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ernestbro

94 karma · joined October 22, 2015

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ernestbro··on Show HN: Delve, an open source (AGPL) enterprise-grade data analytics platform
Do you have a demo video?
ernestbro··on AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach
Snowflake is a platform. The lack of trust is in whoever configured Snowflake for AT&T

Credential rotation, SSO, PrivateLink or IP allowlists all should be used with PII.

ernestbro··on Show HN: A tool that helps you focus on startup metrics that matter
My thought for shorter trials: If something more important derailed the trial then the product isn’t solving a problem with enough urgency for you and you were unlikely to convert.
ernestbro··on Infor buys BI vendor Birst
Founded in 2004, $129M in funding, 260 employees, 300 customers, undisclosed deal amount.
ernestbro··on A new upstream project to break up Docker into independent components
Moby is the fedora like oss project and docker is the RHEL like commercial product. Purely a clever rebranding job. Timing is perfect - now that enterprise is adopting the technology, when you tell your boss you adopted moby he/she will say- but the CTO wants to be seen as being innovative for adopting this new technology and ita called docker not moby!
ernestbro··on The AI Misinformation Epidemic
I'd say you can build real "ML-driven apps"using only APIs - I disagree that you have to build it all from scratch
ernestbro··on Scaling Financial Reporting at Airbnb
Same story with Superset, their homegrown BI system. Why re-invent the wheel?
ernestbro··on Ask HN: Product Managers, how did you get there and what's your background?
That's project management- not product management
ernestbro··on Standard Notes – A notes app with a focus on longevity, portability, and privacy
Funny how a Slack group is used for discussions. No offense to the lovely people at Slack but they fall into the category of "private, short-lived, growth-oriented companies", no?

This discussion came up here before "Please don't use Slack for FOSS projects": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11013136

ernestbro··on Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless
Thank you! This makes perfect sense: "A huge percentage of online advertisements are never seen by humans. They are viewed by bots–automated scripts that are opening web pages in a browser and pretending to be a human. Advertising scammers set up web pages, embed advertisements on those pages, and then pay for bot traffic to come and view those advertisements."

https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2016/12/20/ad-fraud-res...

ernestbro··on Amazon QuickSight Now Generally Available
There's an O'Reilly book titled "Embedding Analytics into Modern Applications" that helps with white label options https://www.jaspersoft.com/resource/free-oreilly-book-embedd...
ernestbro··on Amazon QuickSight Now Generally Available
Apparently QuickSight is an OEM of ZoomData http://fortune.com/2016/03/14/zoomdata-adds-amazon-data-sour...
ernestbro··on Amazon QuickSight Now Generally Available
Wouldnt QuickSight be a SaaS product (not PaaS)?
ernestbro··on Amazon QuickSight Now Generally Available
Didn't know about workmail! I suppose that's closer to an infrastructure product vs an app like analytics. Isn't a mail server just an API for mail clients to connect to?
ernestbro··on Amazon QuickSight Now Generally Available
Strange one from Amazon. They've always provided cloud infrastructure services for building and launching apps, QuickSight departs from this - it's a ready to use app.

The logic must be: more money in apps than infrastructure.

Opposite of Google, they have the apps and now want the infrastructure too - I think it's a mistake for Amazon to go down this route, there is too much competition in this space and so far playing with QuickSight I don't see anything new/different from other analytics apps available on Amazon marketplace [1].

It feels like an experiment vs. a new direction for the company

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/b/2649336011?ref_=gtw_nav...

ernestbro··on Ways Data Projects Fail
"Somebody heard: Data is the new Oil: No it isn't. Data is not a commodity, it needs to be transformed into a product before it's valuable"

Err...Oil needs to be transformed and refined before it can be called a product (like gasoline, plastics). So the analogy is good and even supports #1!

ernestbro··on Open Source is not dead: On the recent demise of RethinkDB
I think what is dead is open source as a novelty that gets you noticed (e.g. Ipso facto having an open source product means the market you're after notices you over your competitors).

Yes, open source brings commercial benefits to a company over closed source but it's not as big of a differentiator because it's quite pervasive now (which is good!)

ernestbro··on This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley
Nanny != babysitter
ernestbro··on Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?
Kodak failed because the entire verticalized printed photo industry was demonetized. It's the same way the newspaper industry has shrunk: yes people still take pictures and read news, no there isn't an obvious way for large companies to extract value as there used to be. Printing chemicals and large printing presses are very expensive and hard to reproduce, meanwhile while digital comes along and easily replaces them. And if Instagram dies 10 others can take their place.
ernestbro··on Donkey – A computer game included with early versions of PC DOS
GORILLAS.BAS for the win
ernestbro··on Ask HN: Insider history of the demise of Kodak?
Thought experiment..even if you could time travel, how would you have saved Kodak?
ernestbro··on The Fight for the “Right to Repair”
The French have an approach to this problem as well "forcing manufacturers to tell consumers how long their appliances will last. French companies will also have to inform consumers how long spare parts for the product will be available"[1].

IMHO, because it would only apply to French manufacturers, it will drive any manufacturing outside of France. Similar to the 35 hour work week: interesting principle, bad outcome.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2015/mar/03...

ernestbro··on China Tops U.S. in Supercomputers
Well for one there's being able to control 51% of bitcoin[1] which would let China "prevent transactions of their choosing from gaining any confirmations, thus making them invalid, potentially preventing people from sending Bitcoins between addresses. They could also reverse transactions they send during the time they are in control (allowing double spend transactions), and they could potentially prevent other miners from finding any blocks for a short period of time."

[1] https://learncryptography.com/cryptocurrency/51-attack

ernestbro··on What Happened to All 53 of Marissa Mayer's Yahoo Acquisitions
A team of people known to work & accomplish together had a common motivation when they worked for a startup, usually building a single product for a single market. The effects of this focus + motivation is huge. When a larger company like Yahoo acquires the focus + motivation is pulled from underneath them and quickly become quite average.
ernestbro··on The Panama Papers
It's suspicious that North America is missing from this leak. Interesting timing given the election.
ernestbro··on Airbnb open-sources Caravel: data exploration and visualization platform
There is a study done by a market analyst (Wayne Eckerson) about Building vs Buying BI, he has some good insights based on surveys as to why some companies chose to build and some choose to buy

71% of those who chose to build the BI tools said they built because "We can customize the functionality better"

51% of those who buy say "Buying enables us to provide best-in-class BI functionality"

The study: http://www.jaspersoft.com/sites/default/files/confirmation_f...

ernestbro··on I got hacked mid-air while writing an Apple-FBI story
Doesn't disclose how he was hacked...I assume he had to accept a forged SSL certificate at some stage?