raiyu

> Our failure to deal with coronavirus wasn’t because the government didn’t want to deal with the issue.

Technically it was directly the result of our government not wanting to deal with the issue and making it political rather than scientific. Trump could have easily said wear a mask, follow the guidelines, let's take our time to reopen, let's make sure that we pump additional money into the system sooner rather than later, because if we will end up pumping it anyway, but this way we avoid foreclosures, rent evictions, homelessness, and all of that will lead to poverty and increased lawlessness.

There's plenty that could have been done to contain the virus. Yes America is much larger in geography and population than Europe, but Italy, Spain, Germany, all have shown that you can contain the virus.

If our leadership actually united around what was best for America rather than fighting each other, we could have certainly improved where we are today. By the end of this week we will be hitting 75k new cases and we are full bore into the second wave.

Yet, the President still won't put on a mask in public, won't call people out on it, it's gotten so bad that even his lackey VP Pence has finally said it's a good idea to put the mask on.

America has become extremely divided and it is because of the media. On both sides. You have FoxNews that paints a narrative that ignores all science, and you have the left media that is all too happy to jump on any little issue that makes Trump look bad and heighten it out of proportion and then as a result the right fights back even harder.

I moved from nyc to Miami and actually find the opposite. After three years here there was only one year worse than being in nyc during the summer.

The summer almost feels milder here. Anecdotally of course.

When Hey.com announced their features I scrolled through each one and would probably get value from 75% of them. Superhuman seems more of a signaling play.

Hey.com features on top of Gmail though, that would be amazing.

Very click baity headline. With revenue in the hundreds of millions and growth at near 100% it is the literal definition of product market fit.

It is augmented email - there are a lot of features they wrote that break the standard protocol so you would lose a ton of benefit without the app.

https://hey.com/features/

Likewise because of that you don't get IMAP credentials so you couldn't even use a different email app to add your hey.com email address to it.

I think saying that marketing isn't AWS's strength misses the point. As the VP of product marketing he most likely had access to revenue by porduct line. As a result he would know which segments of the product suite are growing quickly, showing promise, and which others have missed the mark.

That information is extremely valuable to a competitor that is trying to catch up to AWS'. This information can also be passed along verbally and be 99% as a effective as having an up to date detailed revenue breakout spreadsheet.

So in this case he is taking some "secret sauce", which can be disclosed without ever being able to prove that it was.

Imposing an 18 month window where that person can't work at a direct competitor is sufficient enough to make that information somewhat stale and no longer as effective.

I'm personally against non-competes, but I did want to point out that there is cause for concern here. Also, as the VP of product marketing, he could have gone on to any job he wanted in any other cloud provider that wasn't a direct competitor, such as say Slack, Twilio, Box, Dropbox, I mean the list is pretty long. So it's not like his hands were tied in the job market. And certainly he signed the agreement originally, and should have modified it before hand if he was concerned. So it is possible that his boss at AWS is a bit irritated that he did not live up to the agreement that was signed. And as a VP you can't really claim that you "didn't know" about the non-compete since you will be doing a lot of hiring and imposing that very same clause on all of your hires.

This is absolutely true and this is what Netflix and Spotify have proven. If you provide an easy to use digital platform people will subscribe.

Now Netflix has a higher market cap than most Hollywood Studios, and Spotify has a higher market cap than most if not all record companies.

But this is the classic case of not listening to your customers and innovators dilemma.

Old models of business are very slow to change and it has happened time and time again. Movies, music, newspapers, and so forth.

I always wonder when a company does this if it is completely altruistic or if something else is going on behind the scenes.

Maybe notifying customers gets them to reactivate, maybe if they resubscribe later they can charge more, maybe it’s better for financial reporting and projecting subscriber counts.

On the other hand it could just be a rare moment of a company doing right by the customer.

Yes - https://medium.com/glitch/fog-creek-is-now-glitch-5a57dab604...

Making money in developer education is especially difficult. Especially if it isn't the specific core of what you are building. Surely there is plenty of education specific resources there, but it isn't as focused on it as Codecademy for example.

The last funding round closed in November 2018 at $30MM, which is a considerable sum - but it's been a year and a half since then and head count of 100-ish people does begin to accelerate the burn rate especially if the eyeballs and users haven't converted into paying customers.

It's a tired saying, but no less, true if you aren't paying for it you are the product.

