HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

jamesshamenski

241 karma · joined October 21, 2009

behaving nicely when nobody is watching
submissionscomments
jamesshamenski··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (April 2025)
Genius. Could this work with iPads?
jamesshamenski··on I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA
Hi Peter, thanks for always circling back to the YC community!

I'm curious about LLMs for the legal system that can reference the law and help to guide individuals on the process they need to navigate. How much of Immigration Law do you think can be navigated independently by people? Obviously, unauthorized practices of the law would be illegal *but if it was permissible*, how critical are lawyers in Immigration Law when people are cheap and want to DIY?

jamesshamenski··on Making “social” social again: Announcing Mozi
This is very similar to Dopplr.com - started in 2007ish and had a bunch of hype but not many people formed a habit of using it. It was acquihired by Nokia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopplr
jamesshamenski··on AI clones teen girl’s voice in $1M kidnapping scam: ‘I’ve got your daughter’
If one service was compromised, isn't it reasonable to think that the scammer can access other services during this breach?
jamesshamenski··on FTX Future Fund
-_-

Sam's primary motivation to generate money is to fund Effective Altruism.

jamesshamenski··on FTX Future Fund
Here's how FTX deals with climate: https://www.ftx-climate.com/

Is your stance on the environment what led you to leave the auto industry?

jamesshamenski··on FTX Future Fund
FTX has a dedicated Climate initiative: https://www.ftx-climate.com/
jamesshamenski··on Financial innovations brought by technology
The reason I stopped reading HN (looking deep into the mirror) is that all the smart people here generally have a negative sentiment to something that's math based. It's a head scratcher but easy for me to move on after 14-ish years of being here.
jamesshamenski··on Financial innovations brought by technology
If you haven't moved people to crypto, you're enabling the problem.
jamesshamenski··on Apple Music now has 38M paid members
The labels have ownership in Spotify [1]. If any disruption comes from the aggregation of their own content, the labels will profit.

The labels will not pull the plug on Spotify as it represents too great a portion of future industry revenues.

You are correct about dealing with Spotify's competitors. Tidal and other streaming services are the labels best shot at reducing the leverage of any one player (Spotify or Apple).

[1] http://www.swedishwire.com/jobs/680-record-labels-part-owner...

jamesshamenski··on Show HN: Scout – See lower direct hotel rates as you browse online travel agents
The widget showed me the same price as the hotel. I was asked to click through in order to see if a lower rate was available.

So no, I cannot 'see lower direct hotel rates as I browse online travel agents'.

The marketing messaging is completely disjointed from what the product actually does.

jamesshamenski··on Launch HN: Nutrigene (YC W18) – Tailor-made liquid supplements using health data
The game has been changed. Society will look back at the 'health isle' in a drugstore and wonder how anyone navigated through a sea of labels and white lies.

The next step is to hook up with HealthKit and monitor my activity and use to inform what to send me next month.

jamesshamenski··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2017)
Product Manager

  Location: Los Angeles (preferred) / New York (Current)
  Remote: Yes
  Willing to relocate: Yes 
  Technologies: Swift, JS, basic web stack
  Résumé/CV: http://bit.ly/shamenski
  Email: shamenski@gmail.com
Process driven product leader with 10 years experience (Current #1 app in App Store for social media, Nike+, grubHub). Seeking very senior positions in product, strategy or operations. Looking for a position ASAP.
jamesshamenski··on Show HN: A drop-in iOS keyboard button that mimics the native keyboard buttons
Yep, this won't play as an option for the top row of keys inside an iOS 8 keyboard extension. There is no method to display art beyond above the area where the default view of the keyboard resides.

Obviously, Apple doesn't have to play by their own rules... but I understand how this could be abused.

The CYRKeyboardButton seems like a great starting point for someone building a keyboard native to their own app or if the art is used on the lower rows of keys.

jamesshamenski··on Andrew Warner's Mixergy Celebrates 1,000th interview
Big congrats Andrew! I've been listening from the beginning and find it to be an immensely valuable way to learn about different businesses.

