So anytime someone is excited about a product and says "I love it; you should try it!" they're a shill? If your customers used your product and told others to do the same, would you have the same opinion?
It's not a show about science; it's a show about ratings. Popular science gets ratings, which are still less than non-popular-related shows, and which are far higher than any hard-science-related shows could ever get. You'll have to scratch that itch somewhere else... though I totally agree with you!!!
And just knowing they exist would be incredibly exciting, even if there was zero chance that we could directly contact them in the span of our entire existence.
You're bang-on. A lot of overweight people go for a walk or a light jog every day and genuinely try. But they only burn a few hundred calories, then turn around and eat a Quarter Pounder with fries and Coke and think they're coming out ahead. You can lose weight by not exercising but eating less than you burn. But you can't lose weight by exercising and eating more than you burn. A pill won't help this.
YC never said they would fund no-idea founders. They said they would let them apply. It's an experiment. Maybe they'll fund them; maybe they won't. This is only the first step. When you consider how much experience and data YC has now, you should assume they'll use that wealth of information to determine if a no-idea set of founders matches the qualities they attribute to success in previous start-ups. They'll probably also talk to them about different types of ideas and projects in the actual interview.
People shitting on this idea appear to be assuming that YC is run by a bunch of idiots.
"Brand of ethics"? You either stick to your word after you give it, or you don't. I don't think it has anything to do with which party is telling the story.
This is only bad if your real goal is pushing the specific car. If you're more concerned with brand awareness, or being remembered as innovative or creative or doing something unexpected, this type of commercial can be very effective. I'll definitely remember that it's Mercedes. I'll bet a lot of people on HN remember the Darth Vader kid was in a VW commercial, even though they may not remember which car it was an ad for or what the car looked like. They probably know that the talking baby is in an eTrade commercial, even though they might not remember what he was talking about.
But I'll agree with you that it is really easy to waste your marketing dollars on these commercials if the message isn't somehow making the viewer remember the brand. The ones that just celebrate the creativity of the ad firm ARE terrible; I just don't think this was an example of that.
Cognitive dissonance. Deep down, people know what they're doing is wrong, but don't want to admit it. The same reasoning that allows them to perceive that they're not doing anything wrong has to be applied to guys like Kim Dotcom; otherwise, they have to admit they're doing something wrong.
Did you even read the article? The "replacement" part is replacing the large internal network of connections at a company with the network of connections to YC alumni.
If you're comparing buying shares on the public market for companies that are already worth billions of dollars to investing millions of dollars in companies that are worth a few tens of millions of dollars, then you should probably elaborate, because the comparison on its own is apples and oranges.
I agree, but it would sure be nice if people worried more about what they do than what they're called. It's just a word that people get attached to. When I talk to my friends/family about what I do, I certainly don't call myself a "hacker", nor would I even if they all understood the true meaning of the word. The fact that people are so irrationally passionate about the word, to me, says a lot more about them than the people who use it the wrong way.
Once societal mainstream embraces -- and misuses -- a word that a subset of society previously held dearly, it's time for that subset to let the word go, regardless of how much they romanticized or embraced it.
If selling phones is profitable, then the best scenario is to sell as many phones as possible, regardless of Microsoft's money. Once they sell more than enough phones to offset Microsoft's money, it means their profit per phone goes up, so "selling just enough phones to cover the production costs" doesn't really make sense.
I don't understand what's so complicated about my original question. She says she's not going to sell the company. It's reported that she took $2.5M. Let's say she gave up 50% of the company for that (which I'm sure she didn't). And let's assume that the investors want their return within the next ten years (they probably want it sooner). And let's assume it's 10x. So these are ALL very conservative numbers for early stage investors. Let's say she ends up with 50% net profit (never gonna happen). And let's say she pays out 100% of profits as dividends (never gonna happen). That means the investors have to average $2.5M/yr in dividends over the next ten years, which means she has to be doing $10M in gross per year, on average, with 50% in profit. For a tech blog, I think most people will agree this is probably beyond unreasonable. And remember, she said she's never going to sell it.
So again, all I'm asking is where are the investors supposed to get their returns?
But doesn't that bring us back to the issue of who would buy those investments off the original investors if there is never going to be a liquidation event?
Those owners probably aren't great at training their staff and/or don't understand the intangibles that make for a good service experience. You might be able to sell the owners on your product. That doesn't mean the owners can sell their customers on your product.
Most people don't notice good service; they notice bad service. For any restaurant that already has good servers and good training, this type of thing will destroy the flow of service and the interaction between guests and servers.
I was LOOKING for the rudeness and condescension and I didn't sense even the smallest bit of it. So yeah, it's your prejudice. You should really keep that shit off HN.
I think it was just a humorous comment. I don't see the harm in it. BTW, you just asserted the opposite of the opinion you disagree with without any additional information beyond what the author had ;-)
My take on what you said in the article was that you were encouraging developers to implement software (that was not tied into other software, but that was still used by end users) in a language that they want to learn. From what you said here, it sounds like you mean something you run just for yourself to get your work done, then toss. I thought you were suggesting doing this for actual software that is used internally or by a client, but that had no other dependencies and you could work on by yourself; as in software that may need to be maintained, have bugs that users discover that need to be fixed, etc. If you mean software for your own purposes as a tool to get a project done, but is not used at all once the project is done, and nobody will need to know or care that it existed, then my comment does not apply to that and I'm mistaken on my interpretation of your original meaning. If you mean software that is used more than once internally or by a client and you're writing it in a language that someone has to support that is NOT supported by the company you work for, then my original opinion stands ;-)
Either way, the parent to your comment has no bearing on my original comment or this one. You replied here, so I'm just replying to you.