There are no social platforms that are VC backed that aren't going to at some point resort to the lowest common denominator of making a buck at someone's expense. And when you aren't paying for the product, then you are no longer able to control that exchange.

Google started off with Don't be Evil - now they force adverts from your competitors on your registered trademark and force you to advertise your own company name or lose customers - meanwhile for Google's products, no one can advertise in the same manner.

Facebook - well - that one is too long to even dive into.

Twitter - has done ok, sort of - but the problem with it's no policing policy is pretty rampant harassment that is also dealt with in an inconsistent manner.

That's why paying for something you create an exchange where the company providing that service has an incentive to keep you happy, not some advertising company. There is also competition that will naturally spring up, competing for that dollar.

Opppfh my mistake, easier to spell spotify than shopify mentally for some reason! =]

The biggest positive to companies going all digital especially at Spotify's scale is the cost savings.

The problem with companies that have started in Urban centers is that many of their employees don't have the "extra" bedroom in their house to be able to accommodate for this new work from home scenario.

This is especially true in NYC. Where apartments are usually significantly smaller than anywhere else. And if both adults in the house hold are working from home, often times one of them ends up in a closet taking zoom calls.

Ran into the same issue. Loved the design and the demos I saw so I signed up.

What I really wanted was just a simple flexible to-do list, something that I missed from Basecamp v1 and was willing to try somewhere else.

But the flexibility made it a nightmare. Because what I wanted was very simple, the friction that I encountered, though probably not huge, felt much larger, because I felt, why can't this be easier? I just want a simple to do list, and I was messing with headings and all of this non-essential stuff that I didn't need.

I'm sure in a business setting it could be different, especially if someone goes through the trouble of setting things up so you have some sort of system of consistency that you work inside of, but as a first time user the flexibility was a bit of hinderance.

Probably a much more common problem - definitely need to ensure that all resources are linked together through the DNS provider so that when you destroy the VM you also remove the associated DNS record if it is the last available resource.

Yeah but from Uber's perspective they aren't paying drivers as salaried employees but contractors only for a completed fare. So Uber isn't incurring any overhead expense by having cars in less desirable pick up points, or having a car travel 10-15 minutes for a pick up before they can start a fare.

Also keep in mind that the majority of Uber's revenue is from metropolitan areas, not rural areas. And in the metro areas there was a lot of convenience to be gained from their app and matching supply and demand side of the equation and a lot of those areas were underserved by the TLC and specifically car services because taxis didn't even operate there. So they actually took the pent up demand and created a better system.

Now they are still grossly unprofitable, but not for the reason you cited here.

Going public is still a fundraising event that puts cash on the balance sheet of the company.

So whether they are funded by VC's or large institutional buyers who are the majority traders on the public market, there is no difference and the companies continue to lost money.

The issue for Uber is that they need to change the narrative. They don't have the story that Amazon did, that they are losing money because they are reinvesting it back into tremendous infrastructure which will give them scale.

Uber is losing money because they grew very quickly so there were a lot of innate inefficiencies because of that. So these firings are a chance to right size the company and see if the new trimmed down Uber will now be profitable when eventually ridership returns to normal.

Last private raise - https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/31/giphy-the-platform-for-all...

- $600MM

- $150MM raised

- $400MM sale price

- $400MM - $150MM 1x preferred = $250MM (assuming not ratchet up for selling below last preferred price)

- $250MM net to shareholders.

- 50% for preferred investor share holders

- 25% to founders

- 25% to individual contributors

- 25% of $250MM = $62.5MM

These are all just estimates

The problems here are many.

There is no consistency in how loan forbearance will be addressed with customers.

Allowing someone to not pay their mortgage for three months and then requiring a balloon payment isn't really a solution for the crisis, and will just kick the can down the road.

The article misses the point entirely. It wasn't about launching early, or not having enough games, or wait times.

It comes down to pricing.

In gaming, the same thing has always played out. The console that can deliver the best value wins.

$399 vs $299 is a huge difference. That's the equivalent of $500 vs $750 today.

And don't forget that this was a huge step up already from the $150-199 price point of Super Nintendo.

At the end of the day, when it comes to mass appeal, it isn't the better technology that wins, but the one that combines the best price and performance, and people always underestimate that price is the bigger factor than performance.

> We hope that you internalize our company’s anecdote as some sort of ground truth and show it to your company’s CTO so they too can consider redesigning their architecture like we have done.

