randomacct3847's comments

I’ve commented on how scammy Amazon is multiple times on here. For whatever reason I feel like there are more people on HN ready to defend Amazon than not and call out those who say it’s become scammy as “overreacting.”

Anyone else feel like tech workers are now bucketed in “just show me the money” and “oh my god what have I enabled” groups?

Media companies can most certainly be massive multi bil companies. There is a reason why telcos are buying up media companies (e.g. ATT buying Time Warner/HBO and Comcast buying NBC) and some of the richest billionaires are media tycoons.

I think HQ is on the right track but I don’t see the current team being the right team to turn it into the next big media play. The future of live TV should be heavily interactive.

Did you read the WSJ article? https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tech-whiz-behind-vine-and-h...

The reporter basically insinuates that Rus had been aggressively trying to undermine and get employees to turn on Colin for a year and leaves an open question on whether stress resulting from their toxic relationship contributed to him increasing his drug usage.

Basically, it was maybe not a complete accident unrelated to his work.

The company has been diversifying hosts and games for awhile now. I never thought the success of the company was going to or should ride on him alone.

I’m saying I don’t believe whatever private valuation they have. Wealth management is a lifestyle biz at best unless you get to Blackrock scale. I believe that is what they are pitching investors to get whatever valuation they have now but I am extremely bearish on these companies. Robo investing has been largely commoditized and AUM will inevitably tank with the next recession.

FWIW the only reason I’ve heard about Lambda School is because people I follow either liked, retweeted, or mentioned Lambda School so many times that I could not have heard of it.

I don’t know if there’s a name for it, but it’s basically “get your CEO and influential investors” to incessantly tweet about your company.

Not sure if it’s considered pure content marketing but a mix of content + influencer marketing.

I think you’re overestimating the revenue an asset manager makes with $11b assets under management (AUM).

They aren’t a hedge fund (no profit sharing) and take .25% in fees a year. $11b *.25% is only $27.5m. Hardly a unicorn scale business IMO unless they are pitching investors they’ll get to Blackrock scale (trillion in AUM). Personally I don’t see it. Switching cost is big for existing clients but new clients have a bunch of Robo options now including free ones offered by Schwab, big banks, etc.

For some perspective, after college I worked for an investment fund with around $3b AUM with around 7-8 full time staff with a similar fee structure...it was basically a nice lifestyle company for the two founders.

I think the key is sleep...

I think the market has already realized that Amazon retail is beatable. There’s been a resurgence in stocks that were once falling like a knife because everyone thought Amazon would destroy them...among them Best Buy, Etsy, Shopify, etc.

It is definitely not overblown. Easy to do simple searches on Amazon and compare to a site that doesn’t rely on 3rd party sellers like Best Buy. If you searched “wireless headphones” the top results are all knock off airpods and other suspect cheap Chinese made electronics with thousands of likely fake reviews. It’s a joke

Shopping on Amazon has become like shopping on Canal Street in NYC (e.g. street lined with shops selling counterfeit goods). You never know what you’re going to get.

Medicare is notorious for being rife with fraud and waste. This ring is far from the only one.

This includes mom-and-pop doctors who “upcode” certain procedure codes so that they get paid more. There’s obviously very little the govt can do to check or know. That kind of stuff happens all the time. Like I wonder if the govt is even doing basic anomaly detection on claims data to catch these things...if a ring is getting away with $1bil it makes me think no.

Also...there got to be so much opportunity to build a company around selling a DS tool to the government or insurance companies to help detect and stop medical fraud.

I don’t think it’s clear from the customer perspective what you really get for $1k. Sure, it’s a lot cheaper than going to school but if it means nothing to an employer than psychologically it feels like money spent rather than money invested. I’m sure they have partnerships with some cos to offer to their employees but seems like investing on enterprise sales for employee training could be a more fruitful route than b2c.

Truth is its a very typical salary + equity package for established cos and competitive late stage startups in Bay Area. With CoL it’s comparable to making $150k in almost every other major market outside maybe NY.

Never use Plaid. I’m guessing the apps that would apply to most on here are Venmo and Robinhood. Square Cash probably use them too.

That isn’t true. They do a lot of mining themselves. Their trouble toward end of 2018 was in part because they had so much bitcoin cash on their balance sheet made from mining on their own rigs.

This is just some random guy’s blog. Sorry but I hardly believe any entity, govt or not, could accurately map out the % of calories that come from carbs for all Americans year over year going back a few decades.

There are low glycemic fruits and high glycemic fruits...stick with the low ones. I’m on keto and will ocassionally have berries (all considered low). Avoid fruits like grapes, mangos, watermelon...etc.

Not sure where you got the stat on sugar consumption...it’s not really just sugar it’s carb consumption in general and I would be very surprised if that was trending downward at all.

Vegetable oils are not good but would not say that by itself is the issue. It’s the carbs you’re eating that is being cooked in vegetable oils.