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wangarific

148 karma · joined June 15, 2010

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wangarific··on Ask HN: I was hit with a patent troll lawsuit, how do I deal with it?
This is amazing, you are awesome for doing this.
wangarific··on Modeling a Wealth Tax
In investing, this is why expense ratios and fees are so important to pay attention to. They're this.
wangarific··on How the Stock Market Works
It's less about being "smarter," it's really about identifying your advantage and understanding whether you can exploit it. This could be something as obvious as an information advantage (insider trading) to simply having more time/patience. If you can buy and hold for decades, you can wait out the bumps, the people who are forced to sell, and for more money to enter the market.
wangarific··on A blogging style guide
I think the key difference is the audience. For a lot of food bloggers that share their recipes, the initial group of readers is loyal fans. They want to hear the stories and the recipe is almost secondary.

When you find a recipe through search, you want the recipe and have to wade through the story and the photos to get to it and that's frustrating. Oddly enough, it's also what may help that article rank higher in search too.

wangarific··on A Well-Known Expert on Student Loans Is Not Real
As someone who has been quoted by major news outlets in what's likely a similar fashion - adding color to the story rather than reporting news - there is rarely "vetting" and the fact checking that occurs is merely confirming that what the journalist wrote matched what I said. They don't try to find additional sources to corroborate the story.

So the fact checking focused on the surveys conducted, the methodology, etc - not whether Drew Cloud was a real person.

(Also, I'm a real person so it's possible they do this type of vetting and I never experienced it because... well, I'm real)

wangarific··on Ten years of professional blogging – what I’ve learned
Another benefit of publicly sharing your learning is that if you misinterpreted or misremembered something, others can point it out so you don't go through life with incorrect ideas.
wangarific··on Scott's Cheap Flights: Growing a small side project into a booming business
Doesn't sound like you lose anything if you include roundtrip
wangarific··on Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?
And long enough. It's a lot of survival until you learn enough to make money.
wangarific··on Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?
There are a lot of blogging categories that are surprisingly profitable but in different ways. The internet is quite vast!
wangarific··on Ask HN: How much ad revenue you make from your side project?
FWIW, that fluff is what builds a relationship with readers and for a lot of food blogs that's what separates you from powerhouses like seriouseats. You can usually just jump down to the recipe card if you want to skip the fluff.
wangarific··on Boost – Your personal advisor and career coach
It's a huge mental barrier for a lot of people... but can it overcome by talking to something you know is a bot?
wangarific··on How I made a SaaS webservice earning $1000/month
I thought this looked familiar!
wangarific··on False information on the internet is hiding the truth about onions
It's because most people don't take 45+ minutes so they don't know the difference. In 10-20min you just have soft brown onions... but once you truly caramelize, you know it's totally different.
wangarific··on Ask HN: What're the best-designed things you've ever used?
We had one growing up that was the same way.

Now I own one with a bazillion buttons and I only ever press one button - +30 seconds.

wangarific··on A One-Line Proof of the Infinitude of Primes
But then you can't exclaim Q.E.D., bitches! and it would be a terrible cartoon. :)
wangarific··on Ask HN: What are your passive income sources?
For 100% passive, you really can't beat this. Funnel your cash into dividend stocks and now you have a stream of income that's taxed at a favorable rate too. Even if you were to go with an S&P 500 index fund you get a near 2% yield.
wangarific··on Wal-Mart in Talks to Buy Web Retailer Jet.com for $3B
I wonder how much that guy who bought Facebook ads to be the leading referrer will get...
wangarific··on UK scientists dropped from EU projects because of post-Brexit funding fears
We have enough trouble overcoming the challenges of nature, we don't really need people making it harder for us.
wangarific··on Amazon's Chinese Counterfeit Problem Is Getting Worse
They can do this but then companies will ask fake reviewers to buy the product through Amazon and then reimburse. The seller is only out the commission + price of product - it would create a small hurdle but wouldn't solve the problem.
wangarific··on How 'Advantage Players' Game the Casinos
Ha I did this too! Those were wonderful days... can you imagine the playthrough requirements used to be as low as 4x!?!? Those were the days. :)
wangarific··on Buffer Layoffs
I don't think it's cynical at all, I think a lot of how people view their job has to do with their evolution as an employee. If you fall in love with the mission, like the people you work with, it's easy to conflate family and work. You spend 8+ hours a day with these folks and the people you work with most likely care about you as much as you care about them.

The reality is that it's still business and decisions are made with the numbers in mind, especially when things get rough.

wangarific··on LivingSocial Is Laying Off More Than 50 Percent of Its Staff
When you saw the subsequent layoffs, what was your reaction?
wangarific··on A bot has successfully appealed $3M worth of parking tickets in the UK
Can't the bot account for this by stating that if there's no response, call your local attorney and bring them this summary of facts?
wangarific··on Washington Post’s ‘Bandito’ Tool Optimizes Content for Clicks
Testing titles isn't that innovative on the whole but coupled with different teasers on the homepage and automating that test seems to be something you don't often see.

For example, on the homepage now the primary headline is "Trump, Sanders roll to victory." It actually goes to the same story as "Jumbled finish could keep GOP field from thinning." I suspect bandito would test headlines but also integrate into which story to put in the headline to increase engagement.

wangarific··on Washington Post’s ‘Bandito’ Tool Optimizes Content for Clicks
I've always thought that between clicks and SEO, this is why the URLs of articles sometimes can vary so widely from the title.
wangarific··on Fidelity Writes Down Snapchat Holding by 63 Percent
An eyeball attracting "typo"
wangarific··on Amazon full of sponsored reviews
There are a lot of these sites that give you free or cheaply priced products in return for a review, the reviews help that product listing appear higher in the Amazon search listings. There's often no requirement to disclose you got the product for cheap or free. I suspect this is Amazon's way of policing it.
wangarific··on Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change
The idea is that conventional gasoline engines will pollute, electric engines won't. As for the source of electricity, it's currently not 100% clean but getting cleaner as renewable sources take over.
wangarific··on Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?
It's time to lawyer up and not talk at all.
wangarific··on Jet.com changes business plan, drops membership fee
I wonder how the guy who used ads to got those 100,000 stock options feels. I was one of the folks who got a "lifetime membership" to Jet which I already knew was worthless once I saw the prices on the site, but I also didn't spend money to get my "lifetime membership."
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