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madamepsychosison Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (January 2021)

Location: London UK Remote : Yes

Are you building a complicated technical product that is difficult to explain to customers?

Are you reaching the stage where it’s becoming necessary to think more strategically about market and positioning?

Do you want to catch the attention of your industry and build an iconic and reputable brand?

Maybe I can help.

I’m a former programmer, VC analyst and startup founder with an CS degree who now advises startups on product marketing. I combine technical and market expertise with skill in writing and social media. I can help figure out the essentials of what your product is doing and for whom, and figure out how best to get that message out there.

I specialize in: - startups expanding, and needing to redefine who they are - developer marketing and finding influential power-users - writing stand-out copy that succinctly expresses a technical idea - startups just discovering p/m fit and wanting to quickly respond to it

Often I can help solve your problem with less than 2 weeks of consulting and research. I can make a content plan or guidelines or work with an existing team.

Email: saku@asteroid.zone

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sakunthala-panditharatne-ab07111...

madamepsychosison Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide

Something I think could help people in these situations but doesn't have much popular support - over-the-counter antidepressants.

It's telling that the author was able to check out a book on suicide, but didn't seek medical help. That would require a) getting past the stigma of suffering from depression b) calling up a doctor or therapist c) suffering through the long mental health wait times that exist in most countries, d) being sent to a CBT therapist, given a self-help book or website e) being referred to a psychiatrist f) finally being prescribed something.

It can be months before a depressed person gets any kind of treatment at all. And they are the last people to have the energy it takes to navigate a byzantine healthcare system, or have a friend or family member help them (many people still believe depression is a character weakness and will punish the patient for speaking out).

Antidepressants aren't all that dangerous, even when compared to other over-the-counter drugs like Plan B. They're not happy pills, they often won't even make a miserable life bearable, but they do give the patient enough energy to deal with his/her problems. Given the number of lives lost to suicide, and the high disease burden of depression, I think the safety tradeoff is absolutely worth it.

I'm aware this comment is going to attract a lot of ill-will and uninformed comments about anti-depressant efficacy/ woo about happy pills etc. so I direct you to read this FAQ first. https://medical.mit.edu/faqs/antidepressants

madamepsychosison Passport Index – How much power does your passport have?

More interesting would be to rank citizenship by price. For example, you can directly get Maltese citizenship for $150k. Indirectly you can get a green card for $500k. Maybe someone could sort through all these direct and indirect rules to classify citizenships by value.

madamepsychosison On a brother’s suicide: ‘I wish I had never told him to go to counseling’

I live in Europe and something similar happened to one of my friends. Abuses of power are everywhere.

madamepsychosison When is proof by contradiction necessary?

My intuition – proof by contradiction means we have to use one step that inverts the set of values for which the statement is true – so whether we need a contradiction step depends on the cardinality of this truth set. Perhaps it depends on the relationship between the ‘truth set’ of our premises and our conclusions (e.g. the square root of 2 is one number, but all of the rationals is infinite) Supporting this intuition, getting rid of proof by contradiction leaves us unable to construct uncountable sets. Maybe some proofs need several contradiction steps (i.e., when their truth set cardinality is aleph-2,3, etc.)

madamepsychosison Ask HN: I got rejected from Facebook, Dropbox, Microsoft, Quora, What's Wrong?

Remember lots of these things come down to luck. Resume looks more impressive than me, and I did get one of those internships. Just keep trying and don't take it personally.

madamepsychosison Europe’s Plan to Compete with Silicon Valley

Here's a recent anecdote: A company in London had developed a seriously impressive, breakthrough technology. When they went to meet European VCs, they wanted a business plan, revenue graphs, etc., nothing about how the technology worked. They were mostly ex-McKinsey and ex-banking and probably would not have understood the mechanics anyway. They lowballed/ passed on this company, because they were raising > £10 million, which by EU standards is a massive amount, and the financials of this < 5 y/o company were too shaky. Then the founders went out to SF for a month, and pretty soon were practically drowning in termsheets.

madamepsychosison Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2015)

Rouge Paradise Planet | VR Gaming | London, UK and San Francisco, CA Very early stage. Computer graphics, vision or Unity engineers. sp668@cam.ac.uk

madamepsychosison [dead]

I think the reason NYTimes columnists sound so stupid is this: to become a NYTimes columnist, you need to impress a whole string of gatekeepers, professors, editors etc. The biggest problem in their world caused by gender bias is these gatekeepers not letting women through. Much of the world works in a similar way, but tech does not, and journalists have not seemed to realize this.

So when critiquing the valley, they look for the gatekeepers, which is why they think - "aha! there must be no female founders because VCs aren't letting them in!"

This baffles SV insiders, who can better understand the relative importance of a VC's opinion. Being rejected? Why that happened to Google 63 times! Unfortunately, this is the point where they conclude that gender bias is a nonsense problem invented by poorly informed arts graduates.

