vlad

I explained to Affinity this summer, "...it would only be in your favor to have a designer learn your tools instead of Figma and Adobe, because the reason they got popular is because people brought them to work."

In 2025, Affinity's trial was one week. Last year, hundreds of thousands of people saw ads and signed up for 6 month licenses. I signed up, but I didn't activate. There was no requirement to activate immediately in the offer, and the welcome email specifically mentioned the license would start after the downloadable products were activated.

Affinity announced in 2024 that the offer has been updated: the 6 month licenses would expire immediately if not started in the next weeks.

Since I had written my own desktop software products, I advised Affinity to email the hundreds of thousands of people and offer another long license, especially if they didn't activate or didn't use it.

I explained my advice to affinity@serif.com:

"I decided... I'm not going to be using my time to learn new design software in a week's trial... I think there is a very easy and (practically) free solution, like I wrote in the original replies, including extending a license."

"...it would only be in your favor to have a designer learn your tools instead of Figma and Adobe, because the reason they got popular is because people brought them to work."

And now, the 2024 web page with the offers redirects to the new announcement!

The authors were professor and grad student at UMass Amherst, and are the current winners of the Turing Award.

https://www.cics.umass.edu/

https://www.nsf.gov/news/ai-pioneers-andrew-barto-richard-su...

Facebook's "React" library was discussed here (with 100+ comments) when it launched in 2013[0]. I remember because I wrote an example to compare React with Angular, and my post was also #1 on the same day[1] :)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5789055

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790799

I registered @paulg on Twitter and "vlad" on news.yc in 2007 when this website (news.ycombinator.com) was "Startup News". Besides flying to the US Naval Academy, my first domestic flight was to Y Combinator Startup School in 2007. As you can see in my video, it would be the day before my birthday. Also, I had an app-based business, and Max Levchin and Mark Zuckerberg were speakers.

Vladislav Yazhbin at Startup School with many early YC founders (Stanford, 2007):

https://vimeo.com/3170520

I don't know why I missed the talk by pg (Paul Graham) in 2005 when Y Combinator was founded, but I recorded videos in 2007 because I saw "Pirates of Silicon Valley" in high school about early days of Apple and Microsoft. It was obvious that my videos about Y Combinator could be valuable some day. And, I liked that Paul Graham studied art and programming with many people, while I had made a desktop product with paying customers all over the world. I even joined the companies that Y Combinator accelerated, Justin.tv in 2009 and DoorDash in 2020, to help them succeed.

I visited Boston in 1995 (to get an award in the Governor's Office for winning a poster design contest judged by reporters, politicians, and art critics). I visited Boston again in 2002 after 9/11 (September 11) for my US Citizenship. I applied to the US Naval Academy and was nominated by U.S. Congress, although I was already attending a two-year technical community college. I focused on programming, similar to MrBeast making videos while attending a community college. My college is where George Washington built the first federal armory for United States, but they did not have student email accounts.

In 2002, sitting in my Student President's office, I came up with the idea that I could verify students with the .edu domain name and I could make a website for my college. I was already Student President and already started a printed newspaper. Although each issue was funded with Student Activity fees, Student Activities Office wanted to review each article. However, an employee showed me she used "Black Planet" to share news, and MySpace and Facebook had not been invented yet. Unfortunately, I didn't want Student Activity Fees to be spent to buy server hardware and software because student had free personal @aol.com and @yahoo.com accounts already. I might have mentioned to a friend at Harvard University. Also, I worked as a high school volleyball official, therapeutic recreation aide at a nursing home (entertaining residents who have alzheimer's and dementia), and the campus police department on weekends. I also attended monthly meetings with other Student Presidents of Massachusetts public colleges.

In late 2003, I launched "assfirm" to find and watch items and pay later for merchants on eBay, Yahoo! and Overstock. It was a bootstrapped, paid app for middle-age users who bought physical items on their computers. This allowed me to market and support a product for people older than students but younger than nursing home residents.

In spring 2009, Sequoia was interviewing YC founders in the Mountain View office. I attended this event after arriving from the airport. I stayed in a Hacker House with some YC founders. I met new founders who were excited that I had "assfirm" as a company to buy physical products from merchants. I explained I wanted a name with A in the phonebook. I talked with Max Levchin (founder of PayPal and Slide) in the street in Palo Alto the same week. His next company was named "affirm" years later.

