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pratyushag2

39 karma · joined March 22, 2016

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pratyushag2··on Ask HN: Meal Planning App?
Love Paprika for meal planning, saving recipes (and eating them), allows for easy modifications of recipe as well as web imports, and great interface for groceries. Definitely worth the price.
pratyushag2··on Transparent memory offloading: more memory at a fraction of the cost and power
Funny. At first I laughed and the googled [0]. The response would suggest that either chinese teens are immune or china is blocking it in most of china. Or something else, but we know that the users are not in china.

0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1299807/number-of-monthl...

pratyushag2··on Xerox PARC’s engineers on how they invented the future and Xerox lost it (1985)
Agreed. I used Instaweb to clean it up and make it printable. Then I sent it to my Kindle because it was still 30 pages.
pratyushag2··on Why Is It So Hard to Build Profitable Robot Companies?
Would the costs and development be much lower and easier if the focus was augmenting humans strength in physical work? Would that still qualify as a robot company?
pratyushag2··on The next recession
Why do you wish that you had bought the house despite accurately predicting and waiting for the downturn? Didn’t you get a significantly better deal or did it just get offset anyway? Curious because it’s a similar decision now. A recession is inevitable, will it happen in the next 3-6 months or take two years is hard to predict.
pratyushag2··on In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users
Burn I wonder if that’s really a problem because in 3 years, if GOogle Cloud becomes a billion dollar company then most wont question its financial importance to Alphabet.
pratyushag2··on A new insomnia therapy
Yes, Sleepio is very helpful!
pratyushag2··on Airbus moves 130k employees from Microsoft Office to GSuite
It’s 2m cells, not 400k.
pratyushag2··on Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious?
Thanks for your well researched comment!
pratyushag2··on Ask HN: My company plans an ICO despite my opposition as CTO, any advice?
Your board members are crypto enthusiasts so I would recommend getting somebody who is very knowledgeable in crypto to 1) assess if crypto is a good fit for the company 2) if yes, then how to go about executing it in a way that it's legal and profitable.

It's possible that you may be proven wrong or likey that you're right. Either way, it would be hard for a board of say no to such an idea and it would delay the execution of it to such time as when your investments can vest. If they still move forward by then and you're uncomfortable despite all this, you can leave as soon as your stocks have vested. Your goal today is to delay, secondary is to convince.

pratyushag2··on Brown University raising $120M to eliminate all student loans
Maybe I’m understanding incorrectly: 13k in teacher salaries would be per course taught by a teacher right? Which really means cost should be 1/4th.

52k per student for a 5,000 student college is 260m per year of claimed expenditure. That is quite a lot money for a faculty of 700, even after subtracting boarding and scholarships, no? I do not know where money is going, although the Bain research does seem to support the evidence for concluding that admin is a benefactor of it.

pratyushag2··on Ask HN: How would you turn Twitter around?
Twitter should own the utility of being a messaging forum for the public. This means a communication layer that can be easily used by many different services for different purposes. From there on, it should open up this message level integration as easily embrddable feature for websites and to app developers. Monetization potential will increase with engagement and engagement to a forum using twitter should be made as easy as text messages.

Cut costs and cut it by a lot!

pratyushag2··on Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?
These are incredible pictures. What kind of camera did you use to click these?
pratyushag2··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2016)
New Incentives (YC S16) | SF | REMOTE | Full-time

New Incentives is a metrics-based non-profit that is creating one of the most cost-effective ways of saving lives. We are looking for a senior engineer who will lead the development of tools to help scale our organization. This role requires strong skills managing backend and frontend services.

This is very important for us and we're looking for someone who is motivated by the challenges of increasing efficiency and building products that are scalable.

Email: pratyush-AT-newincentives. org

pratyushag2··on Ask HN: How do you get notified about newest research papers in your field?
Google alerts. Just insert the journalist or topic names that you're most interested in. Does an incredible job of not only research papers but of informing you pre-publisihing, which has advantages.
pratyushag2··on Google’s stock slid after report on search ad decline
Google and Facebook provide tools to help people implement their dreams. For example, our nonprofit heavily relies on Google's services (email, drive, sheets)for everything. In fact, sheets doubles as a database that can be used for all sorts of functionalities without needing to learn how to code. My point is that tools that help other companies in their journey to innovate can make a real difference. I realized this only when we were in Nigeria setting up the entire program. I am much less convinced bout Facebook of course but I imagine it helps new businesses with an avenue to get a lot of early revenue. Substitutes, at least for Google products for me seem much less functional in comparison and would probably require an equal # of engineers.

