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tschwimmer

2,940 karma · joined July 25, 2016

Product Manager. Formerly Flexport, Dropbox. My opinions are my own and do not reflect those of my employer.
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tschwimmer··on Travel locally, where you are
Switzerland is probably the most densely interesting and scenic place in the entire world. Try telling this to someone in Iowa.
tschwimmer··on Why Japanese companies do so many different things
Mondragon gets glazed on HN frequently. Just search and you’ll find many examples.
tschwimmer··on Cursor Camp
Does anyone know how he is implementing country detection? I'm certain it's not GeoIP since my current IP address (and physical location) is different than the country it's showing me from.
tschwimmer··on Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional
>It also means penalties are limited to fines and can't impact your driving privilege or insurance.

If this is the case, what are the consequences of not paying the fine? I interpret your statement to mean that they can't prevent registration of your car. Can they tow you in SF for unpaid fines?

tschwimmer··on Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn
Unlike other commenters, I agree that there are some (arguably significant) things to complain about. The first one is price - tickets are quite expensive. I frequently travel Zurich HB -> Lugano. This is 200km and costs a whopping 120+ CHF round trip. Zurich -> Geneva, Zurich Bern are similarly expensive. However, it's a bit hard to fault them as Switzerland is an expensive country and perhaps the high prices keep the service good.

What I am less able to excuse them for is capacity issues, especially on weekend and Friday trains on popular routes in the Summer. That Zurich Lugano train is packed to the gills most weekends during the summer such that it's standing room only for most of the 2 hour ride. They need to add more trains or at least more cars.

Reliability is not something to complain about. The trains are punctual, that's for sure.

tschwimmer··on Alaska Airlines' statement on IT outage
Tell me about it. Swiss air refuses to pay out 1800€ in EC261 compensation…
tschwimmer··on Alaska Airlines' statement on IT outage
I was affected. Taking off now for a 5:30pm PT flight to Seattle. Aside from clearly not having an appropriate disaster readiness plan, communication was bad even though some information was readily available. For example, there was an inbound ground stop for KSEA for hours, but it was never announced to passengers. We were very lucky the crew was fresh, and there was no discussion of when they would time out. I happened to find out that the crew had lots of time left so I decided to stay but at least a dozen people gave up and left.

Air travel sucks. I wasted 8 hours today and I won’t even get a lousy T shirt. I’m sure next time I can take my business to a different airline who will also be happy to not do any better.

tschwimmer··on The React Foundation
You think bandwidth is free?

-Sent from my 1T parameter LLM

tschwimmer··on Pre-record your demos
I don't agree that a bad live demo is a 3/10. The recent demo showed me conclusively that the Meta Ray Bans are not at the quality level where I would buy them, especially not for $800. That's pretty much a 0/10 in my book. Since it was live usage, it's indicative of the real quality of the product.
tschwimmer··on Buyers of Radio Shack, Pier 1 brands accused of running $112M Ponzi scheme
Tai Lopez became so famous he was immortalized in the cute rogue-like "Going Under" where he is spoofed as the "Hauntrepreneur"[0]

https://going-under.fandom.com/wiki/Hauntrepreneur

tschwimmer··on The Culture novels as a dystopia
Strongly disagree with most of the consensus here to start with Player of Games and that Consider Phlebas is boring. I found Player of Games to be the much weaker book, with lots of heavy handed social critique and a generally quite stock plot.

It's true that Consider Phlebas is set outside The Culture. I think that's for the best as The Culture is pretty alien and the Phlebas protagonist is more relatable. Banks does a great job of building the world such that when you get to the end of the book, you're like "I get it" in terms of understanding the Culture. Plus, Phlebas has a number of wonderfully evocative set pieces that are super cool. You can see how influential the series was on later sci-fi, especially stuff like Halo.

tschwimmer··on Cars are so expensive that buyers need seven-year loans
Car dealers are a scourge on Americans and a hidden tax imposed via poor legislation. They employ thousands and are generally very wealthy so regrettably they have become an embedded political entity.

