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Hi all! Like many people here we wanted to reduce our monthly expenses given the time, and found Twilio to be one of the highest line items. When we dug into the data, we found that 80% of our users were iPhone users and thus could receive iMessages.

Thus we built Balto - an API to send iMessages, and were able to transition our entire customer list successfully (as well as take advantage of iMessage features like unlimited messaging, read receipts, apple pay, etc.)

Would love HN thoughts/feedback! We also have a customer facing version if you’re not a developer (https://usebalto.com/) and wrote a blog documenting the journey for those interested (https://usebalto.com/blog/balto-origin-story%20) :)

Do you have a budget of some sort that your company provides? Or is it just on an ad hoc basis

This is super cool! There's definitely an advantage to being a native iMessage vs just sending out texts.

Also if I'm understanding correctly, I can also use the API to understand if a message was read or not?

The landing page for the first one cracked me up haha

Took bites from the best podcast episodes of the week and compiled into a single 30 min episode! This one is all about coronavirus - from its origin, to why CDC testing was delayed, potential impact on the economy when compared to 2008, and a fun little segment at the end about rude london babies :)

This is a fun experiment that my friends and I are running while quarantined - there are TOO many podcast episodes, and so we’re picking bites from the best ones. Now you can sample new episodes, learn something new, and if you like a specific one, go and listen to the whole episode!

Would love thoughts on the format, and if interested in future ones, sign up here - https://forms.gle/8gUEgTugUt4Gfw6L9

This is pretty cool, just signed up.

Does this take a lot of time? Or do you have a specific note taking process for podcasts?

He technically has until March of 2020. I still think there’s a chance that he pulls #1 off (SpaceX pulling off human flights in Q1 and re-raises, Airbnb going public as a profitable and defensible business, Uber and rationalization in ridesharing and delivery + continued execution)

"It’s easy to assume from the headlines that Libra is only associated with Facebook, but that is not the case."

With the post on.... Facebook.com

Really fascinating - can you talk a little bit more about your experiences?

You always hear about trying moonshots but I’ve never heard someone who went reverse and was happier!

There’s a good book called Mastery (Robert Greene) on this topic

"90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds".

I'd say let's have a moment of silence for Google+, but that is clearly too generous

The Mythical Man-Month :)

I don’t have the study on me but there is evidence for that. The key I remember is that men bond over EXPERIENCES and doing things together, while for female-female (and male-female) interactions, just talking on the phone and catching up works. It changed how I approached some of my relationships (ex. Catch up with a male friend over a sport/activity vs over coffee)

GrubHub, a direct publicly traded competitor, is profitable and has a market cap of 11.6B (and is growing tremendously). Considering that Uber Eats already has a gross sales run rate larger than GrubHub, I do imagine it's a pretty good bet. There are also a lot of horizontal synergies between the business models.

This partnership could also allow Uber driver partners to basically have another source of income - rebalancing the scooter/bike network and helping with charging (ex. someone drives for Uber Eats, drops off a scooter at pickup restaurant to charge). Current Lime freelance chargers are making ~$1400 earnings per month[1] so this could start being substantial and help the growth for both companies

[1] https://www.axios.com/how-lime-is-pitching-its-bike-a-152949...

Can you elaborate more on the Coke and Uber comparison? Why did Coke win and maintain a competitive advantage, was it just brand?

I think Buffett et all are betting Uber is not “at the top” and still has significant room to grow. If new investors are buying at a 62B (recent tender offer), they’re expecting some level of increase over the next 18 months and when Uber goes public.

"Specifically, the world’s billionaires – the richest 2,000 people on the planet – saw their wealth increase by a staggering $762 billion in just one year. That’s an average of $381 million apiece. If those billionaires had simply been content with staying at their 2016 wealth, and had given their one-year gains to the world’s poorest people instead, then extreme poverty would have been eradicated."

This kind of blew my mind (though of course it's not as simple as just giving). Full report here - https://d1tn3vj7xz9fdh.cloudfront.net/s3fs-public/file_attac...

