HN user
Twitter is a great way to get targeted traffic, but it takes work. You need to find users that are interested and interact with them.
I was able to get 5000 signups in a month for a product I was releasing. The product never really came to fruition (problems with my co-founder).
But, the marketing strategy still worked pretty well.
Dating apps are kind of like social networking sites. They both take a tremendous amount of money to get off the ground and are very difficult to monetize.
Tinder was different because the goal is not to have a long-term relationship (and leave the app).
I also care about democracy. I hope that in the future, the DNC doesn't collude with the mainstream media to destroy any real chances of a third-party in this country.
Since they haven't apologized to the American public for doing so and instead keep doubling-down on emotional rhetoric, I don't want them anywhere near the white house.
I really hate Trump. But I hate that you pushed me to vote for him because the alternative meant that this politically correct toxic culture would continue to saturate all parts of our society.
I support resistance. The resistance against the anti-fascists who are beating people up in our streets and threatening someone with violence for speaking their mind. If their idea is ridiculous, have a civil debate and stop using violence in an attempt to win an argument.
"GPS is the automated tool that killed the Taxi."
No, not really. When I travel to a new city, I always use a Taxi to get around. GPS actually helps out the taxi drivers because I don't need to sit there explaining exactly where to go. I can just tell them the address. In a foreign country, it's even better: Just give them a business card or piece of paper with the address on it.
"Uber is just the first major company to take advantage of cheap GPS technology."
Uber is the first major company to avoid all of the taxi unions and the medallion systems and hire any driver off the street for what amounts to some extra beer money for the drivers.
It's really convenient and nice for consumers, but guts the industry of jobs that could actually earn someone a real living.
"the Taxicab industry became an endangered species."
Again, no it didn't. I'm not sure how much traveling you have done but when you need to get somewhere on time, Trains and Subways don't really cut it. You need to take a taxi.
Unless we have an instant form of travel without cars, we will always have a need for taxis.
Uber did, however, show us that when unions are in place and create a monopoly in an industry, they really have no incentive to actually make things better for the consumer.
We don't need AI to end the middle class.
Services like Uber are replacing what used to be a stable job by fewer drivers with a job now done by many more drivers for peanuts. It's almost a way of taking an industry and redistributing the wealth.
When I see these allegations, I often wonder if we are looking at it from the wrong side.
Yes, someone black might be getting paid $10K/less on average. The question is, do they have the same amount of education and experience as their non-black counterpart?
If not, then we need to figure out why there aren't as many qualified black candidates.
Instead, the answer seems to just have a quota of black applications, which really doesn't help anyone.
Becoming? Has everyone been under a rock for the last decade and a half?
China and Russia hackers have been breaking into computers all over the Internet for quite some time.
Donald Trump is the answer to the question: Do we really want our politicians taking in millions of dollars for favors, colluding with the mainstream media to destroy our chances of a true third-party candidate, and lying to the public about everything?
With all of the bitching and moaning about Trump from the left, nobody has learned from their mistakes. Most of us didn't even want Trump. We were just sick and tired of the mainstream media calling us racists, sexists, and bigots for merely having an opinion that questions the current narrative.
Enjoy the next 4 years and learn how to accept and talk to the people you may not agree with politically.
It's ironic that the group that claims they are the most open-minded, show their true colors when faced with opposing viewpoints.
This happened to me with two different friends and two different startups.
Many people love the idea of a startup: getting rich, being a tech rock star, and retiring early. Most aren't willing to do what it actually takes to succeed: unpleasant work, long hours, and sometimes little pay off for a long time.
One of my co-founders thought that 'writing something off' meant we could spend money on whatever we wanted and the government would pay for it.
Another friend had me meet with his lawyer and wanted me to sign an agreement where anything I worked on outside of our business together was property of the business (I had 2 other successful companies already running and he knew it) but all of his current work was solely owned by him.
Before I had a chance to tell him 'fuck no', he flaked out and got a job. Since then, he's onto his 3rd startup job and I've been running my successful companies.
Luckily, both startups were in such early phases, I was able to get out early.
I learned the hard lesson that your co-worker or friend doesn't necessarily make a good co-founder. A very small percentage of people will be disciplined enough to see a company from start to success. There are also different stages of a company. In the beginning with no real roles defined, a person might be great. When you become an actual company with products, meetings, deadlines, and customers. That same person might not work out.
Choose your co-founder wisely or you will go through lots of pain and suffering. Don't partner with an 'ideas' person unless they are investing money or giving you important contacts into an industry. If not, it will be difficult to put them into a position later when the company gets to the next stage.
