etothepii

And yet even on the page about Chrome's new AI assistant is a cookie pop-up ...

Yes I'm talking Python. The namespaces are long, dare I say ugly, urls. Even though the xml file itself uses `<w:t` you can't unless you provide a dictionary as an argument that contains `{"w":"https://...."}` which means that you need to do a bunch of reading and understanding before you can start playing with the files.

I spent a lot of time last year replicating every valid Excel number format. I've really struggled to find good documentation on the excel format when you really get into the weeds.

The use of namespaces is also incredibly annoying in so far as I can tell in every xml library I can find they really aren't well supported for that "human" readable component.

When you crack open the file it feels like you are going to be able to find everything you need with an xpath like //w:t but none of the xml parsers I've found cope well with the namespaces.

The intention was to observe that the standard you are holding the show to are extremely hard to do in the context of fields which have a great deal of context, last for only 45 minutes, and are targeted at the standard user of the Clapham Omnibus.

Assuming that you had perhaps not contemplated this observation by way of analogy I shared my suspicion that an expert on Cyrus the Great might be very annoyed about the way he was discussed.

The problem, of course, is that such analogies are extremely difficult to make as subjects such as M/NS/CS very much have right and wrong answers in the way that history tends not to.

In 45 minutes assuming only the education of the (wo)man on the Clapham Omnibus explaining P vs NP is always going to be extremely difficult.

I've never made the mistake of thinking that after a 45 minute episode of in our time on, say, Cyrus the Great, that I'm now in a position to write an essay on the man. I would assume that none M/NS/CS types don't make that mistake after listening to the episode on P vs NP.

Define white goods. Define warranty.

Would this guys experience meet your criteria? What are the consequences for failing?

Is it 10 years of normal use or still 10 years if you basically run a laundrette. What if you never used it at all. What if (and where I live this is a serious use for a washing machine) you only used the washing machine for making a special rum based cocktail?

Would another way of saying this be that while high expectation it's also high variance?

I used to be a polyphasic sleeper so this article interested me but I find myself stuck on the final paragraph.

> My velocity has increased 10x and I'm shipping features like a cracked ninja now, which is great because my B2B SaaS is still in stealth mode.

Does someone have a good book I can read on stealth mode startups?

My B2B SaaS is only small (about $1.25m ARR) but I can't imagine shipping features without someone to use them. We could definitely write a lot more features if our users didn't point out the ways that what we were doing wasn't quite right or didn't fit with the problem we thought we were solving.

I can imagine doing the business part, regulatory part or hard tech part of a startup in stealth mode - but what would does it mean to ship features in stealth mode?

Don't hire them. Commission-based sales people can only be used to sell transactional products.

You will have high reputation and be able to change the background colour, down vote comments etc.

This typically has surprisingly little impact on force of mortality.

Men under 40 essentially have incredibly low mortality. Once you exclude cars and suicide it drops basically to zero.

Even things that are very very bad for you, like being very obese (BMI>40), are factors that scale a mortality that is massively dominated by age and sex. Even 3x mortality at 25 rounds to zero. At 60 background become 1% per year and a 3x increase would make a huge difference.

I would wager $50 that there are no contiguous collection of zip codes in the USA where the average 40 year old has a higher life expectancy than the average 30 year old in any other contiguous set of zip codes assuming there are over 1000 people of that age in both.

I think the article is making the point that that is what they have traditionally been able to do but they no longer can. Since the magic drugs are giving people the will power to be able to make these changes.

For mortality tables age and sex are pretty much sufficient to get to 98% accuracy.

If you have PMF, everyone staying behind is taking full market salaries and your valuation is based on a priced round then you should likely keep all your vested equity undiluted.

However, I assume that, as a pivot implies, you are pre-product market fit. In which case here are some questions to consider.

What is the value of the company after the pivot? How much of what was done pre-pivot has any relevance to the post-pivot company?

Is the startup valued at $20m or do you have SAFEs with a $20m cap? If the company is _worth_ $20m that means you've probably had a priced round and someone would likely pay $2m for your vested equity. Is that correct? Sell to them with a substantial, say ~50%, liquidity preference that goes to the Company (likely the Board's approval is required for a share transfer).

In large part the purpose of the SAFE is to avoid valuing the company. What valuation did you put on your 409A? Are you equating your "given a win-state valuation" (the cap) with your actual valuation (409A).

There is a Michael Seibel video where he talks about founder equity. In it he suggests that you should give back a lot of equity if pre product market fit as this will actually maximize your total return.

Remember if you raised $2m at $20m cap but have spent $1m your remaining co-founder is essentially taking $1m at $5m cap if compared to starting again (since they still have to hand over 10% to the investors and now they have to hand over 10% to you too but you spent $1m so they are giving up 20% for $1m).

Would it be more sensible for your co-founders to start a new company and offer the investors a substantial chunk or all of their remaining money back or to come with? Did they invest in them, you or both of you? In a liquidation how much would you get?