The reality of cryonics is a little bit more nuanced than I originally thought. Here's a really good read which changed my mind and puts more color to what Nectome is trying to do - https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/cryonics.html

Are they still taking a cut per transaction? I remember they had an arrangement like that with some banks before (but banks weren't happy about it).

It's just to be honest that you're not hyping up a stock for a pump and dump scheme (see some cryptos). But you're right it doesn't really matter for such a big/liquid stock like TSLA

For what it's worth, Disclaimer: I own Tesla Shares :)

I heard that a16z did something similar when they started - they were willing to pay a significant premium because 1) they had more conviction in their bets and 2) to win deals/access when starting off.

Softbank is just doing this on steroids, and we'll see what happens. Though I am glad that this much capital is at least being directed to high growth tech companies creating things (rather than being used for financial engineering like MBS/CDOs)

A lot of this is confirmation bias at its finest. Not saying you're wrong, but I think it's naive to assume Tesla has some "secret sauce" - there are equally smart and competent people at Tesla competitors. I would bet that the risk and decision making process may be different (incumbents may want higher probability of success to make a bet, while Musk's NPV analysis is different), but again it's naive to assume they don't understand at all what is or isn't possible in manufacturing

If you look a bit further into Chinese history, it makes sense why they're so hesitant of the west - China was literally screwed over by the West for almost a century (see Century of Humiliation, the Opium Wars, Unequal Treaties, having British military in their capital, etc.). They went from being a leader of the world to being treated like crap by the West in a fairly short time period. This idea of "Chinese Exceptionalism" came from this innate desire for China to be unique again (the original "Make X Great Again").

Mao's success I think reinforced some the idea that the only way for China to stand on its own was to be united and strongly controlled and maintained. The hundreds of years of having different clans pre-Mao (or weak dynasties like Qing) just didn't work.

While I might not completely agree with their arguments, it's worth understanding Chinese criticism and their skepticism of the West. China is literally 4x the size of the US with a very rich and complicated history and thinking, so we can't just assume you can put in Western democracy/thinking just like that. Sure a lot of it may be encouraged by the party, but I think a lot of is much deeper than that.

Careful, it's not more expensive for the company, just the financiers. By investing in this SPAC, you're basically willing to 1) eat the fees to bring a unicorn public earlier, and 2) and actually participate in a potentially "hot" unicorn that you're trusting Chamath will find.

For the company, you get to go public at 1) just the reverse merger fees which is significantly lower than IPO fees, and 2) at less time than going public (basically 1-2 months for the merger to go through)

No it's the founders of the SPAC (Chamath et. al) get 20% of the SPAC, which will then be diluted once they merge with the target startup.

I do think you do raise a fair question of what stake Chamath et. al should get for sourcing a deal. 20% is definitely high, and I think a typical SPAC is something like 5% sourcing stake for the owners.

I'm not sure where you're getting the 20% number...?

The ownership stake is dependent on how the negotiations go and how much the company is looking to raise at what valuation/terms. Social Capital will argue a liquidity premium should be applied, and I'm sure the company will say what you're saying (they can IPO <1%). However, they could both stand to benefit, so I see a deal happening with this SPAC

Or a company is raising a normal round of funding and this is suddenly a much better option - 1) funding, 2) liquidity in public markets, 3) backing of SC and whatever help they may offer. If I was raising 600M anyways, these added benefits seem like a good deal to me.

Siddhartha Mukherjee had a fantastic point about this on a recent Sam Harris Podcast - "The more specific we make tests, the more likely we'll find genetic reasons".

If we define beautiful as having blue eyes and blonde hair, of course beauty is genetic! That's equally analogous to how we define intelligence and find it similarly heritable. More work needs to be done on the former before we can for sure talk about the latter.

One of my favorite questions to ask about this topic is:

"Given what you know today (and how blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized networks work), would you still design the financial system and other systems (ex. identity, currencies, etc) the same way they are designed today?"

My answer is no, and that's why I'm still bullish on decentralized technology and systems winning in the long-term. In that case, investments in Bitcoin and Ethereum are merely call options for an entirely new financial world and a risk still worth betting on.