The same thing is happening when journalists complain tech firms don't hire enough women. It would be a very serious problem for women in journalism if their employers were institutionally sexist institution (which I'm sure it is not, of course) but for women in tech, less so. We have far greater "exit rights", due to the liquidity of the market and the relative ease of starting our own companies.

This isn't to say gender bias doesn't exist, or that it isn't a problem, merely that it manifests itself in wildly different ways than a journalist may expect.

madamepsychosison Ask HN: Do you take nootropics?

L-theanine has been a miracle drug for me. Took away a lot of my depression/energy issues.

madamepsychosison Why I Left the Thiel Fellowship for Quora

This reads like a parody of what grad students think.

madamepsychosison Scientists are suggesting that depression is a result of inflammation

Anecdata here - as a teen, I had depression. I would take ibuprofen a few times a day when it got really bad, it helped a lot. It would lift my mood from dulled, paralysing rumination to merely sad. I think I started doing it after reading a study like the one in the link. It's a popular theory there are many different diseases that fall under the label 'depression', which is why patients often try multiple antidepressants until one works - perhaps this inflammatory one is just one of them.

madamepsychosison Startup depression

I'm curious - why are there constantly posts about depression on HN? Is there something about the programmer/startup lifestyle thats more accepting of depressed people?

madamepsychosison Square to Raise $100M at a $6B Valuation

http://avc.com/2014/03/the-bubble-question/

Fred Wilson explains it pretty well here.

madamepsychosison Why women have no time for Wikipedia

It has always seemed to me that a main payoff of many open source/ Wikipedia editors is intellectual authority. Other commentators have mentioned the hostile atmosphere on Wikipedia- I'd argue that that's a symptom of contributors having their intellectual authority threatened.

Women are granted significantly less intellectual authority in their IRL lives, so it makes sense they aren't so concerned about establishing it online.

madamepsychosison SF’s Housing Crisis Explained

HN, tell me why this wouldn't work: tax anyone renting an old property (i.e. built more than 15 years ago) for 50% of the difference between the rent now & before the tech boom. Put this to subsidise development of affordable housing in under-developed areas like SOMA.

Really, the lowest hanging fruit is just building reasonable transport through the whole city. At the moment it seems like only 30-40% of SF is actually being used. Demolishing freeways & replacing them with housing would not be a bad area either. Smaller houses, like the ones in European cities, would help a lot as well.

madamepsychosison Ask HN: Working in the USA as a young Canadian, no degree

If you manage to get $100k in funding (from a VC, sales, crowdfunding, whatever), and you own 50%+ of the company, you can get an E2 visa to temporarily operate in the US. Wait times for the required interview are about 5 months & the amount of paperwork means you'll need a lawyer. IIRC its valid for 2 years but you can extend it. The emphasis is on bringing jobs to the US.

madamepsychosison I am a successful software dev but I have a serious drinking problem

Try Alan Carr's "Easy Way To Stop Drinking". Addiction perpetuates itself partly through false beliefs, this book goes through and debunks all of them. I used his guide to quit smoking, and it was really helpful.

madamepsychosison What is really happening in Ukraine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

madamepsychosison Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (February 2013)

SEEKING WORK - Remote/ London/ Berlin

iOS & Ruby on Rails. Familiar with graphics & non-ARC iPhone apps. Contact: sp668@cam.ac.uk

madamepsychosison Ask HN: Best books you read in 2012

Also: The Age of Gold by HW Brands- a really fun history of the California gold rush.

madamepsychosison Ask HN: Best books you read in 2012

"Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace, if you have 90 hours or so to kill "On Numbers & Games" is a fun maths book

madamepsychosison Juggling by numbers: How notation revealed new tricks

Could you link us to something explaining the number & the throw? (BTW I saw your talk as a kid, though before I knew any real maths. Very fun!)

madamepsychosison Evidence suggesting that young computer programmers have “bilingual brains”

I remember waking up whilst learning about animation and thinking that I couldn't move because I had set up the world, view, projection matrices but not the model matrices for my legs and arms.

madamepsychosison Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (December 2012)

SEEKING WORK, iOS & RoR developer, have most experience in prototyping. I am a student at Cambridge so I can only work with you until mid-January. Email me sp668@cam.ac.uk. London area or remote.

madamepsychosison Ask HN: I am shutting down. And starting up, again? What do you think?

For what it's worth, I would pay to use a service like this. Obviously the chicken and egg problem is the tough part here.

madamepsychosison Coco Controller (YC S12) Will Turn Your iPhone Into A Gaming Powerhouse

Second that!

madamepsychosison What My Son's Disabilities Taught Me About 'Having It All'

May I recommend Max Weber's "The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism"?

madamepsychosison Why “just do it” is bullshit

It's not really true, but I've always thought of it as a slogan to dispel irrational fear around trying something new. In that it has it's use.

madamepsychosison Men In Tech

^This. It's not that exclusively women have these problems, it's that they have them to a greater extent than men because of centuries-old ideas about how women and men should act. Articles like these are just saying it'd be nice if we made some effort to reduce the effect of these old social conventions on women in tech today.