I would suggest that you should look to offer at least 90% of your vested equity to not have the remaining equity diluted. A good rule of thumb here would be what could you sell the company for today with no one staying (more than the a few months for minimal hand over) and divide the amount you raised by this number and this is the dilution you should be looking for.

You are disagreeing about the meaning of the word free.

This was entirely vibe coded, but has proven useful so I thought we would share it.

Does this get covered in the post, "in front of neighbours drive" then one is covered by 5, no?

or by the abutting private property owner;

The difference is that the users buying the product (eye balls on search) value it differently. This means you can get your first 1m users without needing to be as much better (maybe you can even be worse) than Google as you would otherwise need to be.

It's a very interesting problem. When starting a company the biggest problem is often getting the first few users. One option is to build something people want - another is to build something your friends want - but another option is to build something the media wants to talk about.

I agree that Monarchs are great if they realise their long term legacy is best served by doing very little-to-nothing but still bringing the Prime Minister to account once a week (the A/UK/CA/NZ evolutionary model). However, even the ceremonial power is proving problematic in a world where the government of UK wants King of UK to have Trump for tea and the government of CA wants King of CA to spit in it.

Though it means that some years have 53 weeks in.

One sec was great for breaking my YouTube shorts habit but the safari plugin only works 90% of the time and in some way the "gambling nature" of hitting reload and getting in sometimes has made it worse.

Which part is delusional?

Yes most people would struggle to resist a $5m buyout (e.g. Larry and Sergey) but if you had $5m in the bank you would be quite robust in your ability to resist further economic pressure - if you wanted to.

Most 20 year olds can get by on <$20k a year if they are willing to flat share, move home, eat noodles etc, given SWE make $150k+ most can generate this short of revenue on their own in short order.

The vast, vast amount of software is unbelievably bad. It does the task it's designed for just barely, the idea there isn't massive opportunity for improvement, fun and profit is patently absurd.

Not sure what part of this is delusional.

OS X used to cost $99 for each point release.

Somehow someone at Apple decided they could make more giving the software (but not the source code) away for free.

The real difference with tech is that this isn't true.

If you make something people want you can sell it. When I started our company 4 years ago I'd have considered $1m ARR a massive achievement. Now I'm here in my heart I feel a need to grow and raise or we'll die - but In my head I don't think this is actually true.

I don't think there has been a time in human history before where a company of our size (30x median wages) could have been built without needing a great deal of capital.

If Microsoft/Google et al want to use Blackrock/Vanguard's money to buy up small companies that creates more incentive for the young and idealistic to start such companies. While economic security is of sufficient value that resisting a first buyout would be hard for most (hence Sergey and Larry trying to sell for $1m) once a first buyout has been achieved a second buyout can never be forced.

Without wishing to appear overly snippy, this is how I would begin hacking such a site.

Offer to do a "code review".

This pasta is impossible to make. A celebrity chef once spent two HOURS trying.

It is very unusual for AWS not to issue refunds in situations like this, so I don't think it's a function of them finding an edge to milk thousands from user mistakes. More likely they've found that issuing refunds is less onerous than it would be to provide accurate and cheap tutorials.

Perhaps that does not excuse the behaviour but AWS reversed a $600 charge I incurred using AWS Textract where the charges were completely legitimate and I was working for a billion dollar enterprise.

Because Tim Harford has time for him I had assumed that much of the Gladwell hating was ad hominem attacks because he's a bit of a lefty. However, the opening paragraph really is hard to comprehend.

Gladwell sits under a poster of Mao Zedong, one of the greatest mass murderers in history, for "no particular reason". That is literally _incredible_.

I agree with your statements but believe the solution to be the abolition, or substantial reduction, of planning controls and the introduction of a Georgist Land Tax.

Airbnb demonstrates that there was clearly substantial demand for "house style" hotel rooms but hotels chose not to provide them. In most hotels where a room is $400 a suite with a space to work, watch tv and cook, might be $10,000. The hotel market optimised for the business man travelling alone to conferences and paid a price for it. Even my favourite hotel on earth does not provide an "ordinary menu" for the nights where you just want to curl up with your loved one and watch a film - it's Michelin star dining or bust.

In most hotels the only amenity that a hotel offers that is "better" than the home experience is a swimming pool and daily housekeeping.

Who, but the richest amongst us, has their bed linen changed _every day_?

If hotels had been built as apartments with no zoning restrictions arbitrarily placed upon them there would have been an option for the hotels to adapt by offering their rooms up on a long lease.

I have friends and family. From time to time I would like to host them when they visit so we can drink alcohol and stay up late.

Consequently it is always likely that one might want at least one more room than is needed by the family. It additionally provides buffer overflow should the pitter-patter of tiny drains on one's resources appear.

In such circumstances renting out a spare room on a longish licence should necessarily reduce rents since now there is an option which is likely to be cheaper. Renting out a spare room for other people visiting ones city should similarly have had a depressive impact on the price of hotels or an improvement in their offering.

Given the inconvenience and reduced amenity one gains from living in a house under multiple occupation there is further no specific reason why it should be the case that this does not more than offset the cash remuneration meaning there is no in principle reason why the capital cost of such a property should increase.