Question, what's next? Don't kill me if this is your 1,000th episode, I just started listening to it : )

jamesshamenski··on Mylar: A platform for building secure web applications
Right. If the page is public, then security isn't needed. If it's gated content then a new approach is inevitable.
jamesshamenski··on Mylar: A platform for building secure web applications
It seems absolutely ridiculous that large piles of data are being stolen by small teams of hackers. If solutions like Mylar's prevent reading of the extracted data, that sounds promising. Sure, it's just another hurdle in an attack but it's something.

I wonder if we're only a few years away where technologies and practices like this become standard?

jamesshamenski··on Amazon Acquires Social Reading Site Goodreads
I think this is Amazon's third purchase of a social book community.
jamesshamenski··on On Naming Apps
The order of keywords having an effect on placement is an odd variable for the App store algo.

Another helpful hack is to rename your company. Instead of Tapstream, an example would be 'Stock Market Data Insight'. Packing in the keywords in a name is great because;

A) it's visible to the viewer in the iOS store list view

B) adds clarity + confidence in the product solution / offering

C) has lots of index weight. Far more than just the keyword field.

jamesshamenski··on The Next SoundCloud
gotcha. Thanks Spadgos!
jamesshamenski··on The Next SoundCloud
The page structure with the audio timeline serving as a navigation cue to the content below is great.

Could someone point me to how to make the audio image waveform reference the on page anchors? I scanned the developer page and couldn't see where to start.

jamesshamenski··on Mobile A/B Testing Made Easy
Brilliant! Can I ask how long this methodology took to implement?
jamesshamenski··on SV Angel, Founder Collective put $850K In Customer Retention SaaS Custora
Congrats!

I love these guys. Custora validated Campusfood's customer lifetime value. Without this service to validate our internal data we probably wouldn't have gotten as high an acquisition price from GrubHub.

Note: we also did CLV analysis using an outside accounting firm and it took them 3 weeks to come up with pretty much the same number. But, it cost more and gave us no actionable insight into our users.

jamesshamenski··on US Senate drafts a Crowdfunding bill, 'Democratizing Access to Capital Act'
The obvious differences over the House Bill are;

1. individual participation level has been decreased from $10k to $1k.

2. Companies must use a public crowdfunding site.

3. Must be incorporated and also pick a primary state to do business under.

jamesshamenski··on Is crowdfunding startups a solution, or just another problem?
How long might it be until these bills are passed and can be acted upon?
jamesshamenski··on Index Ventures Leads $4 billion Valuation Round In Dropbox
There is nothing being 'returned' to YC. The value of the investment has gone up but that has little to do with an exit.
jamesshamenski··on Ask Alexis Ohanian anything about your startup on OfficeHours.TV
the moment you wander into the paid world, the globe perceives the cost/benefit and forever becomes obsessed with value. write back with really really great content and you'll stay on top.
jamesshamenski··on Why "Coupon Code" Should Not be a Field on Your Payment Form
Allmenus.com yesterday launched a new feature that somewhat solves this issue. In the shopping cart, we have text reading 'Discount Code' with a link 'Apply'. If you click the link, we reveal an input box with a button to submit a coupon code.

I believe that by removing the text box, less visual attention is stressed to go out and find a coupon. If a customer has come to our site with the prior intention of redeeming a coupon, I believe they'll navigate our interface without a problem.

See what i'm talking about, just add an item from the menu to meet the order minimum to see the text appear:

http://www.allmenus.com/ny/new-york/280265-yorganic/menu/

Sidenote: Yes, we'll test the lingo to determine what preforms the best and monitor campaign results for changes in usage patterns.

jamesshamenski··on Jack Dorsey Cleaning House At Twitter: 4 Key Product Guys Are Out
If Jack really is the prognosticator of web products like I keep hearing, he will have to put new talent in place. Twitter is really a special product but it's going to work - it must have Jack's vision seen through every pixel, without compromise.
jamesshamenski··on College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon
This is a really strong back-to-school campaign. I can see this really improving the sale of Kindles and igniting Amazon's Q3 results. Under ideal scenarios, this could save a college student hundreds of dollars each semester.
Page 1 of 6Next →