship. The real owner will know that you'll be resentful rather than grateful and will try to get rid of you as soon as practical. If your deal on paper is too costly for them they'll find a way to restructure / dilute you in some way to avoid paying out anything substantial.

People get desperate, I understand that. But it should be better to just walk away. The real solution though is to plan things through and not get yourself in the situation of "needing" to raise cash or go bust. There are tons of ways to avoid getting stuck is this situation.

If you hire a VP Sales and they do not work out you can rollback the change with pretty limited amount of pain and start over. If you decide to hire CEO or COO you could be irreversibly transforming your entire organization and a subsequent "pivot" may kill you. You might hit a jackpot with an Eric Schmidt or a Jim Barksdale or you could be stuck with a turkey that ruins your company (which is a lot more likely outcome).

There is nothing wrong with hiring senior talent (for whatever role) as long as everyone is clear about the chain of command, responsibilities and expectations. Whether you want to make the top decisions or let someone else do that be sure you know what you are getting into.

Since you'd be selling to large organizations the most critical issue is figuring out the sales process, the MVP and what you can charge them. You might want to follow Steve Blank's process for market / business model discovery: http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/ep245/CourseRev/1

Rest assured he is still going to support amnesty for unskilled illegals who are more likely to vote Democrat for years to come.

EDIT: It is pretty funny how the downvoters fail to acknowledge the basic facts about the politics of the issue and instead fall for the Administration's excuses and rush to condemn "conspiracy theories". There are no theories here, just basic facts.

If you act like a patsy you'll be treated like one. If you sell your value to the investors you'll be in the position to drive terms.

That's why early stage fundraising/investing is tricky by definition. The value is purely speculative and is little more than guesswork based on a mix of intuition, guesswork and sheep instinct. The term "spray and pray" came into being for a reason.

But once you are later stage you raise on revenues / cash flow / profit / growth rate. Entrepreneur rightfully should be in the driver seat for this type of deal.

It is a lot better to be polarizing yourself and find your natural constituency than fail to connect with anyone by trying to be "safe".

If they have to rely on "asymmetrical information" to get access to deal flow and make competitive offers and if releasing the data would hurt their attractiveness to prospective investees, why exactly are they a good deal for entrepreneurs (who can actually build a business)?

There is an old saying if you do not know who is the fool at the poker table, that's you.

But as we all know so well the "startup outcomes" follow a power law. Dropbox and AirBnB make for a great YC PR, but are certainly nothing like a statistical mean outcome (aka "expected value").

I'd say it is a pretty reasonable thing to postulate that "doing things YC way" would result in a worse expected outcome for an individual founder vs. retaining control of a profitable business. If this statement is wrong please refute it with data.

The way things are right now, YC is selling the "possibility" of becoming an outlier, while downplaying what "typical results" usually look like. If you were in a consumer product market it could likely break FTC rules on truth in advertising: http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/starek/nima96d4.shtm

EDIT / RESPONSE 1: This is not an "accusation". I am simply stating as fact that YC's model is focused on promoting its largest outlier successes (which form the bulk of YC portfolio value) while releasing no real data on the "mean outcome". Take it for what it is worth. As far as my statement about comparing "mean outcomes" it is obviously just a subjective judgement based on anecdotal evidence because there is no publicly released data from YC.

EDIT / RESPONSE 2: Let's be realistic. Any VC firm can release % of IPOs, M&A and failures as well as IRR figures and exit bands. There is no reason to include any company-specific proprietary data. The only reason for YC to not give such estimates is because it would highlight the fact that most startups are nothing like Dropbox.

This is nothing more than a quest for cheap publicity and endorsement of various pressure groups, which promote the self-interests of their funders and staffers under the guise of the "public interest". What they really want is regulation that would let them profit from shakedown lawsuits.

These sorts of assaults on product development freedom need to be nipped in the bud.

By the way your answer is wrong.

This is definitely the sort of tuning everyone should be doing on their production instances.

  These investors, including myself, know what you don’t, and they are not telling
  you. The minute you ask for money, you are playing in their game, they aren’t 
  playing in yours. You are at a huge disadvantage, and it’s only going to get
  worse if you take their money. The minute you take money, the leverage completely
  flips to the investor. They control the destiny of your dreams, not you.

  Almost always, having one major investor with a lot of skin in the game is better
  than a “party round” with lots of people in for a small amount. When the company
  needs help with a “party round” no one has enough at stake to do real work to help.
  Conversely, when a single investor has real money at stake, then they have real 
  upside to help the company grow, and real money at risk if the company is in
  trouble, so will be there when help is needed.

Whatever you are doing, you should choose a career you can enjoy. Some people are really picky of what (in their view) constitutes meaningful and fulfilling work. Others may consider any work that generates money to be fulfilling by this definition alone.

One person feels they have to solve the world hunger to feel good about themselves. Someone else feels fulfilled just working on better advertising technologies. Yet another person has to start Wikileaks or become a martyr of some kind to feel like they have accomplished something.

Stop over-thinking the meaning of life and just find a career that makes you happy! If your work feels like fun you'll be motivated to achieve in whatever path you have chosen.

EDIT: To address the comment that definitions of "fulfillment" can change over lifetime, let me repeat the famous quote: "in the long run we are all dead". If you are not enjoying the journey you are probably not very excited about your supposed destination. But I am sure the debates about the "meaning of life" and the "search for the right path, etc" is a way to happiness for many people. Go for it!

  1) It is an antiquated industry
  2) There has to be a better way to do it with IT
  3) My company has the magic solution that will save everyone and make me rich

You can make the best ML algorithm to diagnose and treat disease and doctors will spend decades arguing about why it is unsafe and they should always be the final authority. You won't be able to get a diagnosis and a prescription without them. You might think otherwise, but they have real power in denying you medical choice via setting professional guidelines through medical boards and lobbying politicians who are simply not brave enough to pit themselves against doctor's medical judgement.

It is harder to think of a more counter-productive and self-defeating way to market any healthcare solution then by saying it is going to "replace doctors". Here is a great example (DNA testing) of how doctor lobby can restrict innovation: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/20/business/20consumergenebar...

EDIT: I actually believe Vinod Khosla knows better and he just made a troll statement on purpose. It worked, we are talking about it!

Tony Robbins may be using it for psychological conditioning, but it can be explained from the purely rational / scientific perspective.

There is no legitimate justification to infringe on a contract between a willing buyer and a willing seller, but to actually fight these crackdowns you have to spend lots of $$$ on local political campaigns in every municipality. Easier said than done. Unless that massive lobbying investment (or at least a publicity campaign, like SOPA boycotts) happen the entrenched interests win by default and lots of peer-to-peer transactions will move to gray/black market.

Prohibition always creates speakeasies and the organized crime to protect them.

EDIT: To address "devil advocates", yes, most regulation mandated and enforced by government is a terrible imposition. Self-regulation that preserves consumer choice is a much better idea. You want to pay extra $$$ for a better level of service / protection /etc? Make it an optional line item with explicit cost.