probe's comments

The second point is really interesting - how instrumental was having a semi-public feed in them taking off? I use venmo b/c everyone I know has it, it has my bank info anyways, and it's easy to find people. Even now with a gazillion options I still default to venmo.

On the latter point of finding people though, a public feed has been useful. Often when I venmo someone new (ex. dinner), it's helpful to see my friends also having venmo'ed the person so I know I have the right account.

The more people invest in ETFs/indexes/passively, the more opportunity there will be for active traders (indices by definition are adjusted to average and leave underpriced assets in the index), and so I don't think it's that surprising we're seeing more people try.

What to do with money is kind of like politics - people have different risk preferences/processes/deep rooted beliefs on what is right. And like politics, there is "no one right answer" but instead what compromises one wishes to make and what is relevant to their specific situation (ex. gun holders in middle of nowhere farmland vs. anti-gun urban dwellers).

I think Robinhood is net positive and kind of like political voting in that way - it empowers people to do something they couldn't before, and allow them to test their value systems in the real world.

"Over coffee, John Saito once mentioned to us that the product of Dropbox itself had more words than a Harry Potter novel!"

Wow that is actually super cool to think about. I wonder what they mean by this (i.e. is it the product itself or does it include things like T&C)? I wonder what a comparison looks like for a more documentation heavy company (ex. Stripe)

Super cool!! Is he manually joining these Zoom calls or is there a script running to let him join automatically (seems to be the former)?

Was looking into a side project that was a Zoom Timer (i.e. dial into Zoom with a timer background to keep everyone on track), but was worried we'd hit captcha if we tried to automate. Curious if he solved this :o

Thanks for creating this - super cool!

Is there any empirical evidence of Price’s law? Would love to see it.

I could only find this study (admittedly from 1986) that disproved the original hypothesis - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/030645...

We can tell whether the number is iMessage compatible (similar to how when you type in a new number to text on an iPhone you can tell whether it is iMessage compatible or not). So if it's not iMessage, we can send that number an SMS like normal. If they are iMessage, but for some reason delivery fails, we can also send an SMS as a backup.

Happy to chat more on privacy depending on your use case and how you want to set it up!

You're spot on - iMessage returns a date_delivered so we know if it's successful or not, and send an SMS backup via Twilio.

Yup great callout, something we think a lot about. We haven’t run into any rate-limiting yet, though are aware that it’s a possibility. iMessage returns the date_delivered which has been valid and we send an SMS in those cases.

As for Apple shutting us down, it is a valid concern, although right now the service looks no different than if one were to type out a message on their own device.

Happy to share more details and go through any concerns you might have - maybe there's ways we can help with appointment reminders!

Hi all! Like many people here we wanted to reduce our monthly expenses given the time, and found Twilio to be one of the highest line items. When we dug into the data, we found that 80% of our users were iPhone users and thus could receive iMessages.

Thus we built Balto - an API to send iMessages, and were able to transition our entire customer list successfully (as well as take advantage of iMessage features like unlimited messaging, read receipts, apple pay, etc.)

Would love HN thoughts/feedback! We also have a customer facing version if you’re not a developer (https://usebalto.com/) and wrote a blog documenting the journey for those interested (https://usebalto.com/blog/balto-origin-story%20) :)

Do you have a budget of some sort that your company provides? Or is it just on an ad hoc basis

This is super cool! There's definitely an advantage to being a native iMessage vs just sending out texts.

Also if I'm understanding correctly, I can also use the API to understand if a message was read or not?

The landing page for the first one cracked me up haha

Took bites from the best podcast episodes of the week and compiled into a single 30 min episode! This one is all about coronavirus - from its origin, to why CDC testing was delayed, potential impact on the economy when compared to 2008, and a fun little segment at the end about rude london babies :)

This is a fun experiment that my friends and I are running while quarantined - there are TOO many podcast episodes, and so we’re picking bites from the best ones. Now you can sample new episodes, learn something new, and if you like a specific one, go and listen to the whole episode!

Would love thoughts on the format, and if interested in future ones, sign up here - https://forms.gle/8gUEgTugUt4Gfw6L9

This is pretty cool, just signed up.

Does this take a lot of time? Or do you have a specific note taking process for podcasts?

He technically has until March of 2020. I still think there’s a chance that he pulls #1 off (SpaceX pulling off human flights in Q1 and re-raises, Airbnb going public as a profitable and defensible business, Uber and rationalization in ridesharing and delivery + continued execution)

"It’s easy to assume from the headlines that Libra is only associated with Facebook, but that is not the case."

With the post on.... Facebook.com

Really fascinating - can you talk a little bit more about your experiences?

You always hear about trying moonshots but I’ve never heard someone who went reverse and was happier!

There’s a good book called Mastery (Robert Greene) on this topic

"90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds".

I'd say let's have a moment of silence for Google+, but that is clearly too generous