The sad part is how often this is the case. Not just about technology choices, but everything else as well, HR, marketing, and so forth.

Someone reads something, usually very short - that's semi correct, but lacks a ton of context, and then it gets accepted as some sort of unquestionable truth.

Completely misses the point that the main reason for Tim Bray leaving is because Amazon retaliated against an employee that was highlighting concerns.

What I read was that the reason for in-state college tuition increasing so much was because of the reduction in property taxes.

Typically property taxes go towards education at the local level, and as property taxes were reduced there would be a shortfall in the budget somewhere. This typically fell on education, which then forced colleges to start raising tuition as there is still a non-zero cost to education.

There was a "print" article about this in the 70's or 80's in a local newspaper in California urging residents to vote NO on lowering property taxes citing the increase in future college education as the main reason. But the vote went through, property taxes were slashed, and then of course ten years later and so forth, tuition had sky rocketed.

Decreasing taxes is like debt. Once you are hooked on it it's hard to go back. Hard to imagine any real states or large communities raising property taxes significantly to actually reinvest in the local community.

Technically it wouldn't be for Adam Neumann personally. Softbank has pulled back it's tender offer for an additional $3B share re-purchase which would have mostly come from existing shareholders.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/02/softbank-pulls-deal-costing-...

This was the deal that would have been the golden parachute for Adam Neumann as well as providing a sizable return for Benchmark.

This is now going to go to litigation, but highly unlikely that it will close as there were certain conditions to the deal closing which haven't been met.

Travel has certainly been a great deal affected, but the 737 Max was a pretty massive disaster in an of itself.

With the coronavirus this is a huge 1-2 blow to Boeing.

I wonder how much of their go forward business will be military contracts, as the their civilian aviation business seems to be dead for the next 3-5 years.

They can get the 737 Max recertified to fly, but I think the damage to the reputation is done, so they probably will need to release a brand new plane to be competitive. Not sure on the design to production timeline for an airplane, but that's where I assumed 3-5 years.

I'm skeptical of articles that talk about how well they did something but don't provide the actual numbers.

There is no mention of actual ROI, conversions, traffic, and so forth.

Overall, I'm pretty skeptical of the true return that marketing campaigns can generate. When you calculate the full cost not just of the marketing but you include margins and the full lifetime value of the customer then you get a real sense.

The thing that stood out to me is the first sentence, that the person had an unlimited budget. With that in mind, basically makes me believe they weren't that focused on the true profitability of the spend.

Can we just replace agile, and every modern management practice with some mix of common sense, talking to the customer, talking to the team, and being able to voice concerns to upper management where people actually listen instead of running their own agenda? =]

Coronovirus has an rFactor of 2-3 and it is airborne, which requires droplets from a host to come in contact with an uninfected person. But these droplets travel to the air and then will collect on a surface. They will not stay suspended in the air. Simply breathing next to a person who has the virus isn't enough for transmission.

By contrast, measles has an rFactor of 17, because it is an aerosol. It is 6x more contagious. And as an aeorsol, simply breathing next to a person who is infected is enough for you to contract the virus.

Airborne is not the same as aerosol.

Put another way. If there is a person infected in a house hold with coronavirus, not everyone is guaranteed to get it, because it is only airborne.

If someone has the measles in a house hold, and there is no vaccine, then everyone will get it, because it is an aerosol.

While this is true, I would be curious of the overall economic impact.

A business owner can have a successful business but they aren't really making tremendous profit, so how much of that money really remains in the local community.

The other aspect is also that real estate taxes need to be increased, which is the best way to ensure that funds inside a community stay there.

This way as more work moves remotely, through real estate taxes the local communities are still able to thrive.

I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying, but it isn't so black and white.

I've tracked my car for 5 years, then started racing for the past 5 years, and moved up to pro racing two years ago competing in Pirelli World Challenge and MX-5 Cup.

The simulators today are fantastic. The skills you learn in the simulator are 100% transferable to real life, and they happen without you having to think.

I went 9 years without using a sim and then two years ago started using it.

What gets transferred immediately are how you turn the steering wheel, catching the car in slides, and your gas pedal application while this is happening.

People often forget that our bodies are complex operating systems and they are operating distinctly. There is plenty of documentation that shows mirroring for knowledge transfer works, and when you use a sim the habits that you develop are available subconciously to you.