I don't know what the answer to them is other than to remove the anti-DTC laws but that seems unlikely.

tschwimmer··on Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears
Thanks yeah, you’re right these are bad.
tschwimmer··on Privately-Owned Rail Cars
They're not going to build a 4 mile siding, which is the length that many freight operate at. At that point it's like building a second set of tracks.
tschwimmer··on Mark Zuckerberg freezes AI hiring amid bubble fears
Can you provide a reference translation or at least call out the issues you see with this passage? I see "far far away in the [time period]" which I should imagine should be "a long time ago" What are the other issues?
tschwimmer··on GPT-5: "How many times does the letter b appear in blueberry?"
Fair criticism, but also this arguably would be preferable. For many use cases it would be strictly better, as you've built some sort of automated drone that can do lots of work but without preferences and personality.
tschwimmer··on Surviving the Cut, but Drowning in Tasks: The Layoff Lottery's Bitter Prize
Honestly very impressive, even with LLM augmentation.
tschwimmer··on Silicon Valley finally has a big electronics retailer again: Micro Center opens
I am a "savvy shopper" and have no desire to buy components on Amazon anymore. Their stock co-mingling doesn't work for speciality computer components. I've received items marked as new that were clearly open box returns. I've received completely nonfunctional components. I've received the wrong item a few times. The component I've had the most success with are SSDs, but for anything beyond that I prefer to buy from brick and mortar because of their "curation." To be honest, it's a shame because the Amazon shopping experience is vastly superior but they send you crap, so it's unusable for this vertical. I still buy other junk from Amazon, but nothing that's particularly performance sensitive.
tschwimmer··on WTF Is Botmetr? The First Platform That Rewards You for Hunting Chatbots
foiled by the old em-dasheroo!
tschwimmer··on Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic
You're only considering braking, and for that case you're right. You're not considering acceleration, where EVs supply near maximum torque instantly when you press the accelerator pedal. This causes increased wear in tires, I've seen estimates of 20%.
tschwimmer··on Devs say AI crawlers dominate traffic, forcing blocks on entire countries
Check out Anubis - it's not quite what you're suggesting but similar in concept: https://anubis.techaro.lol/
tschwimmer··on I'm the Canadian who was detained by ICE for two weeks
TN self sponsorship is not allowed. However, it's not immediately clear to me that she would meet the standard of self-sponsorship as laid out in the law:

>> A professional will be deemed to be self-employed if he or she will be rendering services to a corporation or entity of which the professional is the sole or controlling shareholder or owner. [0]

I did quite a bit of digging to see if I could find corporate entity filings that might indicate if she is a sole or controlling shareholder. My initial findings suggest that she's not, but with low confidence.

Her product's site lists a mailing address in Illinois. I noticed the first line was "My Crew Doses"[1] (side note: lol - I guess this is a pun and a double entendre for "microdoses" but also "my friends dose"). I checked the Illinois register of corporations for that entity but came up short. I noticed the email listed on the contact page was "jeremy@enjoyholywater" and searched for 'Jeremy Holy Water' and came up with this guy [2] who lists himself as "Chief Scientific Officer" and a Co-founder of Holy! Water. I noticed he's in Colorado and checked the Colorado corporate register and bingo, came up with this: The corporate entity for My Crew Doses[3]. Not much info there but it lists the home registration of the entity as Wyoming. Going to the Wyoming register, we find the listing: [4]. That lists "Brian Mccaslin" as the sole corporate officer (President) with an @enjoyholywater.com email address. Cross-referencing his LinkedIn, it seems to be this guy: [5]. He also seems to go by BJ.

Now, assuming that this is the corporate entity for Holy! Water, I find it highly doubtful that the subject of the article is a controlling shareholder. We don't know what the ownership breakdown is but the fact that she isn't even listed as a corporate officer or a director is to me a strong indication that she isn't a majority shareholder. My hunch is that she in fact would be eligible (or at least not disqualified under this rule) for a TN visa.

