funkwyrm's comments

funkwyrm | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: What up with these startup salaries?

"An employees risk is several magnitudes less than the founders across many factors. "

I read often about founder risk, but I think it is overstated for non-bootstrapped companies. If you are a founder of a funded company, you get a salary the same as everyone else. In that case, what exactly is your "magnitudes greater" risk?

funkwyrm | 12 years ago | on: Every Entrepreneur Should Try Magic Mushrooms

1 - If you've ever had alcohol, you've done a drug.

2 - marijuana is a more common first "drug" than hallucinogens, for good reason. Although temporary psychotic breaks CAN happen, they are rare, and it is an otherwise pretty innocuous drug.

3- as for hallucinogens: SET, SETTING, and DOSAGE.

Negative story: taking mushrooms with a friend when neither of us were in a good place, emotionally. [bad set] Got confused at the typical 20 minutes in when you "think nothing is happening maybe they didn't work" (this thought ALWAYS occurs) both ate more mushrooms. [bad dosage] Bad bad negative hallucinations. Head on upside down. Turned in to prehistoric bird. Friend outside on the street screaming racist epithets (not normally a racist dude) Luckily ghetto neighbors did not execute him (people can be much more tolerant than we give them credit for) police came and were astonishingly restrained, brought him to hospital. Very close call.

I still concur that hallucinogens are a great thing. But it bears repeating, respect Leary's SET, SETTING, and DOSAGE.

funkwyrm | 13 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do you stop regretting?

Aside from the great general advice you are getting here:

You can always go back to school or learn a new trade. The only thing preventing you is "being in competition" (your words) with people who have more experience.

Don't compare yourself to people who have more experience. For example, if I were to pick up Computer Science today (late 30s) I would be happy to compare myself to 20-somethings who have a similar level of experience.

Of course, I have more life experience, hence other skills and perspective, and that is enough for me.

funkwyrm | 13 years ago | on: Why We Get Fat

Cool explanation. I didn't conceptually get that the mitochondrial energy process is the same as a coal power plant. But if everything gets burned, how do I build new cell walls and stuff? Where does the actual matter come from?

Some of the matter must be used to create matter directly, rather than as simple an energy source. Or if all the matter in my body is grown/created entirely from energy and cell division (can't be true of essential vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids, by definition) isn't growing and repairing my body going to be a huge factor in energy consumption?

funkwyrm | 13 years ago | on: Why We Get Fat

The big mistake begins here:

"Simple physics requires that to lose weight, we must burn more calories than we ingest"

THAT fallacy is how the author leads the reader in to HIS strawman argument, that somehow Taubes is unaware of, or disregards, the laws of thermodynamics.

1) Ingesting calories is not relevant, digesting is.

2) We don't "burn" any calories whatsoever. We use various components of food as raw materials for various biological processes. One conceptual example: when you ingest some sort of protein, your body might break it down in to amino acid chains and then repair a muscle fiber using those raw materials.

Talking about the human body as if it is a closed system that burns food is just silly. We're accidentally taking our metaphors as literal. Yes, if we literally burned all the calories we ingest, the thermodynamics argument would be correct. However, that just a metaphor, don't mistake the map for the territory.

funkwyrm | 13 years ago | on: All Complex Ecosystems Have Parasites (2005)

This particular misconception has been wandering around for a while:

"Simple ecosystems are the goal of proceedings like CARP, the panel that set out the ruinously high royalties for webcasters. The recording industry set the rates as high as they did so that the teeming millions of webcasters would be rendered economically extinct, leaving behind a tiny handful of giant companies that could be negotiated with around a board room table, rather than dealt with by blanket legislation."

The recording industry specifically backed a percentage-of-revenue legislation, and lawmakers took it upon themselves to enact something much more crippling than even what the RIAA had proposed. Why they did that remains a mystery; but it was the actions of either corrupt or ignorant lawmakers, not the "recording industry" that destroyed internet radio.

funkwyrm | 13 years ago | on: When it comes to DRM, Amazon is a bottom feeding Hell Beast

It seems everything the author is concerned about would be solved it there were a centrally/open-source managed, non-profit, DRM out there. The DRM which would be analogous to SSH.

So one thing I've never understood: Is this really not technically possible or is the problem that the people who have the knowhow to create that are ideologically opposed?

funkwyrm | 13 years ago | on: Seriously?

Not true, read the actual quote, he said "and women. Or men. Whatever" he specifically expanded it to basically include "whatever you are attracted to" ... he is a straight man, he will use what HE is attracted to as a reference. Also, how do you know his statements weren't actually directed at lesbians, who are attracted to similar private parts, why assume he was targeting straight men? ... in this case, again with so little context, I would lean towards !lighten up everybody!

funkwyrm | 13 years ago | on: Seriously?

I disagree, IMHO Pussy as a shorthand for sex reduces SEX to the sexual organs. Not the woman, the sex act. That may be unenlightened (we know sex can be so much more!) but not necessarily anti-woman.

funkwyrm | 13 years ago | on: Seriously?

Without being there, I can't be sure, but the way the OP describes this appears to miss the point.

The way I interpret that sentence, using the very little context supplied, is

profits, people, and sex

yaknow, sex with women, men, whatever

remember that song from the 90s opp = other people's "privates | p | p" or whatever you want "P" to stand for.

Without more context, that's exactly what I get from that, nothing anti-women whatsoever.

funkwyrm | 13 years ago | on: Dear Programmer, I have an idea

Conversation with a very technical friend of mine about filling positions in my bootstrapping company:

HIM - you need a technical cofounder

ME - don't I know it ... perhaps you could learn objective C and not only work with me but have tons of high paying freelance work available

HIM - that's a huge time investment. Maybe you should learn objective C and then you wouldn't have this problem any more.

ME - I would genuinely enjoy that. But then who will go out and talk to bands (my first target customer) not to mention doing all this design work, architecture for the product, finding more staff, managing projects, marketing the product ...

HIM - Lot's of people can go talk to bands. Get a college kid to go talk to bands. Developers are what's hard to find.

The thing is, he's probably right ... but there is a structural problem in how we make these decisions about working with other people ... it is nearly impossible to assess expertise in something that you are not knowledgable about. So we often either massively overvalue stuff other people do; i.e. "set up a C corp" is quite a small undertaking and isn't how I would evaluate a business cofounder, or undervalue it "anybody can go talk to bands" displays a lack of specific understanding of the music industry.

funkwyrm | 13 years ago | on: Dear Programmer, I have an idea

Yeah, that's kind of the conclusion I came to. But that just makes me ask the question: Then why doesn't every developer with a related skillset just learn Objective C already and try to charge me lots of money? I mean, if I didn't already have two jobs on top of spending months of the year on tour, that's what I would do. Sometimes capitalism doesn't work.

Thanks for your well wishes!

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