Apple liked the user experience design of my Windows app in 2008. My company "assfirm" was selected by Apple to be the first to make native apps for the App Store in March 2008 before App Store existed. (At Startup School 2008, I don't think anyone else had been selected). I joined UMass Amherst for degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics. I proposed iPhone app designs for a Fortune 100 before I left to the four-year college, and built an app to track my phone's location as calendar events in university. I convinced the enterprise company and university to join Apple's corporate and education programs in 2008.

In summer 2009, I consulted at Justin.tv and co-founded "Hot Or Not Live" with Michael Seibel, Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, and Kyle Vogt. Michael Seibel said he wanted to partner with me for their first API hackathon but said he was CEO and had no other contribution except his idea of rating livestreamers. I had better ideas like live shopping, maybe as a future company. Employees loved the "hot or not" rails demo that I built in hours. It had a video embed and used the REST API to find the next channel. Within hours, Justin.tv founders hosted it as hornotlive.com, and a new hot-pink design and logo, making sure it was on the company's heroku account in case they need to take it down. It was launched very quickly, like investors ask for. This scared Paul Graham and investors when they heard about it via Hacker News, TechCrunch, and Mashable. Also, the HotOrNot company threatened to sue. About two years later, Justin.tv founders launched "SocialCam" for chat and "Twitch" for gamers in 2011.

Before I joined YouTube founders in 2012, I applied to Y Combinator with a mobile app to send messages and photos, and to sell stickers/emojis.

I came up with the idea of a chat app with self-deleting photos, plus the way it would grow quickly. At Startup School, I overheard Evan Spiegel talk about Picaboo. I decided to excitedly share my ideas to a group and walked with him for a bit. When I joined YouTube founders in late 2012, a coworker told me she used Snapchat.

At Startup School one year, Paul Graham smiled at me as I entered the building with a "Mohammed" nametag.

When I was at Startup School to watch Emmett Shear's talk, Justin Kan said "you didn't do anything!" about my three months at Justin.tv, which was completely not true. I noticed that Sam Altman was staring at me with a neutral face. I didn't know what to say. I thought that maybe Sam Altman thought I looked like Elon Musk, which I heard before from YouTube founders (who worked at PayPal with Elon Musk), Instacart founder (who said I looked like half-Elon Musk, half-Jimmy Fallon), co-workers, etc. In 2019-2022, I built a gym at my house in San Francisco and thought I could be a magician, singer, and do impressions as Elon Musk, Jimmy Fallon (I wanted to interview BTS for "Dynamite" while I was in South Korea in summer 2020), Dimash, Keanu Reeves (who filmed Matrix 4 in 2020 in San Francisco but I hadn't seen the movies), etc.

Another YC memory: I started a tech show on YouTube in April 2007 after Startup School. It's possible that I'm the first YouTuber to make videos to ask viewers to do things that help with algorithms (like leaving comments) while having almost no content about the topic. Also, an early usage of "Let's Go...!" Here's the episode about Justin.tv:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210109212744/https://www.youtu...

Adding complexity is fast and easy, adding simplicity is slow and hard.

Any codebase that is simple to understand and modify is a second party's canvas to add complexity in record time, for the purpose of telling a third party they added complexity in record time.

Imagine you get permits, rip out a bathroom, choose tiles and spend a long time cutting them. Someone comes in overnight and superglues them to the floor, and not even the pattern that was intended, but they did the main work and in only a few hours.

Building a cross-platform CLI from a python script in 2009 required unrelated open-source tools to package for each of the three major operating systems. I remember asking Dropbox guys what they were using. Having an official way to do it is much better.

Regardless of technology, I think CLI's tend to maintain their original size, or get smaller over time. If you choose to use a CLI built with Elixir, I imagine it could gain a web-based GUI without a large increase, if each build already includes a runtime environment and system libraries. Or if a CLI is written in another language and advertised as very compact, I imagine its size will also stay consistent, but might not gain the same fancy features. And in any case, popular compilers or packaging tools tend gain optimization improvements over time.

