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adocracy's comments

adocracy | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: As a single bootstrapper, how do you deal with the pressure?

Intellectually, you're on the entrepreneurial path, with a purpose. How you emotionally defend yourself is also part of the entrepreneurial path - we work more hours for less money (on average) because we "control our own destiny" which implies of sense of ownership over one's life that you can't get elsewhere working towards someone else's bottom line. That's probably a myth, but it's an important one for maintaining our psychological health while under the stress of under-delivering. Don't be confused here - as an entrepreneur, you will ALWAYS feel like you're under-delivering, whether on time, or on traction, or on product, or on revenues, or on team, or on awareness... That's an unfortunate part of the path. But it's also an important part of the drive to improve the product, improve the team, etc. Entrepreneurs unfortunately also have a high rate of depression - I'm not adequately versed in those personality types to make any assessments as to why. But as an entrepreneur, I can tell you that, personally, I face that stress every day and yet carry on because I feel like my work is important. I'm not building follow-on products - I'm trying to build first-to-market products, also with a purpose. So either that purpose has to carry you through these tough defensive discussions and resulting stress, or that purpose isn't sufficient, and you'll drop the product and/or the title entrepreneur. If you're going to own your own path, you either do it wholly, or you don't. Trying to figure out a middle path will kill the average person. Don't be average.

adocracy | 9 years ago | on: VotePlz – The Easiest Way to Vote

you show up, take your ballot which registers a receipt, and abstain on that particular office/issue. but at least showing up to register your abstention IS your vote.

adocracy | 9 years ago | on: VotePlz – The Easiest Way to Vote

Sure it is - but it's universal to citizens participating in that society. if you're outside the system, YOU'RE OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM, including UBI. Doesn't mean you have to pick one candidate - you can abstain, as long as you show up to record your abstention.

adocracy | 9 years ago | on: VotePlz – The Easiest Way to Vote

Looks like it's a county-by-county lookup function, crossed with state voting laws. We're building something county-by-county too - difficult locality matching issues.

adocracy | 9 years ago | on: Ask HN: Why is Google so bad at UI Design?

The Marissa Mayer effect still lingering? And a culture of data proofs over creative experimentation? So it's not that the UI is bad - is just stereotypically "Google" and has been homogenized to emphasize technical features over customer delight. A better question is why customer service capabilities have lagged so significantly.

adocracy | 9 years ago | on: The EpiPen, a Case Study in Health System Dysfunction

(2) is untenable. A company could theoretically widely distribute a drug with unknown effects/consequences, only to find after the fact that it negatively affects >10% of patients causing death and disability in major numbers. File for bankruptcy and disappear with no ability for the sufferors to get lifetime care compensation? Catastrophic, with no recourse.

adocracy | 9 years ago | on: Bitmain’s R4 to Bring an In-Home Experience to Bitcoin Mining

the power efficiency is a good achievement, and the hashrate is great, but it's hard to see how US/Brazil/German home miners can compete against the energy costs (both pure hashing power, but also cooling costs) of regional competitive advantages present in Iceland or Russia or Canada mining locations. As mining efficiency approaches the Moore's Law limit present in the commoditized CPU/storage markets, then power generation costs become the true competitive markers?

adocracy | 9 years ago | on: The EpiPen, a Case Study in Health System Dysfunction

I don't agree here. It's both. It's a market failure when the price point (or transparency around the prices) doesn't convince new entrants to persevere through the existing regulatory process. It's market failure when the interests of all stake holders aren't successfully incorporated into the pricing. It's not a regulatory failure that the FDA has higher standards than the offered alternatives - we can't lower standards just to encourage new entrants. But it IS a regulatory failure when the FDA doesn't communicate with the FTC such that unnatural monopolies aren't controlled for, or that the FDA/FTC isn't communicating to the pharma industry that new entrants are required in order to prevent such monopolies from occurring. The FTC should be more "cross-border" effective with the government's own agencies.

adocracy | 9 years ago | on: The EpiPen, a Case Study in Health System Dysfunction

It's an interesting concept to suggest an effective put option for the government, based perhaps on the auditable costs of successful R&D. But this would probably have to work both ways - also including a put option in favor of pharma for R&D that was unsuccessful. R&D spending would become more transparent as a result (inflated, perhaps, to try to hedge against the government intervening on a hugely profitable opportunity), but in any event still entirely recoupable. Different sort of risk/reward algorithm at play, but feasible.

adocracy | 9 years ago | on: Hunter S. Thompson: Finding Your Purpose (1958)

It feels like the "maturing process" has waned over the decades. It feels like people in the past were older, at younger age. This can't be due to the educational system - we have access to more quality information than ever before, and more prolific insights into the complicated troubles of our world. How much of this is due to the increased work ethic in this country where parents serve less and less as role models and mentors for their children, because of time away and dedication to work or company? Can a truly enlightened parent -one who has already discovered the Who they intend to be- ever be absent from their child's maturation process? Probably not, which leads me to think that all this increased work, all this national goal setting, has happened without any Who-finding. Young entrepreneurs - find your own Who, and your personal Product Market Fit will follow.

adocracy | 9 years ago | on: The EpiPen, a Case Study in Health System Dysfunction

It's unfortunate the NYT story doesn't get into the billings process as part of the dysfunction. It makes me wonder how the pricing is then negotiated with the insurance companies. Did they set the retail price so high because the insurance companies were refusing to pay a workable price? Mylan has already commented that most EpiPens are paid through insurance, and there's the "billed rate" and "paid rate" on claims reports which often shows outrageous retail prices by health providers and then the negotiated rate the insurance company actually paid. Mylan's "quick" offer of a $300 discount to individual payers appears to keep in line with this and potentially not impact the insurance claim issue, but does anyone have any evidence that this theory is mistaken?

adocracy | 11 years ago | on: Fluid Tests Hint at Concrete Quantum Reality

Liquid dynamics sounds like an interesting hypothesis, but I agree with the critics that entanglement presents a tough analogy. If Pilot Wave theory suggests that the particle-wave duality is actually two distinct actors - a wave and a particle riding the wave - then 1) each particle has an independently generated wave? and 2) it's difficult to see how that wave could be exactly preserved for both particles over the long distances of entanglement experiments. That's like envisioning a ripple on the far side of a large lake exactly mimicking a ripple here. Granted, the entanglement result of simultaneous collapse of probabilities is also tough to rationally understand. But Pilot Waves maintaining their effect, regardless of various asynchronous interactions encountered between the distances of entanglement experiments, seems naive. Then again, I'm not a particle physicist.

adocracy | 11 years ago | on: Sleep as a Competitive Advantage

See my comment above - I think even "low sleepers" recognize the value of sleep for clear thinking and emotional balance. I totally value napping.
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