jaypaulynice

You’ll know it when you’re best buddies...and you wouldn’t genuinely mind knowing their family and hang out with them...mutual respect to start!

Don't go for a walk...go for a run!

So all these tech startups are just good at raising fund? Is that a business model nowadays? It’s like this startup I worked for and I swear what we did best was hire people to do nothing...

You're not deceiving the customer. The problem is the customer depends on other inputs to make a decision. 99% of the time the decision has no rationale except social proof.

For example: If you went to buy 2 products next to each other at a store. They both do the same thing and same price, which do you take? The one that your neighbor bought or a random one?

For me whenever this happens, I most likely don't buy either unless I have a very specific need to get it.

Theranos knew about this trick, but they took it too far!

This happens pretty often actually. The same early investors own the media companies so they get to push stories to get companies huge valuations. The media is there to make money too! One thing America lacks is public radio/tv whose goal is to serve the public. People keep forgetting that the media is private. Whoever controls the media controls the people.

Google and lots of companies continued to use brain teasers even when they realized it made no sense. Sure they wish to say this after using it for a long time. What I’ve realized sometimes there are barriers to prevent certain people and give a sense of meritocracy while justifying discrimination. It’s like when looking for an apartment, some landlords will only check some people’s backgrounds and not others. The same is true for credit card companies offering some people much lower apr than others for no reason other than prejudice. We could go on and on with examples, but that’s just a few.

In the end every company becomes average because there is only so many people they can hire. This has nothing to do with brain teasers per se.

I’ve worked in tech for over 10 years and I have to say the places I did the best work are interviews I somewhat bombed. Not a surprise!

Pick up the guitar like I have been doing. I even wrote a quick article on how easy I’ve found it:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/learning-play-guitar-jay-paul...

Could someone with an interview confirm?

If you go to apply.ycombinator.com and then “Previous Applications” if your W18 is there I’m guessing it’s a no?! But I could be wrong!

>While I have complaints about Google, UX isn't one of them. I can't think of a Google product that is really all that unintuitive, undiscoverable, or difficult to use.

>Am I missing something? I guess it can be rather subjective, but I don't have any complaints about UX or UI.

For me search is about everything Google got right. I use Google Cloud and I can tell you, everything is buried somewhere and change without notification. Even something simple as billing, I have to search Google to find it. Same with G Suite. Something as simple as the admin interface is impossible to find. I never got G+ and don't see why they haven't killed it. People put up with gmail because there is nothing better. Try to change your profile picture. Android apps look terrible compared to ios and I have apps notifications I never knew existed and can't even tell where they're located. So many I can't list here.

Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion and sold it at a discount...Google just doesn't get user experience. Google bought so many user experience startups and yet they have nothing to show after so many years...

It seems like companies exist nowadays to raise funding. Not to be profitable businesses. Say they go IPO soon after, where does the money come to actually run the company? Is there a designated pool of shares for that? Do they buy back the shares then?

It is absolutely possible to influence an outcome based on thoughts. There are countless studies on this effect. Psychics in that sense don't foresee the future, they influence the outcome of the future. For example, the most common way to know what someone is thinking is for them to tell you, but I believe thoughts have another medium of transfer which is not well understood yet. Think about wavelength, radio frequencies, etc. Just because you can't see/touch it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Btw try this: close your nose and mouth and think about something, you'll realize that you're kind of talking/transferring your thoughts in the air.

Here is a good link "Scientists Transmit Thoughts from one Brain to Another": http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/scientists-transmit-thought...

Are you saying the evidence I provide is wrong? You seriously believe the lottery is perfectly designed? That's like saying cars/airbags/computers/etc. are always perfectly designed.

I found this example: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2183070/MIT-maths-ge...

Of course there are ways to beat the lottery. For one, ask the clerk which ticket to buy. They will gladly give you the one most people win from.

Also you can study the patterns. If you buy the same ticket over and over, a streak of losing is a good idea that something big is coming (uneven distribution of the odds). Most people at this point would give up and buy a different ticket, but that's a bad strategy. A streak of winning small amounts is actually bad (proper distribution of the odds). With a little social engineering (small talks with other customers), you can gather that intelligence. Evidence of this effect: the powerball, mega millions, etc. When no one wins they balloon. When someone wins each time, they win relatively small amounts.

Another mistake people make is buying different tickets instead of the same. That's why only a few people win.

So much of lottery is reverse psychology.

>a master AI that replaces lawyers (I don't think the latter is possible right now)

We did this at Recommind (https://www.recommind.com/axcelerate-ediscovery-product-page...), but replacing low level lawyers for case management. A senior lawyer/case manager usually trained the system to identify relevant documents based on a few...

Sorry, but companies that save pennies and nickels only to lose billions deserve this...but makes no sense that individuals have to suffer the consequences...of course they release the news when it's hurricane season.

Uber succeeded because they can reliable predict demand for services. They have both historical data (rush hours, regular commute, etc.) and also future data (sporting events, concerts, night life, etc.)

I looked at starting an Uber for healthcare when it was getting hot, but I thought again about the problem. It's not possible to predict who will be sick when and where and doctors are very expensive. Having doctors go to people's homes is a lose lose situation because the time they spend driving is time they could spend helping patients.

I'm working on RESTfender: https://restfender.com to connect and secure IoT devices. Show HN link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15106959

After this complaint, it's now back as the 5th result. Google definitely messes around with the search results or I don't know how to explain this.

External links are validation for a fledging idea/startup. If someone searched "restfender" they would be more likely to learn more if they see a discussion that may or may not help them...

Interesting...My 4th result is twitter. I'm wondering now why it's so different...first link is LinkedIn

Strangely, I submitted a project (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15106959) I'm working on here on Show HN and few hours after the show hn link was the second result in Google search when I search "RESTfender", but a day later I can't find it again...it's a project on IoT and Google's IoT platform is in beta...

I doubt my little project is a threat to Google, but this seems strange?

Thanks for the question. Slowly adding details on the website and how it works. Yes it is a reverse proxy. We have a python sdk that you use to connect your device to our platform.

There are quite some "Uber for x," but I'm guessing no one will mention Uber in conversations as it brings up bad memories...look closely from day 1. Marketplaces are effectively "Uber for x"

$50/device?? With that said, I suspect Facebook is working on a browser...that could compete well with Chrome...any reason why Facebook hasn't developed a browser?

http://seed-db.com/accelerators/view?acceleratorid=1011 As much info you can get for now...it says 15B invested Airbnb alone has almost a third of that.

I think there are some implicit bias. I've noticed that most black startups in accelerators cater to other black groups or hail mostly from Africa.

If not being strong enough was a criteria then you could guarantee that every startup would succeed, but looking at a lot of accelerators, there is still a high rate of fail, so who is to say strong enough? I've also seen people you least expect to succeed often succeed and some that you would expect to succeed fail...

Your best bet as a black/latinx founder is to be that outlier or build something for your own group...

I'm very curious about the success rate of YC companies when it comes to race/gender...any data regarding that?

I've worked as a software engineer in a lot of industries and I think advertising/marketing and finance are full of people like this. But in the end, it sucks to live like this always paranoid and watching your back.

When I see someone trying to make a power move, I stay as far away from them as possible. These people could only sustain that life with alcohol, smoking and just whatever else. I remember my boss at a marketing company would take shots early in the morning and our office was full of hard alcohol everywhere that you would think you were at a bar. Is the stress worth it in the end? You reap what you sow...trying to make a quick buck is never worth it.