Let's be honest here. Silicon Valley only wants 'openness to immigration' because they can get cheap labor and the H1B Visa makes it very difficult for a person to move to another job when they get here.
It's all about money. Don't let any of these feel-good articles make you think differently.
I also find it ironic that the same people that complain that there needs to be an increase in the minimum wage also want to flood the market with cheap labor from overseas, which will reduce American's wages.
"President Trump’s recent executive order is not only potentially unconstitutional, but deeply un-American. We are a nation of immigrants, after all. In the tech world,"
We are a nation of immigrants. Trump didn't institute a Muslim ban. He instituted a temporary ban from 7 specific countries for 90 days. This is only until we have a better vetting system.
Obama did something similar in 2009 when he temporarily banned Iraqi citizens for 6 months. I didn't hear a peep out of anyone. Why?
The only flaw I see in his executive order is the fact that he didn't give anyone enough time to implement it and it caused compete chaos. There also should have been some exemptions for travelers or green card holders.
I have many friends that are legal, US citizens and came to the US through legitimate means. Glorifying illegal immigration is a slap in the face to all the people that went through all of the proper channels to get citizenship.
"Right now, Lady Liberty’s lamp is dimming"
It's not. It's getting brighter. We finally have a president that cares about the citizens of this country. I feel like many immigrants that do come here don't really love the country that they are calling their new home.
If I wore a "Make America Great Again" hat in public, I would risk getting spit on and beat up. The real brown-shirt fascists are the anti-trump fanatics that won't actually have a civil debate and use violence towards people they don't like.
When there is a seemingly civil debate, fascists on social media will attempt to destroy the person's personal life and get them fired from their job or boycott their company and put them out of business.
Silicon Valley is losing their source of cheap labor and are now avoiding the law by going to another country.
How is this any different than a company avoiding tax laws by moving its base?
With big companies, it's pretty common. There is probably something about your contact info or education/experience that was auto-flagged as a rejection.
I've never heard of any of these. So the mainstream media has not really picked up on them and they pretty much have no steam on Twitter. Is anyone actually following through?
"These are five examples since November"
These are boycotts of very large companies, which happen all the time. I'm talking more about the harassment of individuals, the trolling of their employers (to get them fired), and the boycotting of small companies. Most of the info leading the charge for these are based on half-truths, libel, and rumors.
The Mozilla CEO was harassed and fired for donating a small amount of money years earlier to a political campaign. He wasn't harassing or being prejudice against anyone and a reporter had to search long and hard to find out about his political donations. I've never seen anyone on the right single out an individual and get them fired over something like this.
This sort of behavior needs to stop and another problem is that nobody will admit it's an actual problem.
Holy Shit your response doesn't offer anything witty or intelligent to our discussion.
With these sorts of responses, I usually don't even respond, so you should feel lucky.
To be blunt, people like you are why Trump was elected and will most likely be elected again in 4.
Cheers! :-D
"you only see this behavior coming from the left because of your own bias."
You don't see that these are progressive tactics because of YOUR bias.
I rarely see the same tactics used on the right. You don't see the online hashtag campaigns that harass and abuse anyone that supports the current progressive narrative.
"How conveniently you forget the entire US Congress right wing refusing to work with the legitimately elected president of the US and building their entire agenda on defeating him because they disagreed with him."
Heh. You say this as if Trump is illegitimate. A vast majority of Democrats in power are refusing to work with the current legitimate president and sitting on their hands...like children.
Obama was able to pass Obamacare. The only way this was possible was with the support of the Republicans.
This was just an under-handed marketing move by Lyft to destroy Uber and simultaneously virtue signal their support for immigrants through ACLU donations.
More and more things like this just shows me how many mentally ill people there are in this world.
I feel like our society has devolved into vindictive children. Instead of allowing someone to have their own thoughts and beliefs and debating them like intelligent adults, you try to get them fired or destroy their only source of income because their beliefs differ from your own.
It's the children brigade getting the CEO of Mozilla fired all over again.
I only see this kind of behavior coming from the left. It means I just won't debate people if they disagree with me. I shut them down immediately.
Jeff Bezos normally doesn't really care that that much about other human beings. Why start now?
Working conditions are deplorable in many Amazon warehouses and he has destroyed many small businesses all in the pursuit of raising Amazon's stock price by a few pennies.
He's doing this as a personal vendetta against Trump. During Trump's campaign, he said he would pursue a federal lawsuit against Amazon for their monopolistic tactics.
