The main issue is the conflating of usage and value. The persona/user group that consumes the Trending pages are likely users who themselves contribute to open source, and thus are part of a flywheel that drives more code contribution overall. (e.g. how 1% of users post on reddit vs 99% consume) Not all usage is made equally.
This scenario reminds me of a funny story posted on HN a while ago: https://memex.marginalia.nu/log/48-i-have-no-capslock.gmi (TL;DR; if you take this "usage based" feature removal logic to it's conclusion, a lot of important keys would be removed from computers/keyboards).
"Over here we have our random number generator."
"Nine nine nine nine nine nine"
"Are you sure that's random?"
"Thats the problem with randomness: you can never be sure."
I haven't started a company that needs to provide employee healthcare--does this have a short-term improvement to insurance rates? What incentivizes a company to employ HealthWiz--are there insurance providers that reduce rates as a result?
How do you convince employers that this service is in their best interest?
The site and data normalization are great. The problem is that applying the phrase "best case scenario" is simply false, and it is just a distraction that was not necessary on the site.
Amortizing my entire data usage over my entire cell plan (which includes talk & text), costs me literally $0.001/MB.
You should not present $0.24/MB (US|Prepaid) as the "Best case scenario" when someone on a standard AT&T plan pays 240x less.
From personal experience in a YC interview: My cofounders and I decided we would speak and answer in turns. The problem we ultimately ran into after a few minutes was that one of our interviewers asked, "so who is the CEO?" Inside, we knew that was a bad sign (I believe I've heard PG say that it's a very bad sign).
It probably wasn't the only reason we were ultimately rejected, but it certainly didn't help. Looking back on that experience, one of the things I would have changed would be the author's next bit of advice:
> "Generally speaking, there will be one person that answers most of the time"
> "It's really bad if we're talking to a bunch of founders and we can't figure out who the leader is..."
Again... This was one YC interview a number of years ago, and I of course have no real insight into the final impression we left on our interviewers. Just something that I remember not feeling great about in hindsight.
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Let us suppose that there is an organized group of Bitcoin enthusiasts with a combined amount of Bitcoin holdings of around 100,000BTC. Would an article "App.net begins accepting Bitcoin" increase the BTC/USD exchange rate by more than 0.01%?
To me it seems that a continued stream of press is good for Bitcoin, and I am genuinely curious is there is such a group of enthusiasts that strategically spend Bitcoins for PR.
Those are examples of predicting demand changes on a macro scale.
Amazon wants to do this on a more micro, person-by-person level. For example, you visit a product page for some specialty shampoo. Amazon might decide to ship that product before you even add it to your cart.
Without addressing the issue of tax loopholes in general, there is a logical rationale for lower taxes on capital gains (for Schwarzman, Buffett & co):
- It's a double tax, as money that was invested had already been previously taxed.
- It does not account for inflation. If an investment grows only with inflation, capital gains taxes still need to be paid on that growth.
That's the thing: I wish more people would notify you when they use your open source stuff. Attribution means less to me than simply knowing that it's being used.
Basically, I derive a significant amount of esteem and happiness from making things that people use. It was this that lead myself and those around me to believe I should pursue Engineering. Unfortunately, I derived very little to no esteem from what I felt was merely "book learning" at Cooper. The school system I grew up in was extremely liberal and forward-thinking, so Cooper Union felt extremely rigid to me (although I acknowledge the possibility that all Engineering programs are like this). I simply couldn't survive four years like that.
Ultimately, I studied Economics at NYU, so I moved away from Engineering to allow myself to pursue development on my own. There are other reasons why I moved to Economics, but thats the gist of it.
I understand the financial mistakes (underperforming investments). I understand the building mistakes (extravagance, over-spending). What I don't understand is this policy that will (in my opinion) destroy The Cooper Union's core asset: the student body. Having attended, I whole-heartedly believe that nearly all of Cooper Union's value-add is in being surrounded by incredibly intelligent peers. Peers who are now less likely to apply or attend.
Me: Spent two years at Cooper, currently graduating from NYU.
Instead of ranking by net points, or points over time, the comments could be ranked by points per view. This essentially gives a close approximation to "What percentage of people who viewed this comment found it worthwhile?"
This scenario reminds me of a funny story posted on HN a while ago: https://memex.marginalia.nu/log/48-i-have-no-capslock.gmi (TL;DR; if you take this "usage based" feature removal logic to it's conclusion, a lot of important keys would be removed from computers/keyboards).