Recent submissions

Comment · 2 years ago
https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/spoon-river-anthology/28-fr...

...Yet at the start there was a clear vision,

A high and urgent purpose in my soul

Which drove me on trying to memorize

The Encyclopedia Britannica!

Comment · 8 years ago
Also average response time is a bad metrics. For one, the average is a bad measure if the variance is high. So I'll probably use 95% time instead of average.

But as a PM I have a different question. Which is the impact of the response time of Github on the user experience? 25% reduction on an average of 2 sec improves greatly the user experience, on a 200ms for a service that has basically no competition is just a marginal improvement, on a 50 ms average is not noticeable.

How is it distributed across multiple operations? Improving the latency of loading a diff is probably more important than the latency of approving a PR. In one case I'm trying to work, in the second I'm done with the work.

Now, my experience with GitHub is that it is already reasonably fast unless I'm doing something stupid. So the CPU utilization is a good metrics because 10% less CPU means 10% less server I need to pay and that goes to their bottom line (I don't know their economics to decide if it is substantial or not). The 25% reduction in latency is just icing on the cake...

Comment · 8 years ago
Interesting point of view. I would challenge this article by asking you what you are using the roadmap for. For me, a roadmap is mostly a communication tool. Off course, if I say I'll do something there's a commitment to that. But I always try to create an understanding that my roadmap is more a vision open to refinement and improvement than a set of solutions.

In this context, I find a feature roadmap easier to share most of the time. Discussing which problem I'm solving is always difficult for many reasons: 1) unless I'm really unfocused, the big problem I'm solving should be the same. I could tackle different parts of the problem, but it is more difficult to communicate 2) when you present a priority between problems you are solving, people develop a "negative" mood. Every problem is a priority. If you focus more on general features, there's more the issue of creating "pet projects".

That said, I always use a problem point of view when working on prioritization and approaching a product.

Comment · 8 years ago
I agree with your comment. Amazon has a problem of 1) how to police all this long-tail product, 2) how to onboard the number of sellers that needs to fulfill the demand for long-tail products.

I'm pretty sure that if someone were to sell a counterfeited copy of a best seller, his store would be shut down in a matter of hours and his account closed forever. But a small store selling stuff difficult to find? They are doing them a service, almost.

Like everything else, there are rules against counterfeiting, but the enforcement should strike a balance for the overall wellbeing of the marketplace...

Comment · 8 years ago
What is Nokia?

Just joking, Totally agree with you...

Comment · 8 years ago
Mmm... 2.2B MAU. When you think about how they counted them, probably they used HyperLogLog. In usual configuration, it has a 0.7 - 1% error. Basically a medium-sized country...

Or the number of users that any startup founder will die for...

It is impressive what Facebook managed to build, but, although the number is staggering, the relative amount of people that switched from horses to cars or to electricity for illumination from candles and burning oil is even bigger... People do not voluntarily stop using something, but the force of innovation is huge. Very few Fortune 500 companies even existed 100 years ago, and the pace of disruption is accelerating...

Comment · 8 years ago
Wow! You are saying no one in the US expects, or at least consider that could be an obstacle on the street in front of you? It doesn't mean necessarily a pedestrian. An animal? Cargo lost by a truck in front of you?

It is the responsibility of the driver to be alert and try to minimize the impact. Just because a cyclist shouldn't cross a four-lane road in the middle of the night, doesn't mean you shouldn't look for obstacles.

Comment · 8 years ago
I find it remarkable that people don't understand there's a non-subtle difference between signing up voluntarily on the Obama website using Facebook and consenting to the information collection vs. signing up for a quiz from an unrelated company and having that data used by the Trump campaign.

If you don't understand the difference, it is the same difference between having consensual sex with your girlfriend and raping your neighbor girlfriend because she consented to have sex with him...

Now, this metaphor is imperfect, but from what we could see the Obama campaign was within the boundary allowed by Facebook TOS and what disclosed to the user. Did they push this to the limit? Yes. To the point that FB didn't think it was feasible. But legit according to the rule. Maybe having consensual extreme BSDM sex with your girlfriend vs. raping your neighbor's GF? Quiz, which one is legal and which one is not?

Comment · 8 years ago
> Our experiences are different I suspect, Check this out https://www.sec.gov/fast-answers/answers-regfdhtm.html.

What this has to do with the parent comment? I'm asking these because I'm not sure I follow the reasoning. Your concern is that the SEC has very strict reporting standards and regulations. These are intended to provide a fair field between all investors (accredited and non-accredited) in order for the market to function in a more efficient way. In exchange for this increased cost of regulation upfront, the transaction between investors on the company's shares have a much lower friction (and transaction costs).

Private companies have lower regulation because the assumption is that the investors willing to buy shares are open to assume higher transaction costs in terms of due diligence. Obviously, reporting the false could open the company to lawsuits, but that's also part of the potential cost for the investors.

The choice between being a public company and a private one, in the end, is a function also of this trade-off. If I understand your reasoning, you fear that the SEC forcing himself into the private market could increase the regulatory cost of all startup. Am I right?

If that is correct, my answer would be that the SEC is not imposing the full regulation but just a minimum level of accurate reporting on behalf of the investors. This is because there's an assumption that a well behaved private market is essential to make the economy more active (imagine if this level of lying was accepted, how many investors would be willing to invest?). On the other side, I see the risk of a slippery slope and having the SEC power to grow to large and kill the startup ecosystems. I don't have a clear answer for that.

Comment · 8 years ago
Question: have you read the article? Loyalty rate is defined as the number of users who switched from one platform to the other in the last year over the number of user on the departing platform. They even say that the absolute number looks different because of the bigger market share of Android.

Now, your argument is that someone who chose to stay with a device with smaller CB is more loyal, but what the article is saying is that out of 100 Android user, around 90 bought a new Android when replacing the phone, while only 86 Apple user bought a new iPhone.

I don't see how you dispute this fact as an evidence that Android users are more loyal. Even an argument on network advantage doesn't work because Android phones are very compatible with Apple ones (not the other way around) and the Apple ecosystem is still pretty big...

Comment · 8 years ago
I read your comment. And I stand my point.

Even being very very friendly and interpreting your comment in the way you clarified it, there is an assumption in your comment. The assumption is that Tesla will be able to bring their car to Level 5, full autonomy, while GM will not be able to that. And let me ask you why you say so? Just because Tesla, in a marketing move, tells you they will be able to do that, and GM is not doing that? Maybe GM has a legal department that warned them not to do that?

To paraphrase your point, no there's no difference between a car that, according to their marketing "will maybe be able to go to mars" and a car that "has the hardware that could be maybe able to go to mars, but we prefer to tell you now because we could be liable if we fail". I understand the value of aspirational statements, but still...

Comment · 8 years ago
Nope, GM has already self-driving cars on the street here in San Francisco. Remember they own Cruise.

So, GM has decided to go to Mars as Tesla did. It has acquired the tech to go to Mars and started testing it. In the meanwhile realized it could copy a page from Tesla's book and put some semi-autonomous vehicle on the road. And, according to this article, did an excellent job.

I'm no way a GM fanboy (do they even exists), but could we be fair?

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