I have no stock in Google or Facebook and don't benefit by promoting either in any way. I just genuinely appreciate what Google's tools has allowed us to do (linked spreadsheets, email, docs, Android, Chromebook, drive and search of course!). I don't care much for fb but I imagine there are businesses that wouldn't survive w/o it and whatsapp is amazing at bringing ppl closer.

pratyushag2··on New Incentives (YC S16 Nonprofit) helps Nigerian mothers deliver babies safely
We founded our own organization in Nigeria to be able to do this, all the employees are hired directly by our organization. Women are enrolled at the clinics by our team and then called to give the cash transfer code (codes are redeemable at ATMs).
pratyushag2··on New Incentives (YC S16 Nonprofit) helps Nigerian mothers deliver babies safely
Obstetric fistula is not one of our focus areas.
pratyushag2··on New Incentives (YC S16 Nonprofit) helps Nigerian mothers deliver babies safely
We haven't had this problem yet and no clinic has reported this as a potential issue either. From what we have seen, these mothers care about their babies A LOT!
pratyushag2··on New Incentives (YC S16 Nonprofit) helps Nigerian mothers deliver babies safely
This is the cost to the government and NGOs. Basically, this leads to a lifetime of consuming drugs which often need to be subsidized by the government and other orgs. Naturally, it also increases the probability of more people getting infected. The costs are hard to estimate but add up to a very large sum and consumes a lot of global aid money that could be better used if these babies weren't born with HIV.

Thanks for pointing that out. While the average estimated number is easily into the thousands of $$, there is not enough evidence to say that it is hundreds of thousands.

pratyushag2··on New Incentives (YC S16 Nonprofit) helps Nigerian mothers deliver babies safely
Good question. Clinics are more hygienic (reducing the chance of blood transmission during birth), provide ARVs pre-birth (reduces HIV viral count), and give Nevirapine at birth (giving this to newborns immediately after birth is the biggest individual step that can reduce transmission).

Not sure why the post is grayed out or what it means. I believe only some members have downvoting privileges (I don't).

pratyushag2··on New Incentives (YC S16 Nonprofit) helps Nigerian mothers deliver babies safely
Thanks Jayme!

Svetha (CEO & co-founder) came across conditional cash transfers (CCTs) while doing research in effective ways of giving AID in developing countries. CCTs have seen incredible success in Mexico, Brazil, and several other countries.

The current idea was a pivot after trying to fund CCTs through partners in various countries. The focus was to save lives through CCTs. Infant mortality is a big problem and Nigeria accounts for one out of three children born with HIV. That's how the org started doing CCTs for reducing HIV transmission and has now expanded beyond HIV transmission.

pratyushag2··on New Incentives (YC S16 Nonprofit) helps Nigerian mothers deliver babies safely
The main problem is not that they cannot afford to have the baby but that they are not delivering it safely at the health clinics. Instead, they are delivering it with traditional birth attendants. This is especially a problem because it can increase the chances of the baby being born diseases like HIV, which has a 50% chance of leading to death within the first two years. The cost of a baby being born with HIV runs into many thousands of dollars.

Also, infant mortality has a strong correlation with the fertility rate, so trying to increase the probability of survival of babies can help reduce the number of babies being born (which addresses the problem you mentioned).

pratyushag2··on New Incentives (YC S16 Nonprofit) helps Nigerian mothers deliver babies safely
Hi HN, I'm a Co-founder at New Incentives. Happy to answer any questions. -Prat
pratyushag2··on GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa
New Incentives does conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in West Africa. CCTs have a lot of research behind them as the parent comment noted.

GD's one-time, large transfers help achieve concrete benefits. Super excited to see the basic income experiment in East Africa evolve.

pratyushag2··on iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs
It's probably true... I've been wanting to buy an unlocked Sprint version of iPhone SE 64gb and have been monitoring all the stores through their website frequently. It's not been available for the last 2 weeks and they have extra protectional measures to make sure iPhone SEs make it safely to the store.