philip1209

It's AMA, so here's something under the category of "anything" . . .

How has AI affected your work as a lawyer, if at all? Do you expect it to change your work or how you bill?

Historically, startups have hired foreign "employees" as contractors to simplify paperwork.

How are "false freelancer" laws, e.g. in Spain, affecting the market? Do you generally advise American early-stage startups startups to hire foreigners as contractors, or to immediately use a PEO?

For those interested in this, I highly recommend the book "Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style" by David Marx. It talks about how Japan appropriated American prep fashion, then exported it back to the USA.

SEEKING FREELANCER | Remote

Find AI is a search engine for people and companies.

We're actively hiring for fractional:

- Go-focused backend engineer

- Svelte / SvelteKit-focused frontend developer

For both of these roles, we're seeking more senior candidates with experience in these frameworks. The work fill focus on rapid product building at an early-stage startup.

Learn more about our fractional work program + apply here: https://usefind.ai/jobs

That's interesting - to me, it seems to work like cash basis vs accrual basis accounting depending on the state.

I put my money on it becoming an installation at Burning Man.

It's probably tied to fundraising. Execs probably have "key person" clauses and need to negotiate stock or secondaries as part of the deal.

Philip here from Find AI. We store our Velvet logs in a dedicated DB. It's postgres now, but we will probably move it to Clickhouse at some point. Our main app DB is in postgres, so everybody just knows how it works and all of our existing BI tools support it.

Here's a video about what we do with the data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaFkRi5ESi8

I disagree. Defaults matter. “It’s illegal” is a firm line parents can hold. And, you don’t need to deter 100% - just taking a chunk out will reverse network effects and cause population collapse.

Plus, expect more services to verify IDs in an effort to combat AI spam.

We should really just raise the age of COPPA from 13. It’s a robust legal framework and we can amend one line in it to regulate this industry without excessive bloat or bickering.

It’s crazy that Americans can be on Instagram 8 years before having a sip of alcohol.

We should raise the COPPA consent age at least 16, but probably 18.

Not sure what you mean by “successful” but our product isn’t a toy.

We have been solving some of these problems at Find AI [1]. Rag on people is hard.

[1] https://usefind.ai

I like to think we are doing that. It doesn’t seem like an AI product but uses AI:

Https://usefind.ai

Makes sense. Would be great to see iPhones / Apple Watches covered for diabetic CGM users, too.

Is it possible to spend FSA/HSA funds on medically-necessary Apple products/services?

That's funny.

I discovered an off-by-one error in college as I was graduating. Apparently the "class plan" I had put together with an advisor during my second year was missing a class, and I discovered it as I petitioned it for graduation. "You're one class short."

(It was for my second major, not the primary one, and the head of the physics department was nice enough to credit a nonlinear optimization course from engineering toward the major, so I earned it.)

They probably thought it would be super niche and nobody would notice. Then, they got product-market fit and didn’t want to walk away from the money.

I learned a lot from Brian Chesky's interview with Lenny's Newsletter and by seeing the failures of "manager mode" at mid-stage tech companies.

Here's what we say on our jobs page [1] - strongly inspired by Chesky + Gumroad + nordic office culture:

> We operate with a fairly flat hierarchy and operate with high trust of each other. The code, copy, or designs you make will often go straight to production with little discussion or modification. Everybody is welcome to give their opinions, inputs, and ideas on the product.

> Our style of work isn't for everybody. You have a lot of freedom in how to work, but not a lot of freedom in what to work on. There isn't much mentorship, community, or discussion. If you need help, we're quick to respond and help - but if we don't hear from you, we assume things are going well.

On the footnote about "Founders who are unable to delegate even things they should will use founder mode as the excuse" - a learning I've had is the importance of operating with a high degree of trust within this system. I set the objective but then can't focus too closely on the tactics. So, I shouldn't second-guess the libraries an engineer decides to use when building a ticket.

"Founder mode" only works if you can modulate where you make decisions. You need to grant some autonomy to people in making their own decisions. That's not to say that the Founder can't override somebody on something detailed like a button label - but those should be about setting the bar for quality of execution, not putting yourself in the critical path of everything. Founders should focus on the decisions that matter, not being a gatekeeper for every little change.

[1] https://usefind.ai/jobs

Can anybody speak to the accounting implications of "donating" software to a foundation/501(c)3? Can there be any kind of tax write-off? (It looks like this might already have been owned by a foundation, but I'm still generally curious)

Which big tech company will be the first to stop doing business in Europe? It's going to happen sooner or later.

> Y Combinator backs its first defense startup, Ares Industries

That's not true - a quick search reveals a bunch of direct defense companies, like Apollo Shield, and a ton of companies building in the defense space:

https://usefind.ai/searches/defense-startups-funded-by-yc

Do they mean to say "weapons company"?

I decided to write more. Just redid my website to be more of a blog, and am committing to publishing every Friday at 9am.

Posts in draft:

- "The next evolution of my product studio"

- "With AI, data isn't evil any more"

- "The AI mullet strategy"

- "COGS analysis on AI products"

- "Two-tier tech companies"

https://contraption.co

We use so many tools from Andrew Kane in our production repo. His packages make it possible to build an AI application using Rails.

How do you measure quality? And, can users game that quality?

I think that's the hardest thing on any recommendation or search system. It's really hard to do without using money as a neutral measure of value. And, without a good measure of quality - it's unclear that the system is optimizing the right metrics (without cannibalizing others).

Because I feel like most people have heard of CBT, but don’t realize that a “major version upgrade” to it is available.

I’ve heard from some friends at major tech companies that their stock grants are not being renewed as they vest. This is leaving them with sometimes >50% effective pay cuts. And, many are choosing to stay put because they don’t think they have other options.

My understanding is that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is considered a "fourth wave" psychotherapy, whereas Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is considered more "third wave". Many therapists still focus on CBT, so those that are interested in ACT will have to seek out practitioners of it.

The classic consumer-facing book about CBT is "Feeling Good", and a good consumer-facing book about ACT is "The Happiness Trap."

I share this because your comment may resonate with people, and I think it's important to understand that ACT is quite different than the more-common CBT.

I enjoyed this article. As a bit of a contrast, I also recommend this article I came across yesterday, which criticizes the American idea of building a home as an isolated utopia:

"The Suburban Lifestyle Dream" https://www.ryanpuzycki.com/p/the-suburban-lifestyle-dream

> Even as the West has built some of the world’s most extraordinary cities, this Puritanical, anti-urban throughline runs across our culture. The desire to return to an Edenic state is a central theme in the story of how the “Suburban Lifestyle Dream” first entered our collective conscience. That dream has powered the unique pattern of suburbanization that typifies much of modern America—one marked by “stratified and segregated social geography” and “relatively low density.”

Ah, 2k-line files makes me miss my days of coding in Go.

It was their largest holding. Isn’t this kind of a rebalancing?