WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

asif's comments

asif | 14 years ago | on: Don't Build APIs

Build the best API you know how to build and ask questions later. If your business is doing well, then supporting your API forever is a high quality problem.

asif | 15 years ago | on: How Do You Talk To An Angel? Use Yobongo, They're All Investing

With absolutely no disrespect intended, "you have to try it to get it" isn't a very compelling pitch to get a potential user on board. There are just too many things out there that one could try. There must be a way that you could describe the service more explicitly.

asif | 16 years ago | on: What Unpaid Internships Say About Your Company

What would the alternative be? Require all students to pay their own way, thereby disincentivizing parents to work hard and save for their children's college education?

On the other hand, there are a lot of intangible benefits to be had by paying your own way through college; benefits that will never be recognized by those born with a silver spoon in their mouths.

In other words, I don't see this as a fundamental problem. It's just the way it is.

asif | 17 years ago | on: Gmail Finally Gets A To-Do List

I agree. I think it is the natural place to have a to-do list. I also don't really like the Remember the Milk add-on. I usually don't think of to-dos as thing that are associated with a particular day. They are just a laundry list of things that need to get done. It would be nice to see the to-dos in the context of what my schedule looks like for the day (i.e. My Google calendar).

asif | 17 years ago | on: Unpaid internships are a ripoff

Disagree. There are certain industry where the argument holds true; investment banking for example (you're likely a sucker if the only way an investment bank will give you an internship is if you work for free). But there must be some industries out there where the market rate for an intern is literally "valuable experience". You could ask a bunch of people that worked in jobs like this, after the fact, if they were happy with what they got out of the experience (i.e., did it help you get a real job later on), and I wouldn't be surprised if the yes/no ratio was similar to those with paid internships. My supporting evidence for this assertion is that the practice is widely taking place today. Certainly it would have been exposed as a fraud and a ripoff by now, if that were the case.

asif | 17 years ago | on: Budgeting for new team members

Whatever you guys are making, if it kicks ass, nobody will care about this nonsense. You certainly have the attention of the HN community now, so don't waste it. It's time to stop fucking up.

asif | 17 years ago | on: Ask YC: What do you actually pay for, you, yourself?

We've been using yahoo for 5 or 6 years now and we're just used to it. I think it costs about $10/season and given how seriously we take this thing, it doesn't feel like a lot of money.

Incidentally, we tried to run a league on fleaflicker last year (for free) in parallel with the yahoo league, and the experience was severely lacking.

asif | 17 years ago | on: One Inviolable Rule

I'm not sure what I would do, but I know what Jack Bauer would do. He would eat the pirates.

asif | 17 years ago | on: One Inviolable Rule

Ha. Thanks for pointing that out. Perhaps I instinctively avoid blanket generalizations so as to avoid the criticism that I am currently unleashing on this article.

asif | 17 years ago | on: One Inviolable Rule

I concede that HN is not the place to solicit legal advice. The level of trust that I was referring to most likely does not exist between users of this site.

Nonetheless, I believe it is incorrect to state that one would be putting one's self in harms way by discussing legal matters with a non-lawyer, as the article implies.

Here's an example: My neighbor has a large tree bordering my yard, from which a branch is hanging over the fence and interfering with my shit. Is it legal for me to chop the branch? Maybe in some jurisdictions, but who knows? Should I call a lawyer right away? Let me see what my wife thinks.

Me: "Hey honey, what should I do about this branch? Should I call a lawyer?"

Honey: "A lawyer?!?!? For God's sake why would you do that? That's just Ethel's tree. Just cut the damn thing down."

-- or --

"Umm, Johnny Cochrane, Jr. lives there. Call five lawyers."

asif | 17 years ago | on: One Inviolable Rule

I can, without hesitation, proclaim that eating children is categorically wrong.

asif | 17 years ago | on: Real-time tracking of human eyes using a webcam

I can't seem to get this thing to figure out where I'm actually looking. Isn't that the point of "eye-tracking"? It is pretty good at figuring out where my eyes are located on my face, but that isn't very valuable information.

Has anyone else had any success?

page 1
more