Hacker News Reader

phlowbieuqon How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M

i wish we lived in the same area and could have an OTR conversation about this. believe it or not, the new "strategy" now that ZO is all shut down is even less well-defined and more pie-in-the-sky than ZO ever was.

phlowbieuqon Ring fired employees for watching customer videos

I'm working on IP cameras sending their video to Surveillance Station on my Synology NAS. Totally local recording, and was super easy to setup with some random IP cam I had laying around.

My plan is to run cable for PoE cameras soon. Will have 24/7 recording, but accessible only locally.

phlowbieuqon Qantas launches inspection blitz after cracks found on Boeing 737 jet

"Qantas. Qantas never crashed."

phlowbieuqon How Firebase Interviewed Software Engineers

Firebase is probably a bit of an edge case on this one, because it was a paradigm-shifting developer product before dev products were cool.

If you were a top-tier developer, there was a >0% chance that you would be super excited about the product because you realized the pain point that it would solve for you if you were building a real-time product at another company. And that excitement or lack thereof was a useful litmus test for Firebase specifically.

I agree that "excited about our company" is not something you get up front if you are interviewing at a company that is building an on-demand AI marketplace for ML-optimized scooter rental office spaces.

phlowbieuqon Amazon will pull the plug on dash buttons

As of now, Amazon appears to still be selling their "IOT button" (which is basically a programmable dash button)

https://aws.amazon.com/iotbutton/

phlowbieuqon Employers are mining the data their workers generate

McKesson has not yet determined what changes it will make as a result of the findings, but has considered adopting a more open office plan to encourage more discussion between employees.

LOL, way to be super creepy AND learn exactly the wrong lesson from this.

phlowbieuqon How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

I feel like another unstated risk here is that if someone can get his plate number through the DMV registration, they could buy tracking on it from one of the large ALPR firms and deduce his home location.

phlowbieuqon Apple finally announces an overhauled Mac mini

I'm interested to know what you run on this server...plex? torrent client? file server? on-prem file backups (if so, which software you use)?

I have a small Intel NUC running windows that runs always-on and does some of these things just fine, but I'm always looking for some excuses to upgrade a gadget.

phlowbieuqon Amazon raises minimum wage to $15 for all US employees

From a former Amazon employee's blog:

"New Amazon Tier One employees receive a small number of restricted stock units (RSUs) within the first month of hire. These shares are set to vest after two years of continuous service. For every year of continuous service, an employee receives another small number of shares of restricted stock, always vesting two years of service later. For example, I received four shares on 8/27/14 set to vest on 8/31/16. I received four more shares on 4/2/15 set to vest on 7/1/17. I received three shares on 4/7/16 set to vest on 6/16/18."

phlowbieuqon Startups I Want to Fund

How do you see these two sentences resolving into a single company that you would fund?

> A normal first check from me ranges from $50k to $250k.

> I’m very bullish on a capital-heavy, asset-full future for startups.

phlowbieuqon The Business of SaaS

If anyone was curious about Inovalon's $70M customer, it appears to be Anthem. It isn't explicitly called out that way, but from page 23 of that report:

  Our largest client, Anthem (formerly known as WellPoint), represented approximately 
  17% of our revenues for the year ended December 31, 2016, while no other clients 
  represented greater than 10% of our revenue.

phlowbieuqon A secret on the ocean floor

I'm hardly ever an optimist, but I believe that this kind of situation is exactly what the saying "Necessity is the mother of invention" applies to. I am 100% confident that Elon has an entire team of material scientists at Tesla working on alternatives to these rare materials.

phlowbieuqon Selling My Bootstrapped SaaS Business

Is it just me, or is patio11 the most widely helpful and valuable person on the entire internet? Can hardly make it through a long HN thread without finding some reference to "patio11 wrote a great post on this topic that helped me immensely"

phlowbieuqon Apple Teases Upcoming Space Gray iMac Pro, "the most powerful Mac ever"

Historically, Apple has been verrrrrry anal about making their x-ray marketing images reflect the real design that is hiding inside their units...and I definitely saw RAM sticks in slots when they were showing off the fans. So maybe they have changed course just a little?

phlowbieuqon A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

Ya their growth in reach has been amazing. Rhinegeist's biggest innovation that allowed them to explosively scale was actually around distribution. I've heard that it pissed a lot of other distributors off, who then lobbied the state org in KY and closed the loophole that they discovered.

Are you on the Cincinnati Tech slack channel? [0] Based on your comment history, I'm curious if I've run into you at a tech meetup at some point.

[0] http://cincytech.herokuapp.com/

phlowbieuqon A scalper who used bots to buy millions of tickets, now wants to stop them

> drinking Rhinegeist.

fistbump for a fellow Cincinnatian. I feel the exact same way about football (especially the Bengals). I can buy 10 cases of beer for what it would cost me to freeze my ass off at the stadium, and they are going to bungle it anyway. =D

phlowbieuqon ‘Firebase’ Does for Apps What Dropbox Did for Docs

Looks sick! Can't wait to see the demos!