moribondus | 9 years ago | on: All the best advice we could find on how to get a job
moribondus's comments
moribondus | 9 years ago | on: San Francisco Is Preparing for Life After This Tech Boom
The SF advantage is so incredibly ephemeral. Everybody wants to go there, because everybody else is there.
If that is all there is to it -- and it is -- this process can very easily go into reverse mode. SF is insanely expensive. You do not need any part of SF to write good software. It only makes your software more expensive.
Some day -- that could take quite a bit of time though -- SF will crash and burn, simply because there is no reason why it wouldn't.
moribondus | 9 years ago | on: Why I turned down $500K and shut down my startup
ContractBeast would have accumulated lots of data that would be compelling for its users. The only problem is that you cannot hand out that data directly: How much did someone else pay for the same contract? What conditions did he get? If you find a way to effectively use this information without actually revealing it, you would have found the compelling feature that you were looking for. ContractBeast would have become the go-to place to check if your contract actually makes sense.
moribondus | 9 years ago | on: It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app
Consider the following problem. If this very question is relevant, then your project is not.
Would it have mattered what they had picked for Google Search? A web site or an app? No. It would not have made any difference.
If what you are building is compelling to its users, they will want it badly. Otherwise, regardless of how well you package it, it will be a waste of time.
You see, for example, companies choose SAP, and then they buy the servers, desktops, and other hardware and software that is suitable for running in a SAP context.
Nobody cares whether the SAP client is a desktop GUI or a web client. It is immaterial. In other words, if that kind of things matter, your program doesn't.
moribondus | 9 years ago | on: French court fines Uber, execs for illegal taxi service
The peer-2-peer mechanism is well understood now. Its economics have clearly been declared perfectly viable.
Therefore, you could have hundreds of Uber-style networks with a few cross-network search engines returning search results. That would have exactly the same effect as having just one Uber.
Transport services are important to the economy. We must always encourage swarmification of our critical infrastructure.
Furthermore, in a related case, we should be grateful that the powers that be attacked Napster and shut it down. Decentralization takes a lot of effort and is not just a natural outcome. The far-reaching decentralization of the bittorrent ecosystem only came about thanks to the continuous legal attacks that made it the only solution possible.
Therefore, I advocate sustained legal and other attacks on Uber.
We do not want a centralized system. We will need the attacks orchestrated by the state apparatus to properly shape a much more decentralized solution.
moribondus | 9 years ago | on: The main social media sites are getting more censored every day
Yes. You would expect that only sites like facebook would do that. It seriously discredits Paul Graham and Y-Combinator. After dealing with Hacker News, who would ever want to trade with anything Paul Graham is involved with?
moribondus | 9 years ago | on: FBI wants access to browser history without a warrant in terrorism, spy cases
Well, they will further and further encroach until they meet some kind of resistance. Unfortunately, resistance will not easily materialize because people here would be the first ones to utterly condemn respect-instilling reprisals.
As far as I am concerned, they can do whatever they want with people who accept that. Concerning myself, I am always on the outlook for some kind of counter-veiling power, the most interesting of which is Islam. It really retaliates. So, I am positive about it.
moribondus | 9 years ago | on: Police use new device to seize money in bank accounts or on prepaid cards
The police will keep encroaching until they meet some kind of resistance, which will not easily materialize because people here would be the first ones to utterly condemn respect-instilling reprisals.
If everybody else around you accepts to get arbitrarily molested in the butt, you either accept it too, or else you move out.
I have personally chosen to move out. Unfortunately, you can see the United Nations, USAID, international NGOs and similar organizations coming over here to convince the locals to accept similar abuse from their own government, by advocating "the rule of law". Of course, there are also the Christian organizations advocating to the locals to offer their other cheek to such thefting police.
Since I cannot keep "moving away", at some point I will have no other option than to finally make a stand.
The Art of War says that the secret of success consists in never letting the enemy choose the time and the place. You must always choose the time and the place by yourself. Therefore, it suggests that it is us who must schedule forceful attacks against the police. Seriously, I am all for it.
page 1
If someone can do all of what they propose, he could as well package his day into some kind of product or service, and then sell that instead.
One reason why people want to be employees and not enterpreneur-cum-salesman is exactly because they do not want to do all of that, or are simply not capable of doing all of that.
Ever since I learned to repackage my hourly efforts into sell-able products and services, I stopped looking for jobs and just sold products and services instead. In the end, an employer is just someone who repackages your hours into sell-able products and services.