Microsoft was a large investor in Apple, Facebook, and Open.ai as well.

Just a guess, but if companies are paying for recruiters[0] and HR software anyway[1], companies may as well keep jobs open, do market research on past compensation, give their engineers practice, and calibrate interview questions among many laid off engineers from top companies. Also, companies are required to collect diversity metrics for state laws or visa purposes, which may be helpful when the company decides to make an offer.

Any entity may list and accept job applications, schedule meetings, and ask candidates to write code. It may be a great way for leadership (tech/people/product) to run their product ideas past candidates and identify how to improve their interview process or product.

[0] Some recruiters may work for free (100% commission) for many companies at once, until a company extends an offer that is accepted.

[1] Software may also be "free" when the company already prepaid for an annual plan; or a license includes X interviews per month; or, the recruiter brings their own tooling, question banks, and services for screening candidates.

eGolf looks great with 88-111% on this chart, but it has a small battery. This car's range of 125 or 135 in warm weather is lower than the other cars', which start at 176 in freezing temperatures.

Newspapers, magazines, newsletters, televisions, audio recorders, photo albums, pens and pencils, paperclips, staplers, stationary, scissors, stickers, ink stamps, software and video game manuals.

Maybe less need for mirrors, lint rollers, and large make-up kits with similar colors (maybe it's easier to adjust the tint in the photo?).

The problem, as this new generation of fans is learning, isn’t just that Ticketmaster is a bad system. The problem is Ticketmaster is the only system. It’s a monopoly.

More competition might reduce fees, but won't turn ticketing sites into state lotteries. Just like some domain name registrars, these sites provide a service but also benefit from powering the technology.

A commercial app is just a blend of software bugs that encourages profitability (not too many bugs, not too few).

I worked at a B2B company with a monolith without API's that rendered old-style CSS. Big projects included defining and writing API's to support a self-service web app for admins, as well as a new web app for end users which was responsive on their tablets and phones. Similarly, a B2C company on features for four sets of audience instead of two. I worked closely with PMs on front-end.

Software engineers who are hired to think, and not just type, can provide a lot of value to teammates, product managers, and designers, and also supplement these other roles. But typing lots of lines is the way to look good in a spreadsheet during layoffs. And, many engineers want projects where they get to type for 4-12 months before users use the features.

Note, the above is not a complaint: I recommend software engineers track and ship a consistent number of diffs every week. It forces you to ask yourself if someone's blocking your reviews, or if maybe it's a good time to squeeze in several quick, safe unrelated improvements, etc. Shipping code should not feel like a chore; the company "owes" you the ability to ship code to production since they value your performance based on that.

I vouched for your post because you posted that companies abuse visas, with links. I don't see why it was flagged.

As far as Meta, I don't understand why recent articles criticize it. The engineers themselves are just posting on LinkedIn to seek new opportunities. This was Meta's first layoff and they're paying people for 3-4 months before the 60 day period even begins.

And when locals are let go, coworkers say "Oh, but it's good that you're not on a Visa". Should that really be a factor Meta takes into account when laying people off?

And for many tech companies, many or most of their engineering employees are on Visa; it's expected that percentage reflected in the layoffs, too.

Aside from Visas, Meta had a hiring freeze below E7 for most roles since May, which might be seen as a signal they were trying to preserve existing employees in favor of onboarding new ones.

Also, many people who last more than a week are later let go right before stock vests. Most everyone in that position will have wished they were let go their first week and got paid for four months, while they accept another offer from that same interview cycle.

(I shortened the title somewhat since it's my own article).

When I built a tool for users of eBay about 20 years ago, the CD option came in a DVD case and cost a flat $5 extra including U.S. shipping. The installer would just download the latest version. The DVD case had a printed code, the same one that would be emailed otherwise. It was nice to show a photo of a physical product, and many people were happy with a download instead.

I used to have @paulg on Twitter. One day, a Twitter founder re-assigned it to pg. I never even got to use it :)

I registered it when I arrived to Startup School 2007. All of us had never seen or heard PG speak online or video, but just essays. The nerdy idea was, what if there's a blog or twitter account that sounds like PG's essays but about mundane topics?

