HN user

0verc00ked

15 karma
Posts1
Comments19
View on HN

Can only speculate, but that doesn't sound out of the realm of possibility.

The possible gains due to all the loopholes are a big part of the problem. Seems that businesses like Facebook are incentivized to do the wrong thing.

But they also have to face the backlash of their actions. Though this sanction is barely going to deter any business from lying again, maybe public perception will.

Well of course they were aware. And the Commission should have been aware. Here's a quote that stuck out to me:

“Consumer communications services: the Commission found that Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp were not close competitors and that consumers would continue to have a wide choice of alternative consumer communications apps post-merger”

The first part doesn’t sound right. If WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger aren’t close competitors, I need to figure out what a competitor is. Hmmm.. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/competitor.html

I suppose it's because they are not rivals? They were pre acquisition. Because they definitely operate in a similar industry with a similar product/service. It’s true that consumers can choose to use alternatives.

If someone answered no to the other question, that would mean: "No. I do not regret taking investment." If they said yes, it would mean: "Yes, I regret taking investment."

If somebody answered no to this question, that would mean: "No, I do not regret not taking investment." If they say yes, it means: "Yes, I regret not taking investment."

I'm having trouble understanding how it's the same question. Yes, the first answer to the other question was someone saying that they regret not taking investment. That didn't actually answer that question. It was really an affirmative to this question, which was partially my motivation for starting another thread, along with just comparing responses and covering all bases.

That's true - as soon as you close one option, people look for the next one. I'm still not in favor though. I just feel like it's an over-the-top response that potentially fails to address the real problem. It won't be too hard for employees to just use their friend's accounts. If the focus isn't on preventing access to the data and instead on a misguided attempt to cut it at the knees, then the problem's still there.. kind of reminiscent of a lot of bad government policy.

They'll care about it becomes an impediment to them making lots of money, which seems like right now.

This whole situation was bound to happen. As others have pointed out, this is an unregulated industry. I think DFS as a whole will be better off as a result this - since they'll be forced to securely store player pick data that can't be accessed by anyone other than the contest participant until the contest starts. FanDuel and DraftKings already have very strict internal rules about this, but I don't think their tech enforces those rules.. yet. Kind of surprising really when they're spending $15M a week on ads.

From there, I think the debate will turn into whether employees at one DFS site should be allowed to play on other sites (actually, that debates already on).

I, for one, think they should be able to. It gives employees the opportunity to experience what it's like to be a user of a similar product. It lets them stay up to date on their competition. And I just think it keeps people inspired. If you really like this stuff - enough that you want to work at a company that makes it - I think it's motivating to experience that when you can't use your own product due to its nature.

However, I'm pretty sure I'm in the minority. I think I actually saw that FD and DK have already banned their employees (in the wake of this) from playing on each others sites.

But to me.. that's silly. If you make it impossible for employees at DK to have access to the data ahead of time and vice versa, then there's really no unfair advantage. Plus, if their products weren't the exact same (and products in this industry WILL diverge), then it also wouldn't matter.

Not true. If anything, it's even more useful than the article makes it sound. If you knew absolutely nothing about sports, but had access to this data and a fairly basic understanding of probability and statistics, you could use this data to be basically +EV in any large field contest you enter. The lottery analogy by slg is a great metaphor to understand it.

The controversy isn't about knowing player price points. That's like the gameboard and it's known to everyone. It's about knowing ownership percentages - which is the overall percentage of lineups in a contest that drafted a certain player.

That info gets published once the contest starts (it's very compelling data), but having access to that ahead of time is the equivalent of insider trading - because you have knowledge other people don't have when they make their picks, which provides you a completely unfair advantage.

I can't help but notice a market opportunity evolving out of the need to moderate comments. I imagine a service where sites could hire cheap, proven moderators - and pay based on the number of comments needing review.

Two-sided marketplaces are undeniably extremely hard to build, but seeing as this is a huge problem and something tons of websites need, maybe it could be successful in this case.

Anyone know of anything out there like this/think this could work? I guess there's MTurk.

I sympathize with how you feel, and I think some of these responses miss the point and are kind of inappropriately harsh for someone asking a perfectly legitimate question. I know plenty of CS students/grads feel the same way. I certainly do.

I definitely agree that college is partly about exposure and teaching you how to learn, but it's ridiculous to say that it's not their responsibility to teach you technologies that you'll be using professionally. Yes you should take it upon yourself to learn what you want or need to know. But with the cost of tuition - they should definitely be doing more than they are.

I know at my college (graduated in 2011), there seemed to be a disproportionate offering of courses that one would use if they wanted to become a video-game developer or an enterprise software engineer. They taught us very little about how to actually program for the web.

Getting back to your question.. heres' a couple things to keep in mind:

- It's not the same anywhere. There's a range in curriculums depending on what school you're at (and even within the same school). Some specialize in different things. Some have different philosophies. And some are better than others.

- The truth is, there's so many languages, libraries, frameworks, and technologies - and they're expanding in all directions faster than anyone can keep up. The only thing you can do is try and pick the ones that matter to you (based on what your aspirations are) and specialize. Anyways, given all this - imagine how hard it is for the universities to keep up themselves while designing a curriculum that can fit all of their students.

As far as what you can do - I'm not sure there's a whole lot you can do within the confines of your university, unless you were super adamant to the point of organizing events/rallies or pestering the hell out of your professors and school until they make some changes. And even then, who knows if it would work and in all the time you'd spend - you could probably have taught yourself a few of the things you're pushing to have them teach you.

Here's a couple other solutions:

- Find a professor/TA you like and knows some things you want to learn, and try to get them to tutor/mentor you. (In my experience, this one is hard because everyone's busy)

- Transfer schools. But do your research first to make sure you don't wind up in the same situation.

- Adapt by teaching yourself the things you want on the side. Tackle small projects, each with one or two new things you want to learn. (this is what the other responses were advocating, and I think you need to get in the habit of doing this regardless)

Hope this was somewhat helpful.

As someone a decade older than you with a CS degree who has yet to ship a mobile app, I salute you nshen! Keep doing what you're doing.

As for the game, I have only positive things to say. I think it's very well done overall. The juggling/swiping works smoothly. The falling items look great. Love the addition of bombs and power ups. Overall, the simplicity of it is what stands to me the most. Many of the games that catch on as addictive time-wasters have simple premises. I think you've found one.

Have you given any thought to a two-player mode? Either cooperative or head-to-head battle?

My only advice is to listen critically to your feedback, but trust your gut. Navigating through everything people say can be a challenge. If you haven't already, I'd read up on the subject. Here's a little article to get your started: http://uxmyths.com/post/746610684/myth-21-people-can-tell-yo...

Good luck!

It was actionable for me. I just rethought how I was collecting feedback, which I was doing right before I saw the post.

I disagree. Though maybe there isn't all that much here (certainly nothing new/groundbreaking), I still think it's useful advice coming from somebody who knows what they're talking about. Maybe it doesn't deserve the all the upvotes/attention it receives, but that just goes to show you how important credibility is.

Haha damnit I wish Jason had posted this a day sooner, as yesterday I created a few threads asking people how much they'd pay for a tool I haven't built yet.

How do you balance this with the principle of not building something people don't want/won't pay for?