This is actually something I hoped Trump would do. Amazon has been abusing their online marketplace monopoly for far too long.
Why wouldn't the investors like it? Companies license IP to other companies all the time. It actually is a plus for investors because they will see a faster ROI.
I've come back to a job after a round of layoffs. My company laid me off and after a month, they realized my manager had lied and actually had another job lined up as they were letting me go. I was the only one that actually knew how the system worked (my manager lied about this too) and they begged me to come back.
10K higher salary and an extra week of vacation later, I was working there again.
The company lasted another year before it folded completely. I only did it because the boss pretty much left me alone and I didn't have anything to do besides maintain the current system that I built during my 5 years there.
I used this opportunity to start my own company because my daily job took me about 20 minutes in the morning. I previously automated most of my daily tasks. Anyone with any tech experience was fired or let go and nobody really knew what I was doing besides keeping the current system running smoothly.
New jobs are always difficult in the beginning. Mostly because you have lots of unfamiliar systems to learn and new coworkers.
The question you should be asking yourself, is why did you quit your old job in the first place? Do you think anything will be different if you go back?
Well, it sounds like you haven't gained the trust of the more senior developers.
"but most of my time is spent doing mundane stuff. It's important work, but it's extremely dull."
I feel like you have unrealistic expectations. Unless you are in a startup with no senior developers (or senior compared to you) as coworkers, you will be spending the beginning part of any job working on mundane/boring tasks.
As you get more experience with the project (and gain the trust of the more senior developers), you will be given more responsibility.
The same thing may happen at your next job.
But it doesn't sound like you're happy here and you should try to find another job.
I got out of my 'rut' by finding a new job. Then I realized I wanted to work for myself and started my own company. 6 years later, my company is still going strong.
He's still young. When he's bored with Facebook and is looking for a new challenge, I predict he will run for some sort of office.
I find this interesting because I just saw a story in my local news about Western Union getting flack because they were making it difficult for certain customers to send money to known terrorist countries. They were called 'bigoted' and 'racist'.
They really can't win here. If they allow anyone to send money anywhere, they get fined by the government for supporting criminals. If they try to make a judgment call, the public gets up-in-arms about it and thinks they are bigoted (and potentially lose customers or get involved in other lawsuits).
I didn't even want Trump, but the people on the left gave me no other choice. Many people like me are just sick of the political correctness and the vindictive racism from the left that is marginalizing anyone that isn't a minority.
Instead of cleaning your wounds and learning from your mistakes, you double-down on what caused the anger and divisiveness in the first place.
The mainstream press was caught red-handed when they colluded with the DNC to first destroy Bernie Sanders and then take aim at anyone against Hillary Clinton (which happened to be Trump).
Instead of being outraged by this, we blame the messenger, which could have been Russia or any disgruntled person angry at the fact that the press and the DNC can do as they please with impunity.
At my first developer job, I accidentally left off the 'Where X=X' in a SQL update statement. My manager didn't catch it in time and pushed it from staging->production.
The next day, the damage was done when the first client started using the new features I just implemented. I stayed until midnight pouring over code with my manager to make sure there were no more mistakes.
Here is a speech from Bernie Sanders, taken right from his own website:
https://berniesanders.com/sanders-prepared-remarks-at-democr...
"Together, my friends, we have begun a political revolution to transform America and that revolution – Our Revolution – continues. Election days come and go. But the struggle of the people to create a government which represents all of us and not just the 1 percent – a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice – that struggle continues. And I look forward to being part of that struggle with you."
The reason I know most news coverage about Trump is bullshit is because Sanders was lauded as a hero and a man of the people. When Trump says pretty much the same thing, he's seen as a 'Batman Villain'. Politically, Sanders and Trump aren't that much different, which is why Hillary wasn't able to pull enough of his supporters over to her side.
It's really like the old story of the boy who cried wolf: After awhile, I just stop believing anything you have to say about Trump because you lied so many times to me.
Just stick to the truth. There are plenty of abhorrent things about the trump administration. The superfluous hyperbole will only result in people like me completely ignoring what you have to say.
Because it's easier to just not think about it. Many people with regular day jobs also have management breathing down their necks to just get the job done.
An easier alternative is to tunnel everything through a SSH connection.
I use putty tunneling+proxifier (on windows) and a python script on my ubuntu box (The name is escaping me at the moment).
It's very simple to setup, doesn't require a ton of configuration, and can be just a secure as a VPN connection.
I've never been a fan of OpenVPN. Configuration is cumbersome and performance wasn't that great.