I could have transferred it myself, years earlier, but I forgot I even did that until an article came out.

I also registered "docs" when Facebook allowed apps to have custom usernames. It was re-assigned to Microsoft the next day.

There were places to learn how to code, but by reading books, docs, and sample code, and not watching videos.

A bigger problem is what you said in the second part. When I had a short chat with Drew when he was looking for a co-founder in 2007, he said almost all MIT students were joining investment banks, grad school in business/law, big companies, etc.

I can confirm that. I was introduced to Drew when he was looking for a co-founder in March and saw his announcement below in April. That's correct, the launch page had a heading "Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive", a short video with the same message, and an email form.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

I had my own software business for three years by then (archived screenshots to https://angel.co/spoof-proof-software), so I replied with better marketing text and benefits, rather than "throw away your USB drive", the problem Drew had at MIT. Years later, they made new intro videos (with a mountain climber) that adopted the ideas I posted way back then.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9153

"What about this on the download page (also good for a press release.) Drop Box: Automatically safeguards even your biggest worries, so you don't have any!

What is a Drop Box?

Your Drop Box is a File Cabinet that Follows You Around Everywhere You Want to Go, Across Your Computers, or Across The Country.

Download and start using it today. (link goes here.)

Your Drop Box includes your own Secretary who Files and Photocopies Every Document You Make or Edit, So You Can See What Each Document Looked Like Yesterday, Two Days Ago, or at Any Point In Time. Did I Mention the Secretary and the File Cabinet are Fire-Proof and Wireless?

But, it's all digital. And, it's secure. And it's built to work between as many Windows desktops or laptop computer you use at NO EXTRA COST! See for yourself! (another link to the download.)

Or, access your files at work from a web-based interface! It's so flexible!

Q: Do I have to change how I work?

A: Absolutely not. Any file and folder (Word documents, spreadsheets, family photos, etc) you add to your Drop Box folder is automatically synchronized and saved remotely.

Q: What is the Drop Box folder?

A: It's just a special folder which will appear on your computer. Anything added to it is automatically saved, synchronized, and "dated" so you can go back in time!

Try it now! (another download link) It's safe, it's free, and you can use it on as many computers to share, backup, and keep archived file versions on, as you need to, by registering for just one account!"

Some of your reports have a year of experience in your code.

1) Do they not propose tasks for bug fixes and refactors?

2) Are engineers encouraged to propose their own solutions?

3) Do you only assign tasks you know how to do yourself?

I'm surprised everybody else is saying it doesn't count.

SaaS stands for Software as a Service, which means begging customers to make a one-time decision to start a predictable subscription in exchange for regular new features and bug fixes.

The alternative is begging customers to make decisions to upgrade to the latest release multiple times, even after they purchased the older software. Customers on older versions spend a lot of time downloading updates to security issues, comparing to competitors, and deciding if this is the right time to upgrade or to wait for a sale.

She'll stop remote work and require all Uber drivers to come to office?

Medallia | San Mateo (California); Washington DC (Virginia); Buenos Aires (Argentina) | Software Engineer, Front-End, Back-End, Infrastructure, DevOps, Security, iOS, Android, Mobile

Success: I found this job with Who is Hiring in 2015 and referred someone successfully as well, so read on! The headquarters are mid-Peninsula, just 26 minutes by Caltrain from San Francisco or Palo Alto (free unlimited pass.)

1) Medallia powers reports and surveys for hundreds of the world's best companies like AirBnB, Hilton, Vanguard, Mercedes-Benz, Four Seasons, Nordstrom, and Delta Airlines.

2) Sequoia recently invested more money into Medallia than they ever have in any company.

3) We use many technologies and tools on various teams, such as Java, React, Angular, and React Native. We host some customers on AWS but the majority use our own scalable platform.

Please send me your resume and I'll make sure it gets looked at: email (my HN username) @ medallia.com

Hi, Tom. Great post!

1) How do you synchronize features between micro-services? Each service may have a different state of the feature set during a request.

2) When you flip the feature on or off, how is that reflected in the UI? Does the UI tell you when the feature propagated to all services?