[0] https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2012-title8-vol1/pdf... [1]https://enjoyholywater.com/policies/contact-information [2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremywidmann/ [3] https://www.sos.state.co.us/biz/BusinessEntityDetail.do?quit... [4] https://wyobiz.wyo.gov/business/FilingDetails.aspx?eFNum=035... [5]https://www.linkedin.com/in/bjmccaslin/

tschwimmer··on Europe's most wanted man plotted my murder and that of my colleague
If you watch Come and See and are excited about war afterwards, you aren't smart or introspective enough that external media has a meaningful effect on your thoughts anyway.
tschwimmer··on An inside look at NSA tactics, techniques and procedures from China's lens
One other question is: how accurate are the data sheets in Shenzhen as opposed to in the US? I can't speak to China, but in the US if you publish a spec for a component and then don't deliver within that spec, you will get sued, and you will lose.
tschwimmer··on The young, inexperienced engineers aiding DOGE
This has shades of Robin Williams’ bar rant in Good Will Hunting.
tschwimmer··on The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Records Reveal How Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax
The banks are likely not holding the loans. They're likely selling the right to the cashflows to an investment firm in exchange for a lump sum of cash more than the value of the loan but less than the total interest collected over the life of the loan. Depending on the composition of the portfolio, various funds may want exposure to the underlying assets and so may be willing to take on the concentrated risk.

While not about these loans specifically, the principles described in [0] apply. Check the section "who buys mortgages?"

[0]https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/mortgages-are-a-manuf...

tschwimmer··on Show HN: I designed an espresso machine and coffee grinder
Unlike MKBHD, James Hoffman has some slightly more objective credibility. He won some barista competitions about 15 years ago. He's been involved in the coffee industry (outside of being a content creator) for most of his life. As far as I know about Marques, his main qualification is that he was just relatively early to the tech review game.

That is not to say that I personally take all or most of Hoffman's suggestions at face value. It's abundantly clear that the level of nuance he considers in coffee is not relevant to me. But I do tend to see him applying a much more objective level of rigor to his reviews than many other content creators.

tschwimmer··on Xylella Fastidiosa: A crisis brewing in Europe's olive groves
They are sick a lot. In the United States, chestnut blight killed 4 billion trees over 40 years. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_blight

tschwimmer··on Launch HN: Double (YC W24) – Index Investing with 0% Expense Ratios
I mean, no. For many people the investments being handled may represent their life savings. It represents potentially decades of work. This isn't some SaaS where poor reliability means wasted time and maybe some money - the stakes are considerably higher.
tschwimmer··on Launch HN: Double (YC W24) – Index Investing with 0% Expense Ratios
I like the idea behind this business and like the value that you are providing. I'm a target customer because I'm sensitive to investment fees and have done lots of comparison shopping over my investing lifetime.

Unfortunately, I won't use your product. While you do appear to be cheaper than Vanguard for a comparable product, I don't think the risk of switching is worth it. The primary risk I'd be worried about is your business model changing (or you getting acquired by legacy finance) and increasing fees down the line, at which point I'd feel like I'd want to switch back to Vanguard. I'm also worried about exposing myself to your organizational risk (e.g. your internal controls failing and an employe running off with the money, your accountant falling victim to a deepfake scam, etc.) which I suspect is going to be much higher than your competitors. For the additional .17%, I actually feel that Vanguard is a damn good bargain.

I think your product actually does have a lot of value for folks invested in crappy mutual funds or with some advisor taking a massive AUM fee, but I don't really think those consumers are generally lacking the information required to understand that your product is superior, I think they're just going for something different.

It's a tough spot. The market size is obviously tantalizing but I feel like the segments are all reasonably well served as it stands. For the folks that you're really targeting, I think it's very hard to beat Vanguard. Their corporate structure and huge size really gives them a massive advantage that seems hard to beat. Best of luck to you folks!

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