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hari_seldon_'s comments

hari_seldon_ | 8 years ago | on: How Harvard helps its richest and most arrogant students get ahead

This is why grade inflation should be curbed at an institutional level. When you compare schools like Harvard and Stanford, where As are very common, to schools like Princeton and MIT, that have some sort of deflation in place, it becomes clear that the latter do not "help" their richest and most arrogant students.

That said, schools like that probably have other informal systems in place that ensure the powerful have their kids stay ahead.

hari_seldon_ | 8 years ago | on: Blue Apron Plans to Cut 24% of Staff Barely a Month After IPO

Agreed in general, but I am specifically not talking about technology used to improve processes or help a company move up the learning curve.

I was trying to offer an explanation of what separates out "tech" companies and not trying to get into the nitty gritty of the fact that many companies use technologies. I would argue that a manufacturing company whose innovation is a more streamlined assembly line to product some widget is not a "tech" company in the sense that many people on hacker news use the word.

hari_seldon_ | 8 years ago | on: Blue Apron Plans to Cut 24% of Staff Barely a Month After IPO

Agreed. I also saw a talk by a PM from Blue Apron a while back, and it seems that another problem is that people subscribe with the hopes of cooking more but then discover that having the meal kit still involves enough time and friction to limit them from doing it. I think that many people love the idea of cooking more often but still wish it were more convenient. To Blue Apron's credit, they have made it fairly streamlined!

hari_seldon_ | 8 years ago | on: Blue Apron Plans to Cut 24% of Staff Barely a Month After IPO

^ this. I think the bigger question becomes "why does it matter if something is a tech company?" Is it because that is what makes it easier to raise money today? If that's the case, then I wish more investors and analysts would go back to first principles and understand why slapping a "tech" label on a company does not necessarily mean it will scale well or succeed in the long run.

hari_seldon_ | 8 years ago | on: Blue Apron Plans to Cut 24% of Staff Barely a Month After IPO

The way that I think about a "tech" company is that it is able to scale its growth non-linearly with its staff (or human resources). This isn't a binary rule, and obviously many successful companies are in a gray area -- but I think that it serves as a good litmus test / starting point when thinking about companies.

For example, an app that is running on a few servers can gain users more quickly than it needs to hire additional workers. A company like Blue Apron has to grow its warehouse staff as it gains new subscribers, effectively meaning that its SG&A and overhead costs scale fairly evenly with growth.

hari_seldon_ | 8 years ago | on: Google launches new security features to protect users from unverified apps

They already do manual review for many of their high-serving ads, and people shouldn't shy away from some human intervention in these processes.

AI and machine learning are most effective these days when they help assist people (flagging potentially malicious code, bubbling up anomalies, etc.), and it isn't that expensive to get a pair of eyeballs to double check conclusions!

hari_seldon_ | 8 years ago | on: iPad Pro 10.5 for Software Development

I have a 2015 15-inch retina macbook pro and a surface pro 4. Ever since Windows 10 added a native ubuntu bash shell to its OS, I have preferred using the surface for all of my development (some web stuff where I ssh into other boxes and some python number crunching done locally). A big factor is that the surface pro 4's screen looks a lot better than my retina macbook pro because it is more dense and has a higher resolution. A few years ago I would not have believed the stuff I am writing in this comment, but here we are!

hari_seldon_ | 8 years ago | on: Dropbox Drops Photo Galleries

They are in a tough bind because they used to be interested in that space and were slow to move on enterprise, allowing Box and others to have more momentum in that space. Now with Google and others dominating the photo storage consumer space, where should Dropbox focus its efforts?

hari_seldon_ | 8 years ago | on: Before Silicon Valley, New Jersey Reigned As Nation's Center Of Innovation

Many people on HN seem to forget that many strides in computer science, computer architecture, and mathematics came from schools that don't start with an "S" and are from outside of the Bay Area. I think it is more that the definition of how you measure innovation has shifted over time -- now it is based on how many dollars are raised for your venture vs. actual strides being made in academic fields of study.
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