Thanks!

"Electric-powered vehicles, of course, have no exhaust emissions. However, because they’re 24 percent heavier on average, the study found that EVs shed more particulate matter from tires and brakes, and also kick up more particulate matter from road surfaces."

If the brake pads are smaller and aren't required to slow down in many cases, the EV should win, especially when the average EV on the street is likely similar in weight compared to an average non-EV vehicle.

As far as kicking up existing particulate matter, EV's shouldn't be penalized for kicking up dust on the road which came from others cars, which are almost entirely non-EV cars and 18-wheelers.

I bet there are other more significant factors to derive impact on pollution from EVs than brake dust, such as the source of electricity used to charge them.

I'll try to look at the study later to see how the 1% difference between road pollution between gas and EV vehicles was calculated.

Brake regeneration is a large part of the braking force for many EVs when the brake pedal is pressed, so the brake pads in some EV cars are actually smaller than their gas siblings.

Brake regeneration also avoids using the brake pedal altogether in many cases because an EV slows down significantly when the gas pedal is released.

With electric power, smaller brake pads, and less need to use them, I'm surprised the article believes there is only a 1% reduction in overall particle pollution for EV's vs. gas cars.

Plus, a typical EV is a small and modern 0-2 year old car compared to the gas vehicles out there, such as a 7-year-old, inefficient, v8 engine SUV.

Medallia | Palo Alto (California); Washington DC (Virginia); Buenos Aires (Argentina) | Software Engineer, Front-End, Back-End, Infrastructure, DevOps, Security, iOS, Android, Mobile

Success: I found this job with Who is Hiring in 2015 and referred someone successfully as well, so read on!

News: The headquarters are moving to San Mateo in May and will be 26 minutes by Caltrain from San Francisco or Palo Alto (free unlimited pass.)

1) Medallia powers reports and surveys for hundreds of the world's best companies like AirBnB, Hilton, Vanguard, Mercedes-Benz, Four Seasons, Nordstrom, and Delta Airlines.

2) Sequoia recently invested more money into Medallia than they ever have in any company.

3) We use many technologies and tools on various teams, such as Java, Angular.JS, and React Native. We host some customers on AWS but the majority use our own scalable platform.

Please send me your resume and I'll make sure it gets looked at: email (my HN username) @ medallia.com

Medallia | Palo Alto (California); Washington DC (Virginia); Buenos Aires (Argentina) | Software Engineer, Front-End, Back-End, Infrastructure, DevOps, Security, iOS, Android, Mobile

News: The headquarters are moving to San Mateo and will be 26 minutes by Caltrain from San Francisco or Palo Alto (free unlimited pass.)

1) Medallia powers reports and surveys for hundreds of the world's best companies like AirBnB, Hilton, Vanguard, Mercedes-Benz, Four Seasons, Nordstrom, and Delta Airlines.

2) Sequoia recently invested more money into Medallia than they ever have in any company.

3) We use many technologies and tools on various teams, such as Java, Angular.JS, and React Native. We host some customers on AWS but the majority use our own scalable platform. Please send me your resume and I'll make sure it gets looked at: email (my HN username) @ medallia.com

- Vlad

Medallia | Palo Alto (California); Washington DC (Virginia); Buenos Aires (Argentina) | Software Engineer, Front-End, Back-End, Infrastructure, DevOps, Security, iOS, Android, Mobile

Success: I found my job with Who is Hiring in 2015, and referred someone successfully as well, so read on!

News: The headquarters are moving to San Mateo in May and will be 26 minutes by Caltrain from San Francisco or Palo Alto (free unlimited pass.)

1) Medallia powers reports and surveys for hundreds of the world's best companies like AirBnB, Hilton, Vanguard, Mercedes-Benz, Four Seasons, Nordstrom, and Delta Airlines.

2) Sequoia recently invested more money into Medallia than they ever have in any company.

3) We use many technologies and tools on various teams, such as Java, Angular.JS, and React Native. We host some customers on AWS but the majority use our own scalable platform.

Please send me your resume and I'll make sure it gets looked at: email (my HN username) @ medallia.com

See my post for the real reason why. You must be right-handed based on your first sentence.