ingenuous2

I disagree. Have you ever been to the CA DMV with a photo of your license (that you lost/had stolen)? I have. They told me I needed a copy of my lost license to get a new one, or else the man couldn't validate my identity.

Bureaucratic hell, as defined by Harry Harrison in the Stainless Steel Rat series, is the definition of humans as automata.

It turns out, it's very hard to determine "legit" or not. Standard of care has not permeated much of the AA/NA [edit: treatment] culture. This is a heavily stigmatized group of people who frequently do not have the response reactions you or I might.

Insurance companies like scans from MRI tests, not reports written from mental health consultants.

These are some of our most vulnerable people. We need to take care of them. It's less competitive as a business to do so.

[edit - like much of mental health issues, 'success' is difficult to define, so outcome based measurement is difficult.]

I agree with you. But there are competitive advantages in a cutthroat industry to being unethical, so over time, it's mostly the bad actors that have the fattest margins and can make plenty of money before getting caught.

Just like any industry, people accept it because it's just what happens. So busy being a business owner that you cannot afford to be Sheriff.

This has always existed. We call it bureaucracy.

Some sites still monetize (minimally / part of the time) with impression based schemes.

$120k in SF probably amounts to take home just under $6k/mo. $4k goes to rent, so you have $2k for everything else.

That's not a great QOL. For comparison, I ran the Mexico City / SF cost of living on Numbeo[0]. $38k in Mexico City would need to be $140k in SF for comparable quality of life.

(side note -- this COL calculator is super neat! anyone have any evidence of the accuracy?)

[0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Where did they make that statement? All I'm hearing GP say is if the only way to know your worth to the market is to test it. There is no other way to measure what your employment is worth.

Usability will always beat security. This is why usability is one of the 2 most important concerns in security.

in general, but with just a $10k angel, the odds of becoming a $100k company are pretty decent.

Some people believe that a lower bar is more achievable, and will provide learning, feedback, and encouragement to surpass a higher bar.

I am naive in this area, but if the creditors freak out, what does that mean? Seems like a "freak out" would mean higher interest rates, and when those rates cross the return from the cash stockpile, they just would stay paying down the debt more aggressively?

Fairly simple (if this is like the other programmatic headless browsers) to make a request through a proxy.

True, but how many humans are able to take that perspective? If history has taught me anything, it's that our desires don't end when they are satisfied.

I think that distinction urge tends to be very superficial. People distinguish themselves as Mac or PC users, but don't generally put much of their identity into being a purple baboon instead of a Mac user.

Agreed. But the community of problem solvers does not frequently overlap with the community of people willing to listen to salesmen.

Yes, there are opportunities. No, I do not believe IBM could solve mine, because of the overpromise, underdeliver. I would only speak with a sales team, or a PM, if my boss ordered me to.

I think before you ask for help from a community like this, you should either offer a reasonable promise that you can deliver better results, or offer to pay people for their time.

IBM's Watson, for me, has been so much marketing fluff that it's in the Oracle class of "only bought by people who don't know better". A profitable business line, but not a problem solving business line.

I don't know what the numbers are like, but bicycling regularly increasing calorie requirements, which would have an environmental impact.

No idea how this compares to the scale of taking a bus or a solo car, but there is an increased cost. Growing food (often with fertilizers, harvest machinery, etc) in order to bring it to the market for you to consume and convert into motion doesn't seem like it's particularly energy efficient.

I bike a lot, it's better for me physically and mentally, but I do wonder how the carbon impact is affected. (Of course, this ignores the fact that petroleum is a limited supply.)

For the sake of argument, I can think of a few reasons. One may believe that everyone in a common society is interconnected, so there is no such thing that only affects you. Another reason is that humans are such mimics of each other, that anything you do is likely to make it more likely other people do it. (See suicide rate studies that compare it to media coverage of events.)

People are busybodies and like to exert control over each other. It's a power trip.

Is a computer virus that mutates itself via an evolutionary algorithm considered life?

Do you think it's desirable to give more power to individuals? Personally, I think enlightened despotism is probably the best form of government in terms of fairness, efficiency, etc.

In the US (a democratic republic), I see that the decision makers act in their own short term self-interest.

The risk with an enlightened despot (think typical corporate structure) is that the person at the top can really cause damage, because they don't have checks on what they can do. We can imagine the downside right now -- the strength of the republic is currently being stress tested to see if it can salvage itself simply by resistance, friction, and inefficiency to prevent Mr. Trump from destroying so much.

What is the actual purpose of punishing people for breaking the rules of our society? It could be a mix of justice or safety, but it does set a norm that you will be held responsible for your actions. If you do something bad, there is a reactive action that society builds.

After all, TANJ (There Ain't No Justice) in the natural world. Punishing people for breaking laws is one way that society "upgrades" over the natural world.

I strongly disagree about your CPM/PPC/CPA categorization.

I work on conversion focused ad campaigns, so YMMV. For conversions, obviously CPA and PPC are superior. I do agree that CPA can be bottom feeders, but PPC is probably the bread and butter of most people I know.

I would suggest that most big companies are paying their agencies, who like pay per view because they can spend more without direct accountability like Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Their job is easier without having to prove their efforts work.

Grain of salt and all. I'm also a guy who has yet to see proof that a branding campaign has value. (It may lift sales, but is it the most effective use of those dollars? Doubtful.)

How does that resolve? If I pay 0% to the military, but the US gets a favorable trade deal b/c theyre worried for invasion, do I get the reward without any skin in the game?

Wouldn't a savvy gamesman just vote for their own self-interest?

Small data point, but I've lived all over California and never heard of such a thing.

It seems possible to me that he wants to use that reputation so he can get just as much money without giving up equity.

Just like this news article showed. Guy with this idea? MEH. Inventor of the Roomba? Let's write it up!

Why would he give up money when he has the best marketing he can't buy? (cheaply)

We don't necessarily need to count all ways of ordering 52 cards if we can build a model of how people will react to playing those cards.

That is to say, everything is in an inertial reference frame, so there is no absolute center.

Just like we can only mark a distance traveled as from a starting point.

I have heard around a $2 CPA. If you're doing tech unboxing videos (possible higher purchasing intent) more, if you're doing abstract poems you wrong, possibly less.

Mentally, I apply a $0.50 - $4 CPM for 1-2 STDEV.

What if the choice were "no investment or attention" versus "creepy attention and small investment"?

Entrepreneurs are so willing to sacrifice, and this should not be the situation, but what if it is? How many of us males would accept these types of advances in order to get our idea funded?

To think that we can remove power from sex is misguided. There were times during my startup that I would have wished for the attention, even as a straight male, if only because it was better than the nothingness that my idea lived in otherwise.

You speak in certainties about vagaries.

There are plenty of companies where "most of the time it's not broken" is a big problem. Possibly bigger than the cost of a security issue (I don't know, because this is both hypothetical and I'm an outsider to the issues at play).

To not acknowledge that others would value a different part of the risk curve lacks perspective.