fredfoobar42's comments

Hedge funds aren't much better, and have the added "benefit" of being completely opaque to the investor with higher fees. Part of why there's so much investment in Venture and Growth Capital by so many institutions, including pensions, is that it's one of the few places that's seeing real returns. And when that bubble bursts...

I know exactly what they'll do: nothing.

Not to be confused with the Baader-Meinhof Gang: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction

Isn't the whole point of bonds that they're _not_ highly liquid?

Do I need to have this WebReply crap? I have my own domain, and I don't have comments, because I want to own every pixel of the thing.

notahacker beat me to it, but how do you sell ads to an anonymous audience without compromizing the anonymity of the audience? You can't, unless you want to do cheap, dumb banner ads. They missed the chance to monetize up front by launching as a free app. Any investor who looked at this app and thought for more than ten seconds should have run screaming, or had security drag the founders out of the building. Or both.

Good, and good riddance. Anyone who invested in Secret is a fucking moron. You can't monetize anonymous messaging, and no established company would buy technology they could build in an afternoon hackathon for the cost of a couple cases of Red Bull. If you need proof, 4chan's run at a loss for over a decade. Any investor in a VC fund that invested in Secret should sue their fund for mismanagement of money.

Tell me about it. I work for a publishing company that's transitioning from Print to Digital that deals with firms that are even less far along in the transition than we are. So, at least once a month, I have to tell someone, _again_ that we can't use Flash banners in email. We will NEVER be able to use Flash banners in an email. STOP ASKING.

I wish. Outlook's flakiness alone requires more knowledge than just HTML 4.

Would be better with "Girl From Ipanema"

Damn, I ran DEVO's "Mongoloid" through that and got a Godspeed You! Black Emperor song.

Heh, I don't like to talk to people, actually. One thing I do like about my job is that I get to sit in my cube all day with headphones on and only have to interact by email or IM.

One word: Love.

I moved to New York City to be with the person I love. I'm not going to uproot them and drag them to Europe. I also like living where I do (maybe not this neighborhood specifically, but I don't hate it), so there's that.

I was told from a very early age that I was going to be something special. I tested into Gifted Education in elementary school. I tested into the best public magnet school in Philadelphia.

The whole thing began to unravel in High School, really... got a "No Credit" for an extra-curricular college course, had to retake a year of Geometry, barely made it through High School Trig. But, I went to college to study Computer Science. And failed out. Failed the same Intro to Pre-Calculus class seven fucking times in three semesters. (Half-semester course.)

I took a semester off, and enrolled in a local community college. Changed my major to English. Graduated with a BA in 2008, in the middle of the economic crisis. I didn't have any Internships... couldn't afford to take one as I was working to pay my way through college part-time in the evenings. Got a shitty telemarketing job for the benefits, got fired, spent a year out of work, worked for the Philadelphia welfare office for a year and a half, and quit.

I lucked into a startup job as a Community Manager, but the environment was borderline abusive, and beyond the border unethical (buying lists of email addresses for their target market to add to their mailing list and calling them active users in fundraising presentations). After getting fired/quitting, I found a decent job doing Web Production for a speciality publishing company.

I'm 31, in debt up to my eyeballs with student loans, barely making ends meet, and working a job that offers no challenge and little opportunity for advancement. I have personal projects where I can get some joy, but it's hard to find the time to do those when you're working forty hours a week, with an hour commute each way, and seeing a huge chunk of your cash go towards paying off the creditors for your borderline useless degree. If I didn't have my self-taught HTML and CSS skills, I'd never be where I am, so that's something.

I still feel like I should be further along because of all the pushing I was given as a kid. They told me I'd change the world. Instead, I'm just some underemployed schlub. I'm not about to jump in front of a train, but for those kids with more pressure, I can't blame 'em.

Wow, that got long.

(I kept the names of the companies I worked for silent, because I try to keep this account semi-anonymous. The startup I worked for loves to threaten lawsuits against former---and current---employees who piss off the founder.)

Also worth noting CalPERS has been slashing its VC allocations.

I never claimed vinyl was superior, just different in a way I enjoy.

For a counterpoint, based on actual science, make sure to read [Daniel Rutter's excellent "Righteous Bits"](http://www.dansdata.com/gz143.htm), and his [responses to the responses](http://www.dansdata.com/gz145.htm).

I listen to MP3s, I listen to AACs from the iTunes store, I listen to FLAC (concert bootlegs), and I listen to vinyl with a tube amp. I cannot tell the difference, even on quality studio headphones, between a v0 MP3, an iTunes 256kbps AAC, and a FLAC file. I can tell a difference with vinyl and the amp, but while it's different, I would hesitate to say it's _better_, let alone assume the reason why.

No Dr. Strangelove fans on HN?

And this is why I only drink rain water and pure grain alcohol... to ensure the purity of my precious bodily fluids...

Bull. Shit.

RadioShack hasn't catered to the hobbyist market in the better part of 20 years. I worked for RadioShack around 2001, and they'd already jettisoned almost all the parts by then. The focus was on pushing cell phones, overpriced TVs and PCs, and extended warranties for everything.