I'll give you two examples, the first is at my last race in Global MX-5 Cup at Laguna Seca. At the start of the race on the opening lap I was going through the corkscrew and got hit at the apex of the right hand corner. The car immediately went into a large slide because of how much steering input I had. I immediately started to correct with both steering input and gas pedal application. I had to correct the two slides to save the car. Immediately upon impact my body was doing what I needed to do, it was completely subconscious, so much so that the only conscious thought I had was, wowee fun, just like the simulator. There was no fear, despite the fact that the slide was massive and I was likely to hit the wall if I didn't catch it.

The second happened a couple of months earlier. I was testing at Sonoma in my BMW m235ir for a Pirelli race. I was going out on old tires, that we were going to swap for fresh ones at the next session. Going through the double right hair pin, I applied a bit too much throttle, car started to slide, I was correcting, but under corrected and went back to full throttle too soon. The car spun, hit the wall, caused $10,000 in damage. The reason that happened was whenever I played the sim I always kept my foot in the gas. Just trying to save the car and have fun. Then I realized, that when I use the simulator I can't approach it from a "fun" mentality, because my brain is remembering what I'm doing. I have to treat it like real life, or I will do something stupid in the car.

There are certainly differences between how a real car handles and a simulator handles, but the skills are the same and what you are really honing is the ability to control the car which is completely transferable. The brake points are very transferrable so it is a great way to push yourself in a simulated practice to get ready for a real race. Learning the track is obviously a benefit.

iRacing has done a fantastic job at all of the above. Coming from a tech background I'm actually blown away by the realism and how much it teaches you transferrable skills.

If you take one of the top 5 people in iRacing that's never been in a car before and put them into a race car they will be quick. This is because everything that will be happening they have already trained for. They won't have fear because everything will feel the same. As long as you don't have fear, and have the underlying skill, subconsciously you will do what you need to.

The reverse isn't as true. Being quick in real life doesn't mean that you will be fast in the simulator. This is simply because it can't replicate the physics 100%. In iRacing it is very sensitive to understeer as you enter a corner, where in real life you can get the car to slide a bit more with some hard inputs into the steering wheel.

But overall I would say it is a 90%+ effective tool, so much so, that anyone who isn't using one in pro racing today, is really at a disadvantage.

The other thing that is critical to racing is practice. Any sport you take seriously the more time you spend doing it the better you will be. Unfortunately racing is extremely expensive, and so no one but the absolute pros can spend as much time as they would like in a race car. Being able to hop on the simulator, at any time, is amazing to help you continue your training and stay sharp during the offseason, or at times like this when all racing is pretty much cancelled.

Anyone who is saying that this isn't transferrable is simply incorrect. They've already taken pure sim racers and put them behind the wheel of real race cars and those people did phenomenally well.

There is more strain physically in a real car, g-forces, breathing, pulse will be higher, but these things are much easier to train for.

There is a reduced amount of feedback certainly, one of the biggest issues for me is not getting a great feel for the brake pedal, but this is where muscle memory comes in, you keep doing laps and refining and your muscles will recognize what inputs you need even though the g-forces aren't there.

Furthermore I tried VR iRacing for the first time and it was insane how amazing the VR is. It is completely life like, just missing the rush of air around me.

I was at Road Atlanta doing laps and went through the last corner on my first lap. You come down a massive hill, hit the compression, and turn right into the fastest corner of the track where you also have walls on both sides that are very close. This is not the corner to fuck up. There is tremendous g-forces in this corner in real life. On the way down the hill I feel fine in VR. The second I hit the compression I get dizzy. This is because my eyes and everything around me is recognizing this part of the track and my body is tensing because it remembers real life. But my body isn't feeling the compression. So the difference between what my eyes see, my brain interrupts, and the lack of sensation in my body is making my brain go haywire and makes me dizzy.

The first time I just thought it was odd. The second lap same exact thing happens. The third lap again. It happened every time I had to take the VR off because I started getting a headache.

Anyway those are my real life stories. If there is anyone on here racing or tracking their car I highly recommend they get a great sim and install it in their house. It will be a lot cheaper than tracking and infinitely less expensive than racing and it will tremendously improve your skills.

This is probably less relevant for top of the sport racers, but if you watch today's youngest F1 athletes all of them do sim racing and all of them are extremely quick. Specifically Lando Norris and Max Verstappen.